Two Rivers

by T. Greenwood

  “Where is he now?”

  “First he got sent to Japan. Now he’s at an army medical center in Texas. He’s supposed to be sent home soon though. Maybe by the end of the summer.” Ray said he’d heard the burns were mostly on his face and his hands. That the fire was set by Brooder’s own platoon; a whole village of people went up in flames.

  At around four A.M ., Betsy and I got in the car. “You want to go home?” I asked. Since my parents had moved, Betsy’s father agreed to let me sleep on his couch until the first of July. I had three weeks left, and no real plan other than the vague idea of whisking Betsy off to Nova Scotia with me.

  “No,” Betsy said. “Let’s drive.”

  I had little more to go on than the images imprinted on my brain (of snowcapped mountains and stone houses) and Freddy’s maps. When I packed up for summer vacation, he took the maps down off our wall and folded them carefully before handing them to me. I’d studied them, traced the coastal edges with my fingers, examining the inch of paper water separating the U.S. and this imagined haven.

  We drove all the way to Gormlaith, and by the time we pulled up in front of Betsy’s favorite cottage, the one with the stained glass windows and red wooden swing, I was sober now, and my nerves were raw. I opened the glove box where I’d been keeping the maps. I hadn’t thought any of this out, not in any real way.

  “See, we just drive to Bar Harbor and take the Blue Nose to Yarmouth,” I said. “We tell them it’s a day trip. Just seeing the sights. It’s as easy as that. We can have our things sent later.”

  Outside the sun was rising. I was delirious from staying up all night. My head was spinning, my heart heavy with thoughts of Brooder. I smiled and touched Betsy’s hair, tucking a piece behind her ear. “It’s supposed to be beautiful there. We can get a little place near the water.”

  She leaned into my touch, closed her eyes as if she were imagining it herself.

  “I’ll catch fish,” I said.

  The cottage was dark. Still deserted. “Let’s just go inside.” She shook her head and laughed, starting to open the car door.

  “I’m not joking.”

  “What about school?” she asked. “You still have another year. The war could be over by the time you get out.”

  “The war’s not going to be over in a year. I’ll graduate and get drafted.”

  “There are other ways,” Betsy said, still smiling.

  My skin prickled. “Sure, I could join the reserves or the National Guard. Would you like that? For me to support this? Or, better yet, I could join the coast guard, then I’d not only be supporting the war , but I’ll also be gone for five years. Is that what you want?” I felt like my entire world had been narrowed down to a short list of possible futures. None of them even remotely resembled the life I’d envisioned when I arrived on campus three years before.

  “You know we can’t leave,” Betsy said, looking up at me, her smile sad and nervous.

  “Sure we can,” I argued, but even as I said it, I knew we couldn’t.

  “Harper.”

  “Why not?” I asked, knowing perfectly well why not. Her father would die without her here. She was trapped. We were both trapped.

  My chest hurt. Every muscle in my body was flexed. Lately I’d felt like I was constantly bracing myself for a blow. I was pissed at her father, pissed at LBJ and his cronies, pissed at a world that always, always seemed to be conspiring to keep Betsy and me apart.

  “Do you understand what will happen to me if I stay?” I asked, my whole body trembling.

  “You can finish college and go to graduate school. It’ll be okay.” Betsy nodded her head, reached for my hand.

  “Betsy, there are a half a million troops over there. What makes me so special? Why should I be spared?”

  Betsy’s eyes were brimming with tears. “Don’t yell at me.”

  “All you’ve ever talked about your whole life is getting out of here,” I said, aware, even as I said it, that I was being ridiculous. Cruel.

  “Stop it.” Betsy’s face looked pained.

  “And now here I’m telling you we can go. We can really go. And we can be together. Make a life ,” I said, reaching for Betsy’s chin and making her look at me.

  Betsy looked out the window at the cottage, which we had broken into more times than I could count. In the mornings, when the sun came up inside this house, it patterned our bodies with pink and orange and violet light.

  “We can’t keep borrowing other people’s lives. Trespassing. Playing house. It’s time for us to make our own life. Be grownups.”

  “Who says?” she asked, her jaw set hard.

  “You’re so worried you’re going to wind up like your mother,” I said, so angry and miserable now I could barely stand it. “But I think you’re crazier than she ever was.”

  I knew I’d gone too far, but still Betsy’s slap startled me. The left-hand side of my face stung. “Take me home,” she said.

  Betsy didn’t speak to me all the way back to Two Rivers. When I pulled up in front of her house, she looked at me hard and then got out, walking quickly up her sidewalk to the front door. She didn’t turn around; she just opened the door and disappeared inside.

  Head buzzing, I made a U-turn and parked the car in our old driveway, forgetting for a moment that I couldn’t just go home. I looked at the plot of land where our house used to be. The people my father had sold it to had put up a chain-link fence. According to my father, the new owners planned to build a house using this same foundation. Despite the devastation to the rest of the house, the substructure was unharmed. I got out of the car and went to the fence, climbing over easily and standing at the edge of the concrete basement below.

  Everything was gone now. My entire childhood had been reduced to a hole in the ground. I wanted to hit something. I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw myself into that awful cement grave like a tragic widower. But instead I stood at the edge and concentrated on my breath. It was June, and the air was redolent with the smell of lilacs. The lilac bush in our backyard was in full bloom. Petals had fallen and covered the basement floor like a layer of pale purple snow.

  I got back into my car, jaw clenched tight, and headed first to St. Johnsbury and then east. It’s only about 250 miles from St. Johnsbury to Bar Harbor, but you can’t go very fast, because Route 2 goes through just about every small town along the way. I stopped for lunch somewhere near Farmington, a little diner attached to a lady’s house. I was the only patron, and the woman who ran the place seemed grateful to have me there. I ordered clam chowder, toast and a cup of coffee. The chowder was thick, the coffee thicker. She brought me a slab of raspberry pie smothered in vanilla ice cream. By the time I got back on the road I was full and exhausted. I hadn’t slept for over thirty hours. As I drove through a sea of birch trees, my mind started playing tricks on me. The birches with their white bark became tall white monuments. As I drove, I felt like I was back at the cemetery, navigating my way through the headstones with the lawn mower. I gripped the steering wheel, trying to stay awake, thinking about the bodies buried beneath me. I was delirious, hallucinating tombstones. By the time I got to Bar Harbor, I knew I had to get some sleep.

  I found some run-down cottages on Frenchman’s Bay, about ten of them in a perfect row, all of them overlooki
ng the water. The woman at the main house insisted on giving me a tour, gesturing grandly to the grungy kitchenette inside and the rusted barbeque outside. “Ever been to Bah Hahba befoah? How long you stayin’?”

  I offered some half-baked story about sightseeing, about hiking in Acadia National Park, thinking only of climbing into bed and falling asleep. Finally she left me, waddling back to her own cabin, and I went to bed without even bothering to take off my shoes.

  I awoke at dusk, completely disoriented. I drew back the heavy curtains to reveal a twilit sky and so much water. The chowder and pie were the only things I’d had to eat all day. There were still raspberry seeds stuck in my teeth, but I was weak with hunger. I hadn’t brought a change of clothes, but I knew I had a long-sleeved shirt in the car. I went out to the DeSoto and grabbed it. The neon light hanging in the main house’s window blinked NO VACANCY in flashes of red light, but none of the other cabins appeared to be occupied. I walked up the gravel walkway to the main house and went inside. The woman who had rented me the cabin was sitting behind the counter, knitting and watching TV.

  “Full house tonight?” I asked, gesturing toward the sign.

  “Sign’s broke,” she said. “Not so great fah bizness.”

  “Why don’t you turn it off?” I asked.

  “Not my bizness.”

  “Mine either, I guess.” I laughed. “There a good place to get dinner around here?”

  “Sure, lots of places on Main Street. Any one of ’em’s as good as the next.”

  I found a pub with outdoor seating near the pier and ordered myself a real downeast feast: fish chowder, boiled lobster with steamers and mussels, French fries, cole slaw, homemade biscuits and, because nobody asked for ID, a bottle of red wine. I dipped most everything with butter and was dripping in it by the time I pulled the last bit of meat out of my lobster’s claw. I drank the whole bottle of wine myself too and felt pleasantly relaxed for the first time in months. It was chilly outside with the wind coming off the water, but the wine made me happy and warm. I asked the waiter if there was a good place to go get a drink around here.

  “There’s the Quonset hut, but it’s pretty dead ’till after the Fourth of July. Probably not much going on in town. You might want to drive up to Ellsworth. Go to Jasper’s or the Hilltop Lounge.”

  “How far’s that?” I asked.

  “’Bout twenty miles, I’d say.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I didn’t want to drive even another mile, so I found the Quonset hut. The place was quiet, except for a handful of pretty girls and a couple of local boys playing pool. There was no band tonight, just music coming from the jukebox. I bellied up to the bar and ordered a bourbon and soda from the bartender. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen, blond curly hair pulled into a ponytail and blue eyes like the Neptune marbles Brooder and I used to collect. I watched her for a while, washing dishes, replenishing the condiment tray with cherries and lemons and limes.

  “Pretty quiet this time of year?” I asked.

  “Ayuh,” she said without turning around. The scent of lemons was strong.

  “What do you know about Nova Scotia?” I asked, feeling cavalier and a little drunk.

  She turned around then and looked at me sadly. Her eyes were startling, even in the smoky half-light of the bar.

  “I mean, what’s it like this time of year? I was thinking about a day trip. Take the ferry over tomorrow.”

  She turned back to the cutting board and grabbed a lime from a box on the counter. “It’s cold,” she said. “Lot like here. Windy. Better bring a coat.”

  I nodded, though her back was still to me. I left the bar and put a quarter on the pool table. I watched the game they had going and then dropped my coin in the slot to release the balls when it was my turn. I played and lost in a matter of minutes. I shook my opponent’s hand and returned to my roost at the bar.

  “That was quick,” the bartender said.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “You got some matches?” I asked.

  She tossed me a pack of matches and I lit a cigarette to give my hands something to do.

  “Shouldn’t smoke,” she said. “It’ll give you cancer.”

  “That’s the least of my worries,” I said. A little too dramatically, I thought.

  “Want another drink?” she asked.

  “Why not?”

  She poured me a fresh cocktail and cleared away my old glass, washing it in the sink. I dug around in my pocket for a couple of dollars to pay her. She must have heard me rustling around because she said, “S’on me.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I’d never had a girl buy me a drink before. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but after a few sips I didn’t really care.

  I stayed until after she had put all the chairs up on the tables (except for mine) and after she’d swept up the cigarette butts and peanut shells that littered the dirt floor.

  “I’m closing up,” she said after a while.

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks for the drink.”

  The girl nodded and then turned out the lights behind the bar.

  I made my way to the front door. “Can I walk you home?” I offered.

  She looked at me suspiciously.

  “I’ve got a girl,” I said, partly to let her know I didn’t have any ulterior motives, and partly to remind myself, though I wasn’t even sure if that was true anymore.

  Whatever my motives were, it seemed to ease her mind. Her shoulders relaxed for the first time all night, and she smiled. “I don’t feel like going home yet,” she said. “You got a car?”

  We walked back to the cabins and I cleared the junk out of my front seat to make room for her. “Where do you want to go?” I asked.

  “I don’t care. Just let me roll the window down so I can get some fresh air. I can still smell the smoke in my hair.” She undid her ponytail, releasing a cascade of curls down her back. I felt my heart quicken in a dangerous way. And for a terrifying half-moment, I thought that maybe I’d been mistaken. Maybe there wasn’t just one single future awaiting me. Perhaps there were many, many possible lives I might live. Maybe I’d gotten it all wrong.

  And then the girl said, “Tell me about your girlfriend. And about why you’re really here.”

  We drove up Cadillac Mountain with the windows rolled down, and I told her everything. I told her about Betsy at twelve, sipping on an Orange Crush by the barber pole, about the way she could climb a tree just as good as any boy. I told her about the way Betsy was afraid of thunder and about the time, in the barn, as heat lightning illuminated the sky. I told her about the fire that lit up our house like a jack-o’-lantern and about the hole in the ground that remained. I told her about Two Rivers (gave her all of the colors of autumn and spring). I told her about snow, about rain, and about the sound of the train. And then I told her about the dreams I’d been having lately, the ones I’d been too afraid to say out loud. The ones where I was on my belly, crawling through the jungle. About the snakes that slithered from my dreams into my waking, how I woke up sometimes convinced I was being strangled.

  “Tell me about Nova Scotia,” I said.

  “My brother’s over there,” the girl (her name was Nancy) said.

  “Canada?” I asked.

  “Vietnam.”

  My whole back tensed.
r />   “Nobody’s heard from him in three weeks.”

  I didn’t know what to say, and so I didn’t say anything. For the first time in hours I kept my mouth shut. When she looked at me, she seemed to need something, though she must have known I had nothing to offer. No words anyway. And so I just reached for her hand.

  We sat in the car until the sky started to fill with light. I think I must have slept a little. I know she did. But she never let go of my hand.

  “Did you know this is the very first place in the United States that you can see the sun rise?” she asked sleepily, rolling her head against the headrest to look at me.

  “Really?” I asked. “Then we’re the first people in the whole country to see this sunrise?”

  She smiled and nodded.

  “Good morning, then,” I said.

  “Good morning.”

  The sun rose over the water. But even from here land was impossible to see. Nova Scotia was as far away as Vietnam. As much of a dream.

  We drove back down the mountain, through the pines, the sun glowing warmly around us. I pulled into the driveway of her parents’ house and got out of the car to open her door to let her out. “Nice meeting you, Harper,” she said, and politely shook my hand.

  “You too,” I said.

  She hugged me then, awkwardly. “Go home,” she whispered into my ear. “While you still can.”

  Later I fell asleep on Sand Beach, on a towel I stole from the cabin. The whole beach was made of crushed seashells; when I awoke they had pressed a crazy pattern into my skin. My face was red and pocked when I stared at my reflection in the rearview mirror as I pulled out of the cabin’s driveway. They faded as I drove, away from the shore, past the giant Paul Bunyon statue in Bangor, and through the birches. And by the time I got home, I could still feel where the shells had imprinted my skin, but the marks were long gone.