Into This River I Drown

by T. J. Klune

  He slides his shirt over his head and gives me one last look before he is out the bedroom and down the hall, then the door closes on Little House with a thud.

  I consider following him, but I don’t. I try to sleep again, but I can’t. I’m still awake when he returns deep in the night. The hunger he comes at me with then is something wicked and bright. I don’t ask him where he went, if he has saved anyone or merely been a presence for someone who needed him. It doesn’t matter. He has returned and he wants me. That desire is evident on his face. It’s enough.

  Cal’s return spreads quickly through Roseland. The first day is relatively quiet,

  given that I’m not at the store. We walk up to Big House early that morning, shortly after coming down off the roof. Cal wraps an arm around my shoulder as we walk, and I relish the feel of him against me. He is chattering away, telling me about a squirrel he saw in the forest during his self-imposed exile. It seemed to follow him over the course of the five days. He is clearly excited about the animal, and I can’t help but grin at him as he imitates the sound it made, a high-pitched squeak that he performs by sucking in his cheeks and sticking out his lips. It’s not a sound a big guy like him should be able to make.

  We are barely on the porch of Big House when the door flies open and Nina barrels out, knocking me out of the way in her rush to tackle Cal. He laughs as he picks her up, spinning her in a circle, her legs kicking out as they whirl. Under his laughter, I can hear her saying, “Blue, Blue, Blue,” over and over again. He finally sets her down, brushing the tears from her face.

  “I am happy to see you, little one,” he says with a smile. She smiles sweetly for a moment… then punches him in the arm. Nina is a lot stronger than she looks, and I wince at the meaty thud. Cal grunts, though I think more from surprise than pain. He stares down at her, eyes wide. “What was that for?”

  “Leaving,” she says with a scowl. “You going to do that again?” A low blush rises up the sides of his neck and into his cheeks, reddening the skin and making his facial hair appear even brighter. “No.”

  She watches him for a moment, trying to figure out if he is telling her the truth. She finally sniffs once and looks him up and down. “Good,” she says. “People missed you here, Benji especially. I was sad. We were all sad. If you do that again, I am going to be very angry with you. This is your home now, you know. You can’t just leave your home.”

  It’s my turn to flush. I’ve never really thought about that. About where this is going, what he and I could mean to each other in the future. Would he stay? Could he stay? The Strange Men whisper in my head, saying it isn’t possible, that he is getting weaker. I shove them away when he glances at me with a low smile before looking back at my little aunt. “I promise I won’t do it again,” he says with complete seriousness.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asks with curiosity.

  He hesitates for a moment. “I think so, though not in the way I thought.”

  “Is that okay, then?”

  “It is,” he says simply. He looks at me again and my face feels like it’s on fire.

  She grabs him by the arm and pulls him toward the house. He reaches out and snags my hand, pulling me with him.

  Mom is gone. Turns out she opened the store herself that morning instead of

  asking Mary or Christie. I should be surprised at this, but I’m not. We each have our own ways of dealing with things. My mother and I don’t know how to articulate our feelings very well. After Big Eddie died, there would be times that days would go by before we would see one another, each of us sequestered in separate parts of the house, or in separate parts of Roseland. The Trio tried to get us together, to eat meals, to watch TV, to have conversations neither of us felt like having. It was a good effort, but none of them could really understand the depths of our heartache. We were points of a triangle: her, me, Big Eddie. It had been the three of us. But then that triangle had been shattered, leaving us to drift aimlessly.

  I know people think that she, as my mother, should have been the one to direct me, to point me toward the future. She should be offering guidance, I’m sure they said. Yes, she lost her husband but he lost his father. There’s a difference. Maybe there was. Maybe there is. I lost my best friend on that day, but my mother also lost the only man she’d ever loved, the man who had been by her side since they were kids. Her first, her only. We didn’t have him to hold us together. Even though the Trio tried, it wasn’t the same. If we ever passed by each other in those weeks and months that followed, there was usually only a shared glance, a matching look of pain etched across our faces. That was how we grieved. That was how we dealt with the inevitability of the unknown.

  Eventually we got better, though not all the way. She recovered more quickly than I did. And more completely. I am ashamed to admit there were some dark days where I resented her for her ability to move on. Every smile was like a slap to my father’s memory, every laugh an affront to the loss of my father. How dare she be happy, I thought. How dare she act like everything is right as rain and nothing will ever bother her again. The Trio was instrumental in breaking her out of her bitter shell. Christie told my mother, You can sleep now, finally. We’re going to stay here as long as you need us. You sleep and let us carry you for a while. I remember thinking how hollow the words sounded, how smug I thought her voice was.

  But still, I let them try their consoling ways on me, only because I knew it made them feel better. For years following his death, there were false confessions about my well-being, fabricated details about how I was feeling. I’m fine, I told them. Time heals all wounds, I said as I smiled, a bitter imitation of my mother. He wouldn’t want me to be mourning him like this. Big Eddie would want me to live.

  And all I wanted was for Big Eddie to be alive. To be here, with me and my mom. To make the triangle complete again so we wouldn’t have to drift, so we wouldn’t be lost within ourselves. Sometimes, I thought we grieved only because we didn’t know what else to do. We’d never find a way out of the black hole we’d created for ourselves. After a time, it became normal, safe. No one could expect much from you if you were grieving. You could slide through life without making a splash because you didn’t care. It didn’t matter who saw you or what they said. It didn’t matter what you looked like, if you were able to get yourself out of bed the next morning, even if it was raining outside. My mom took me to a specialist once down in Eugene, maybe fourteen months after Big Eddie died. He poked and prodded and eventually told us I was suffering from depression. I had laughed a genuine laugh at his diagnosis, the first laugh since I could remember through that hazy fog. Of course I’m depressed, I told the doctor, wiping the tears from my eyes that I wasn’t sure had come from the laughter. That was probably the easiest diagnosis you’ve ever had to give.

  The doctor wanted me on antidepressants. He wanted me to talk to someone. Your mother is recovering, he told me quietly. Your aunts have made sure she is not letting herself drown. Benji, it’s so easy to drown and you could become a danger to yourself.

  Poor word choice there, Doc, I’d said sarcastically. Maybe read the file next time before you open your fucking mouth.

  He’d looked alarmed, but I was already storming out of the room.

  Needless to say, I didn’t take the drugs. I didn’t talk to anyone. I ignored friends and family. People stopped calling me, asking me to hang out. My senior year of high school was a dream I can barely remember.

  I lived day by day, allowing my grief to drift out into the open.

  There were days I went to mile marker seventy-seven and sat in the Ford, poring over the police reports, the photographs, trying to recreate the accident, but missing so much information it was impossible. Other days I sat silently under the stone angel for hours, staring at the fifteen words that meant nothing, that gave no measure of the man buried underneath. I was obsessed with his death and the questions I did not have answers to. The stone angel offered me nothing.

&
nbsp; It was on one of these days, the harder days, that I came home, planning on heading up to my room to look at the scene photographs again, suddenly sure I had missed something, sure that I was going to find an answer that had eluded me and the police and anyone else who had investigated my father’s death. I was going to have proof positive that my father had been murdered, that he’d been run off the road and left there to die, to drown in the river. I was practically vibrating as I opened the door, ignoring a strange sensation that felt like a hand on my shoulder, a breath on my neck. It was nothing. Just my imagination.

  Voices, in the kitchen. Mary and my mother. They had not heard me enter. I heard my name. I thought about ignoring it. I needed to get upstairs, to finally discover the truth.

  But I crept toward the kitchen instead. I heard Mary: You lost your husband, but he lost his father, the only one he will ever have.

  My mother murmured something in return, her voice a whisper.

  Mary: I know you can see it, hon. Big Eddie tied all of you together, but he’s gone. He’s not coming back. You can’t allow your son to follow him, because that’s what’s happening. He’s lost weight; he barely says a single word to anyone. The school called again and left a message. He cut class. They’re talking about expulsion, Lola. Expelling him. Not graduating. He’s got to get his grades up and he’s got to start going back to class, otherwise he’ll be held back. And then what about college?

  A sigh.

  I left quietly.

  The next day, I went to class.

  I came home and did homework.

  I offered fake smiles. False laughter.

  I came downstairs for dinner, ignoring the looks of surprise.

  Smells good, I said. Brightly.

  After a time: Benji, can I talk to you a moment?

  Can it wait, Mom? I’m kind of behind on homework and need to get caught up. I flash her a smile, quiet and earnest.

  Oh? Homework? Sure, Benji. It can wait.

  Thanks.

  Benji?

  Yeah?

  I think… I think everything is going to be all right.

  Of course you do, I thought. Of course you do, you bitch. How dare you forget him like he’s nothing. How dare you. Sure, Mom. Whatever you say. I gave her another smile as she left the room.

  And for the next few months, I focused on what needed to be done not to draw attention to myself. I buckled down. I worked hard. The police reports, the coroner’s reports, the photos, the little chunk of metal that supposedly came from his truck, twisted and black—all stayed locked up, secreted away. They would have my undivided attention later. I would give them all the time they needed once the focus was no longer on me.

  But the longer they stayed hidden, the harder it was to find the courage to look at them again. Maybe I was seeing things that weren’t there. Maybe there was no evidence to suggest anything happened other than what the investigators said. Maybe my father was going to Eugene to meet with friends. Maybe he lost control of the truck (a deer? slick roads? distracted?). Maybe he crashed down the embankment, flipped his truck, and drowned just like they said. Maybe that’s all it was.

  Adrift. My mother and I were adrift, occasionally colliding and bouncing away. The wounds scabbed over but never healed, just waiting to be torn open again. That’s the thing about grief: the longer it festers, the harder it is to cleanse.

  So I’m not surprised that my mother isn’t there the morning after Cal returns.

  She’s seen something that has altered her perception of the way the world works and needs time to work it out on her own. It helps me that she had the exact same reaction I did when Cal first revealed himself: shock, denial, then anger. She and I are more alike than I like to admit, and I would do well to remember that.

  Mary rejoices at seeing Cal again, much like her twin. Christie seems more subdued and gives a less warm reception, but Cal still has her smiling by the end of breakfast, charming her completely. If my mother has said anything to either of them, they don’t show it on their faces. I like to think that they wouldn’t be able to hide the shock of something so life-altering from me, especially given they are blood relations. I watch closely for any telltale sign, any flicker of fear or amazement based on anything other than the conversation at hand.

  There’s nothing.

  Cal and I spend the rest of the day in bed. I don’t hear my phone ring later that night, my mother leaving a message in a flat voice that she wants me to open the store tomorrow, but that Cal should stay at Little House. Like hell, I think when I listen to the message. Cal’s running his big hands up my thighs, cradling my balls. Like fucking hell. I toss the phone to the floor as he leans down and swallows me whole. Fast learner, he is.

  The second day, Roseland rejoices at Cal’s return.

  It doesn’t take long for word to spread that the big guy is back. What starts off as a quiet morning soon leads to the bell above the door ringing steadily. I begin to recognize the looks that people give when they walk in: a brief smile for me, almost as a courtesy, their gazes darting until they find who they are looking for. Their eyes light up, and they step forward, hand outstretched if they are male, arms wide open for a hug if they are female. “It’s good to see you,” becomes the mantra of the day. “Glad to have you back. You sticking around this time?” Cal glances at me every time before he answers, as if seeking my approval, as if I am the one making the decision for him. And every time I nod. “Sure am,” he says. “Benji’s going to let me drive the Ford. It’s so cherry, you know?”

  They know.

  Rosie comes to steal him away later in the afternoon, taking him back to the diner, wanting to show him the green-clover marshmallow cupcakes she made just for him. His eyes go slightly dreamy at the thought (not an “I don’t know if I’m going to like that” uttered) and she glances at me, as if asking my permission. I shove down the slight panic, rolling my eyes and muttering that she’s going to be responsible when he’s destroyed the town due to his sugar high. She laughs and has started pulling him away, the other ten people in the store waiting to follow them out, when Cal stops. And turns. With a determined look in his eye. I know what that look means. I have about four seconds to make up my mind on whether or not to stop him before he’s on me, leaning across the counter, hooking his hand around my neck, pressing his lips firmly against mine. The world goes white around us as he nibbles on my bottom lip, briefly touching his tongue to mine. He pulls away and presses his forehead against me. “Okay, Benji?” he asks quietly, kissing my cheek. “I’ll be back. I promise.”

  “Sure,” I manage to say. “Have fun.”

  He pulls away and turns toward Rosie, who has the biggest shit-eating grin on her face. “Looks like someone has been holding out on me,” she says, eyeing me over his shoulder. “Cal, it appears you owe me a story or two.”

  “I know a lot of stories,” he assures her as I groan, already wondering what the hell he’s going to tell her. Or them, as the rest of the people begin to follow as well, like they’re his little groupies. For the most part, they smile at me, reaching out to pat my hand as they walk by, ignoring the furious blush on my face. “How lovely for you, dear,” Eloise Watkins says, she of the Friday Virginia Slims. “He does have quite the ass. And that red hair….” She sighs and follows him out the door.

  “Good for you!” Doc Heward says cheerfully. “It’s about time.”

  “About time?” I call after him. “He hasn’t been here that long!”

  “Bah!” I heard him call back through the door, following the rest up to Rosie’s.

  “Son of a bitch,” I mutter.

  That bastard knew exactly what he was doing when he kissed me in front of everyone. I’m fine with being out, but that’s different from everyone knowing my business. Granted, I expect half the town assumed we were already fucking the first day they met him, so I don’t suppose it’s anything too bad. Well, not until the gossip wildfire reaches my mother and she finds out my… well, whatever h
e is to me… kissed me in the middle of the store in front of half the business owners on Poplar Street. That should make for a lovely time at the next meeting of the Roseland Chamber of Commerce. Hysterical.

  The bell rings overhead and I roll my eyes without looking up from going over the delivery invoices. “If you’re looking for Cal, the party’s moved up to Rosie’s.”

  “Cal?” a man says. I look up, not immediately recognizing his voice. I’m instantly wary of the stranger standing before me. He’s a lot older than me, probably in his forties. He’s on the losing side of fat, his middle thick, his arms like slabs of concrete in the gray collared shirt. He’s balding on top, his dark hair thinning in little wisps. His eyes are small, and he almost reminds me of a fish, the way his lips pucker as if he’s bitten into a lemon. His face is doughy and pale.

  “Can I help you?” I say. He doesn’t seem like one of the Strange Men, but given the last few days, I don’t want to take any chances.

  “Oh, I’m sure you can,” he says as he walks to the counter and places his meaty hands flat down on top of it. “You said something about Cal?” he asks, watching me closely.

  His voice is familiar to me, though I can’t quite place it. I rack my brain as I say, “Uh, sure. He’s up at the diner with most of the rest of the town.”

  “Is that a fact?” he says, sounding amused. “So old Cal Blue came back, did he?”

  “I’m sorry, do you know him?” I feel cold.

  “Not personally, though I’ve heard a lot about him,” Fish Eyes says, a small smile on his face. “Seems a lot of people around here are talking about him.”

  I school my face so it’s blank when I shrug. “He’s all right.”

  Fish Eyes laughs. “I’m sure he is. And you must be Benji, right?” “Yes.”

  “And you run the station here, right?”

  “Yes.”

  He nods. “Big Eddie’s Gas and Convenience. Quite the mouthful.”