Into This River I Drown

by T. J. Klune

  I was at work, Nina. You know that. At the store.

  No, Benji. What did you do?

  I wait, feeling uneasy.

  She pulls from his embrace and looks up at him. I can’t see his face, but his posture is tense. “Things are different,” Nina says as she squints, as if trying to physically see just what she felt. For all I know, maybe she can.

  “It’s not a bad thing,” I hear Cal say in a low voice.

  “But you hurt,” she says, her lip quivering. “You ache in the haze of your mind. The pieces are shattered and you’re trying to put them back together. Why do you want to remember so bad? Aren’t you happy here? Can’t you just live for now instead of then?” Her gaze flickers over to me as she says this last, and I have to look away.

  “Because,” he whispers as his shoulders slump, “I have to know what happened. I have to know what I did. I have to find out what I can do to make things right. This is my test, I think.”

  I start forward, wanting to wrap myself around him, to take him away from here back to the moment where nothing could touch us and none of this stuff mattered. But I stop as Nina speaks again. “If you did do something wrong, could you forgive yourself?”

  “I am more worried about others forgiving me.”

  “Your Father?”

  He sighs. “Among others.” The intent of his words isn’t lost on me.

  “We make mistakes,” Nina says kindly. “It’s a part of who we are.”

  Cal starts to tense again. “I am not one of you,” he says bitterly.

  “You are more of who we are than what you used to be,” I say, finding my voice. “If you won’t go back, then we’ll find some way to fix this, I promise you.” I say this fiercely, as if I can make him believe with words alone. There’s much I feel I have to say to him, but I can’t find the right words.

  “Sure, Benji,” he says, smiling weakly at me. He looks like he doesn’t believe me in the slightest, but he holds out his hand to me anyway. I don’t hesitate.

  “Remember what you’re here for, Blue,” Nina says, looking at our joined hands. “If this is a test, I think you may be doing it right.”

  “Cross your heart?” Cal asks.

  She doesn’t hesitate and my heart skips a beat. “Hope to die.”

  “Stick a thousand needles in your eye,” I finish.

  “Thank you, little one,” he says, holding out his other hand. She laughs quietly to herself and takes it, her hands so little in his.

  “I like your tie,” I hear her whisper as we walk up the stairs. “Very handsome.”

  “I bought it for Benji,” he whispers back. “I made some money from Benji working at the store and wanted to look nice for him.”

  I stumble on the last step, and he looks at me funny. “You okay?”

  I nod. “Nina?” I ask, without taking my eyes off him. “Can you give us a minute?”

  She giggles again, and I hear the door creak as it opens and then closes after her.

  And then I kiss him with everything I have. “You look so fucking hot in that tie,” I pant at him as our lips separate. “Sorry I didn’t say that earlier.”

  He flushes and looks shy again. “It’s really okay?”

  “Better than okay. Thank you. You don’t need a tie to impress me, but thank you.”

  The smile he gives me then is brilliant, and that warmth I saw earlier in his eyes blossoms like fire. I think I know what it means. I think I know what it says.

  I have to find a way to fix this, I think frantically as I kiss him again. This can’t be an ending. This must be the beginning.

  “Cal, where in California are you from?” Christie asks, causing me to choke on a piece of bread.

  We’re all sitting around the large dining room table, Abe on my left, and Cal to my right. Nina and Mary sit across from us. My mother and Christie sit at the ends of the table. I give serious thought to telling Christie to shut her fucking face, but I don’t think that would quell the innocent question I took to be overtly suspicious. She’s family, I remind myself. She’s not like everyone else.

  I jump in. “Redding.”

  “San Diego,” my mother says at the same time.

  “Sacramento,” Abe says at the same time.

  Everyone stares at us.

  “He traveled a lot,” I say hastily as Cal watches me. “He never stayed in one place for too long. Kind of his thing.”

  “I moved around a lot,” Cal repeats as I resist the urge to kick him under the table. “Always moving. Kind of my thing. Lola, would you happen to have any green clover marshmallows? I think I would like some.”

  My mother smiles weakly I as stifle a groan. “Sorry, Cal. Fresh out. I’m sure Benji has some back at Little House when we’re finished.”

  “Rosie told me you had a thing for those,” Mary says, eyes sparkling. “I found that to be so dear.”

  “Rosie is a good person,” Cal says as he chases a carrot around his plate with a spoon. “She carries that shotgun around with her everywhere and made me cupcakes. I like people like that.”

  “Do you?” Christie asks, amused. “It seems to me shotguns are a scary thing.”

  “I’m not really scared of much,” Cal says. He glances at me and smiles. This look is not missed by anyone at the table.

  “Good to know,” Christie says. “Do you have family back in California, Cal?”

  Dammit. He speaks before I can stop him. “I have a Father,” he says quietly. “And many brothers.”

  Not quite a lie.

  “Big family?”

  “You could say that.”

  I start to sweat.

  “Are you the oldest?”

  He shakes his head. “Youngest.”

  Oh, that’s right. He’s only a couple of hundred years old.

  “What about your mother?”

  “Jesus, Christie,” I snap. “What’s with the third degree?”

  She looks surprised. “I just wanted to get to know your friend better. Seems everyone in town just adores him, and I wanted to see what all the fuss is about. Besides, if he’s going to date my nephew, I think I have a right to know him better!”

  “Dating? We’re… we’re not—” I sputter. “We’re just… shit.”

  “Language,” Nina scolds me.

  “We’re dating,” Cal tells the whole table quite loudly.

  Abe and Nina grin. My mom looks stressed. Mary looks confused. Christie looks triumphant. I look embarrassed, I’m sure. And Cal? Cal looks pretty damned pleased with himself.

  “I guess,” I mumble. “Let’s just drop it, okay?”

  Dinner resumes, conversations veering here and there. Sometimes I speak up, other times I listen. I try to include Cal, steering the conversation away from any dangerous topics. My mom had asked me before why we just didn’t tell Mary and Christie about Cal since they were the only ones here who didn’t know, but I’d asked her to keep it under wraps for now. Mary, though I love her, isn’t known for her discretion, and I didn’t need Cal’s coming-out angel party to include the whole damned town. In my head I saw the swarms of media that would descend on Roseland, cameras flashing, reporters shouting. Then scientists would come and whisk him away to some secret underground testing facility where they would experiment on him, trying to find some way to hold him hostage and try to ransom him off to God. It was an awful thought, but one I believed to be entirely plausible. I put the kibosh on that idea as soon as it’d come from her mouth.

  Dating, I think, barely able to restrain the eye roll. The concept behind it is so completely ludicrous I can’t even grasp it. One does not date a guardian angel, even if one is having sex with a guardian angel. Even if one has developed… feelings for said angel that defy logic or explanation. At the very least, I don’t deserve someone like him, to be sure. One can’t get smaller than being a small-town boy from a place like Roseland. I run the town’s only gas station, which still bears the name of my dead father. I have no prospects for the future. I a
m drowning in my own grief. I am selfishly motivated and desperate for answers I don’t know how to get.

  But even then, even with these thoughts, even with the conversations around us, something happens. Abe is talking about the caves in the back hills again, most likely filled to the brim with gold nuggets the size of ponies. Christie listens with rapt attention, her eyes glittering with excitement. Mary and Mother are discussing the upcoming festival, and what they’ll need in order to prepare all the pies that have been ordered. Nina sits counting the peas on her plate with a look of pure concentration on her face, her tongue peeking out between her teeth as she moves each one from one side of the plate to another. This is my family, and the noise around me is soothing in a way it hasn’t been in quite a long time. That’s mostly my doing, I know, given my self-imposed exile in the Land of Sorrow. But hearing the overlapping voices and laughter, seeing the bright eyes and smiles, does more for me than I ever thought it could.

  The strangely joyous moment is only confirmed when through it all, the noise, the laughter, the brightness of the room, I feel a hand on mine underneath the table. I turn my hand palm up and long fingers brush along the skin, causing the hairs on my arm to stand on end. I’m electrified as Cal brushes the tips of my fingers with his own. This is nothing erotic, though my dick thinks it’s a fine idea. The touch is not meant to be about sex. It is touch, feelings conveyed through a simple action that mean more to me than any words. He slides his fingers between my own, engulfing me as we blend together. I can feel him watching me out of the corner of my eye, and I think to turn, but realize I don’t have control of my emotions. It’s too much. It’s all too much, and I think about getting up and leaving the table. But he knows, like he always does, and squeezes my hand tightly, letting me know that he isn’t going to let go, no matter how hard I fight against it. Only he knows at that moment what is running through my head. Only he knows.

  Eventually, I calm. Eventually, I stop listening to the little voices in my head telling me it won’t matter in the long run; I will lose everything and be alone again. Eventually it feels like blessed silence.

  The only thing missing is my father. His presence doesn’t loom over the table as much as it has in the past when the remaining family came together those few times after he drowned. Then, it was like a large unspeakable thing had fallen over us all, threatening to bury us with its weight. It is still crushing. Devastating. Still painful, yes. Still there, yes. But it’s almost muted somehow, like seen through a fog. The warm hand in mine squeezes again and the fog shifts, only to come into sharper focus, and I recognize it for what it is.

  It’s in my mother’s laugh, a sound as big as I can ever remember. It’s in the way Nina blushes when Cal winks at her. It’s the way Mary leans over and brushes a lock of hair out of Christie’s face. It’s in the way Abe drops a hand on my shoulder and tells me he thought he heard a rumbling noise in his old Honda and wants to bring it in next week for me to check it out.

  We are moving on. We are letting go. I am realizing that some things might be more important than my own selfish desires for answers I might never find. It burns, this feeling. It hurts. It claws at me, but it’s undeniable. Cal glances at me again, those dark eyes sparkling, and it’s like a hammer to my chest.

  But then that feeling is taken away only a short time later.

  We’re clearing the table when my mother comes out from the kitchen, wringing her hands. I wonder at it, having noticed her pointed looks at Cal that got more and more obvious over the past hour. I don’t know what she’s up to, and I have a feeling I don’t want to know. She’s planning something, her nervous hands doing little to detract from the determined look in her eyes.

  “Cal?” she says, and the noise in the room stops. I can hear Mary and Christie chattering in the kitchen while they start the dishes, but the rest of us are quiet, waiting. “May I speak with you? Alone?”

  I narrow my eyes and before I know what I’m doing, I take a step to stand in front of him, as if to protect him. It must look ridiculous, given how much bigger he is than me, but at the moment, I don’t know what she wants and I’m not going to take the chance.

  “Why?” I ask before Cal can speak.

  She glances at me before looking back at Cal. When she speaks, it’s to him. “There’s something I need to say to you. Something that I need you to hear.”

  “Lola,” Abe says. “Maybe we could just—”

  “It’s okay, Abe,” Cal says lightly. “She has the right.”

  “The rest can go,” I say with a scowl. “That’s fine. But if you think I’m going to go too, you better try again.”

  “Alone,” my mother repeats.

  A knock at the door, light but strong.

  We all turn to look.

  “Now who could that be?” my mother says to herself, starting for the door.

  Something is off. I didn’t hear a car come up the driveway, much less see headlights. Cal has begun to growl, his hands turning to fists at his sides. Thoughts of the Strange Men start running through my head. Thoughts of Traynor standing at the door, a cigarette dangling from his lips. Something is wrong.

  I brush past him and put my hand on my mother’s shoulder. “I’ll see who it is,” I say. “Why don’t you just hang back?”

  She starts to object, but Cal’s growling grows louder as he sidesteps us and heads for the door. I rush after him. “Who is it? A thread?” I mutter once I catch up to him.

  He shakes his head. “No thread. It’s him.” For the first time since I’ve known him, I hear fear in his voice, underneath the growling, buried in the bravado.

  This can’t be good.

  I reach the door first, much to Cal’s dismay. Already I can hear the others following us down the hallway. “You don’t open that door, Benji,” he snarls at me. “You get behind me and you let me deal with this. I am a guardian and I will guard. Do it now and don’t make me ask you again.”

  I obey, instantly. I can’t ignore the fury on his face, the way his eyes look like they have turned to oil, liquid and black. Had this occurred only a few short days ago, I’m sure blue lights would have been flashing all around him, forming the outline of his wings. But as it is, there is only a charge in the air, like static, palpable and thick. I don’t want him to open the door.

  The knock comes again.

  “Don’t open the door,” I whisper. “Please.”

  “Benji,” my mother asks from behind me. “Who is it?”

  Cal kisses my forehead and opens the door.

  A man stands there, a man unlike any man I’ve ever seen before. The sun has set long before, the sky behind him like a deep bruise. The light from inside the house bleeds out onto the porch. The shadows from the darkening night seem to crawl over his shoulders.

  He is an imposing figure, all sharp angles and planes. His black hair is short, nary a strand out of place. The goatee around his thick lips is perfectly trimmed. His throat is exposed, showing olive skin that disappears into an opened button-down white shirt that looks crisp. He wears a black dress coat that appears tailored to fit his strong body, buttoned once in the front. He’s not bigger than Cal, more lithe and long, but he radiates authority. He is devastatingly handsome, but in a cold, manufactured way.

  “Calliel,” he says, his voice whiskey smooth. “How lovely to see you again, brother.”

  “Michael,” Cal says quietly in greeting.

  Michael.

  Cal’s voice, a memory: I can’t tell the future. I can’t speak to God’s plan. I don’t think anyone can, even the higher-ups, the archangels, though sometimes I wonder what exactly Michael knows….

  The Strange Men: This will end now as we were instructed. We cannot go back to Michael empty-handed.

  Cal: Minions that do nothing more than Michael’s bidding. They are abominations, and I do not know why Father permits them.

  I feel eyes on me and pull myself out of the memories. The archangel Michael is looking at me with undisgu
ised curiosity, cocking his head to the right, and for a moment I expect his eyes to twitch back and forth like his Strange Men. “You must be Benjamin Edward Green,” he says to me. His voice is kind, and that makes his smile all the more terrible. “It’s nice to meet you, Benji. You’ve certainly made quite the impression, from what I understand.”

  “Don’t you talk to him,” Cal snaps, pulling me behind him. I press my forehead against his back, smelling earth, the charge in the air increasing. “This does not concern him.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Michael asks. “It seems to me it most certainly does involve him. You made that perfectly obvious once you made the decision to come here.”

  “I… I don’t….” Cal sounds upset. Uncertain. I move around him again and stand by his side. This time he doesn’t stop me. I take his hand in mine.

  Michael laughs in disbelief. “You don’t remember?” He shakes his head. “Father certainly does enjoy his games, doesn’t he?” And before I can shout out a warning, Michael flashes out his hand, pressing his palm against Cal’s chest, right above his heart. Cal stiffens as if electrocuted, his hand gripping mine so tightly I think my bones will break. There’s a dull flash in Michael’s eyes, a light that is only there for a moment before falling away. He pulls his hand back and Cal shudders, bowing his head. “Father does enjoy his games,” Michael repeats quietly, the laughter gone from his voice. “The parts are there, I see, but they’ve been shattered. The shapes aren’t making sense. It’s jumbled. Like a knot.”

  “Can you return them to me?” Cal asks, his head still bowed. “The memories?”

  “No,” Michael says. “I was not the one who took them from you. This is a test, Calliel. He is testing your faith, it would seem.” Michael snorts derisively. “He’s been silent on the matter. To me. To the others. No one really seems to know what he’s up to.”

  “Benji?” my mother asks shrilly. “Who is this?”

  Michael peers over Cal’s head. “I am a friend,” he says. “I have not seen Calliel in quite some time, and I decided to check in on him.”

  “Are you one of them?” Abe asks, his voice hard.

  “He is,” Nina whispers. “So many lights. White. So much white around him. He’s so bright.”