Into This River I Drown

by T. J. Klune

  Pastor Thomas Landeros stands on the other side of the altar, head bowed, wearing a black Roman cassock. Thirty-three buttons fall down the center of the cassock. I asked him once, after the Christmas service when I was young, why there were thirty-three buttons. It seemed like such an odd number to me. He told me it symbolized the thirty-three earthly years of Christ. I asked him how anyone could know this. He said it was what was written. I asked him how he could trust something passed down. He said it was a matter of faith.

  He moves his lips as if in prayer, his hands folded near his chin. I can’t hear what he’s saying aloud, if anything, but for some reason it chills me. I wonder how long he’s been at this, wonder what this has done to his belief, his faith. Does he think this is a reward for his service? Does he see this as proof of his faith? Or has this shattered every notion he’s ever had about the way the world works? To say you have faith is one thing; to see evidence of it with your own eyes is something else entirely.

  But it’s the third figure that captures my attention. It’s him I see the most.

  Lying on a white cot with a blanket pulled up to his chest is the guardian angel Calliel. Blue lights flicker around him weakly. His wings disappear then reappear, the long feathers draping across the floor. The smell of earth is heavy and sweet. His skin has a sickly pallor to it, almost yellow in the candlelight, in his own lights. His eyes are closed, and his breathing seems labored. One breath in, held, then released. It takes a second, two seconds, three seconds before he breathes in again.

  I’m moving even before I know I am. I run across the nave. I reach the crossing, the name not lost on me. For a moment, I think it will turn into a raging river that I will be forced to cross. It doesn’t matter. I would. I will do anything to get to him.

  But it doesn’t. The stone crossing remains as it always has. My footsteps echo through the church, my bare feet slapping against the cold ground. I reach the steps that lead to the chancel. The red carpet feels rough against my soles. I’m at the altar before the doc can speak, though I feel his eyes on me, a subtle intake of breath that heralds the beginning of speech. The breath releases without any words as I fall to my knees beside Cal. Closer now, I can hear Pastor Landeros mumbling under his breath. His words sound Latin.

  But above his prayer, I hear the slight rattle in Calliel’s chest with every breath he takes. It’s a subtle clicking that seems to sound like a shotgun blast in my ears. I take his hand in mine and lift it, brushing my lips against the cool, dry skin. It might just be my imagination, but I swear the blue lights become brighter, just for a moment. I choose to believe they do. I choose to believe he knows it’s me, even with how far under he seems to be.

  His eyes are moving rapidly under his eyelids, as if he’s searching for something there, in the dark. I place my hand against his brow, and he takes in a deep breath, his chest rising, pressing against the blanket, against the white bandage on his shoulder. He lets it out with a sigh and his eyes become still. I brush my thumb over the groove in the side of his head. Feathers flutter around me. My heart hurts.

  “Can you fix him?” I ask, my voice echoing in the empty church. “Can you do anything for him?”

  Doc Heward looks down at his hands. “Benji, I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says, his voice scratchy. “I don’t know anything about this. I’ve… removed the bullets. I’ve closed the wounds. He has… organs. Just like us. They were damaged, and I tried to fix them as best I could. But… they’re the same? As us? How is that possible? I don’t….” He rubs his hands over his face. “I’ve given him antibiotics. There’s no infection. There’s nothing there. Everything is fine.”

  “Then why won’t he wake up?” I rub my hand over the stubble on his head, just as he likes. I ignore the tears on my face.

  “I don’t know,” Doc Heward says, sounding like he’s losing control. “I don’t know. He should be getting better. His eyes should be open, and he should be talking and… Benji. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. He’s dying, and I don’t know why. This is out of my league.” He gives a bitter laugh. “I don’t know why,” he says again. He takes a step back.

  I do. I know why. I know why his eyes aren’t open, why he’s not talking. I know why his wings can’t seem to stay and why his blue lights are getting weaker and weaker. It’s close.

  “Leave us,” I say quietly, never taking my eyes from Cal. “Please.”

  The doc makes a sound of protest. I shake my head just once, and I hear his footsteps as he walks away slowly.

  Pastor Landeros stops his mumbling. He looks at me like he’s just now aware of my presence. “Benji?” he whispers. “When did you….” He glances down at Calliel then back at me. “Do you know what this is?”

  “This is my friend,” I tell him.

  “It’s a miracle,” he breathes. “I’ve never….”

  “Not now, Pastor,” I say, shaking my head. “Not now. I know this is your church. I know this is your home. I know this is an affirmation of your faith. I know this is everything you’ve ever hoped for. Everything you’ve ever dreamed about. But this is my friend. I need you to leave us alone. Please.”

  He takes a step toward me and gently touches the top of my head. “It’s more than that,” he says. “It’s so much more than that. It means we are never alone.”

  And then he leaves. I wait until I hear the doors of the church shut behind them.

  “Okay,” I whisper. “Okay.”

  I don’t know what else to say. Actually, I do know what else to say, but I can’t seem to find the power to say it. I can’t seem to form the words to say what I really want, how I really feel. It seems like everything depends on what I’ll say next, that this final test is the most important one.

  How do you say what’s in your heart if your heart is something you haven’t known for years? How do you give yourself completely when all you’ve done is bury yourself in grief? How do you come back from the dark when it’s all you can remember?

  “I don’t know,” I say, my voice cracking. I hang my head and grip Cal’s hand tightly. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go from here. I thought I was the strong one. I thought I could be brave. I thought I could stand and be true, just like what was asked of me, but I don’t know if I can. I’m scared. I’m scared I won’t be good enough. I’m scared I can’t be courageous enough. I’m scared I can’t do what’s expected of me. I don’t know what’s expected of me. I just know I don’t want you to leave. I don’t want you to go away. I don’t want you to cross the river, because I’m not done with you yet. I haven’t had enough of you, not even close. I don’t think I ever will, even if we could go on forever. I need you to come back. I need you to come home. I need you.” The sound of my voice dies in the church.

  I wait.

  Nothing happens. Of course nothing happens.

  My anger rises. I drop Cal’s hand. I look up at St. Jude Novena. He is not God, nor did he ever claim to be. But aside from the unconscious angel in front of me, he’s the closest thing I’ve got. “What do you want from me?” I growl up at the stained glass. “What do you expect me to do? Do you want me to fall to my knees and beg you? Well, here I am!” I raise my voice until it’s a shout. “Here I am! Right here! Right here in the middle of your fucking design, your goddamned pattern! I’m begging you. I’m begging you with all that I have. I’ve done everything you’ve ever asked of me, so you fucking give me something back. You give me something in return!”

  The saint does not respond. God does not respond.

  My ire grows. “I’m sick of your fucking games! None of us have deserved what you’ve done! You take and you take and you take, and you give nothing back! You dangle any chance at happiness right in front of our fucking faces and then you snatch it back right when we think we can have it for our own. I don’t care if love is sacrifice. I don’t care if that’s the only way we can recognize it. I know what it is, I know what it can do, and I won’t let you take love from
me. Not again. Not anymore. He’s mine, you bastard. He doesn’t belong to you—he belongs to me.”

  My voice echoes throughout the church: me, me, me, me.

  St. Jude flickers in the candlelight. Me, he seems to say. Me, me, me, he seems to mock.

  Then the doors fly open behind me. I turn, expecting God himself to walk through the doors, eyes blazing, preparing to strike me down for speaking to him like I have in his house. It’s what I deserve. It’s what I’m owed.

  But it’s not him. It’s not God.

  It’s my mother.

  “Benji,” she cries, rushing toward me. I can’t find the strength to take a step toward her, but it doesn’t matter. Soon she puts her arms around me, pulling me close. She sobs quietly in my ear, scolding me, telling me I can’t scare her like that again, that she was so scared because for a moment, she thought I was gone. Really gone. Gone so she would never see me again, gone just like Big Eddie was gone, and didn’t I know her heart couldn’t take that? Didn’t I know I was all she had left?

  “I had to come,” I tell her. “I have to be with him.”

  She pulls back, kissing my forehead, my eyes, my cheeks. “You don’t get to leave me too!” she shouts in my face.

  “Okay. Okay.”

  I let her hold me for a bit longer, and it’s only then that I realize my anger has waned, and I am just hurt. Every part of me hurts inside and out. She rocks me back and forth gently, humming something lightly in the back of her throat, and I focus on the sound. I pick up each and every note in her voice, following the thread of the music until it becomes my father’s song. She’s singing my father’s song to me. I wrap my arms around her.

  “I saw him,” I say for the second time tonight. It comes out unbidden. She stops humming. She grips me tightly, but she doesn’t pull away. “Where?” “The river. Michael took me to the river. After I was shot.”

  “And he… he was there?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes. He was there. He was so big. He was so much bigger than I remembered. Do you remember how big he was? Bigger than mountains. Bigger than the sky. He….” My throat closes.

  She quakes against me. “Did you get to speak with him?”

  I smile into her hair. “I got to say everything to him.”

  “Was he happy? Is he happy now? Please, Benji. Please tell me he’s happy now!”

  I remember the grin on his face. His happy shout. Abe, he’d said. “I think so,” I say. “I think he’s okay now. He crossed the river. I made sure of it.”

  “Oh, Benji. I miss him so much.”

  “I know. But we’ll be together again. One day.”

  “I know, baby. I know.”

  “He… told me….”

  She pulls back and cups my face. She’s so beautiful, my mother is. So goddamned beautiful. “What?” she asks. “What did he tell you?”

  You just have to have faith.

  In what?

  That everything will be okay. If he believes in you, then you need to believe in him. Nothing’s written in stone.

  I pull away from her hands and turn back to Cal. I fall to my knees again beside him and lean down, brushing my lips against his. The blue lights flash brightly again, and his wings are solid beneath me for seconds before they start to flicker again. I pull away only just, our lips still pressed together. “Do you believe in me?” I ask him quietly.

  There’s no answer. Just the lights. Just his wings.

  But it’s enough.

  I reach back and hold out my hand to my mother. There’s no hesitation on her part as she steps forward. I tug her down gently until she settles beside me. There’s no fear on her face, being this close to him. There’s no trepidation. If anything, she smiles sadly as she reaches up and fixes the blanket on his chest. She lifts it up and pulls it higher, but not before I see the larger bandage covering his stomach. I remember the look on his face, then, right before he fell. Anger. Pain. Love.

  So much love. And it was for me. It was mine.

  My father was right. Nothing is written in stone.

  I do the only thing that’s left to do. I take my mother’s hand in my own. “Will you pray with me?” I whisper.

  She looks unsure as she glances from me up at St. Jude Novena and back again. Something shadows her eyes, and I wonder who she’s thinking about. Is it her grandmother? Big Eddie? Cal? Me? I don’t know. I don’t know if it matters. If she says no, that will be okay. I’ll do it on my own. I’m not leaving this place until I’ve had my say.

  I wait.

  She doesn’t make me wait long. She sighs and leans over, kissing my forehead. “What should we pray for?” she asks.

  I can’t help but feel this is the most important question of all. I know what I think I want. I know what I should want. I know what’s right for me. I know I could pray for all different things. But I also know what my heart wants, and my heart pulls all those others together until they take their own shape. Until they make their own pattern. Their own design.

  “The power of choice,” I say, looking down at Cal’s sleeping form. “We need to pray for the power to choose what we want, and the strength to make that choice. That even though the world might be dark, and we might be crawling on our hands and knees, we can always choose to come home and find it light again.”

  My mother brushes her eyes as she nods. “Benji?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How… how did he look? Big Eddie?”

  “Like the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen,” I tell her, smiling through tears.

  She gives a watery bark of laughter. “He was pretty great, wasn’t he?”

  “The best there was. He loved you, you know. With his whole heart.”

  She weeps quietly. “I know. I know. The both of us. Benji?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re going to be okay, right? After this? After all of this? You and I?”

  I understand now that she needs me. She needs me as much as I need her. We’ve been knocked down, beaten and battered, had brushes with insanity and death. I’ve pushed her away for so long, but she and I are the same. I am my mother’s son.

  “One way or another,” I tell her, “we’ll be okay. After all of this, we’ll be okay. We’ll sit and watch the sunrise, and I’ll tell you everything I’ve heard. All of the things I’ve seen.”

  She nods. “I’d like that.”

  I take her hand again, and she squeezes my fingers tightly. I don’t let go of her as I lower my head. I close my eyes.

  And pray.

  I’m not going to be very good at this. I haven’t been very good at a lot of things. I’ve lied. I’ve cheated. I’ve disrespected my parents. I put my own needs before those of others. When Big Eddie left, I only worried about how it affected me. I didn’t worry about the others. I was selfish. Self-centered. I took to the river and let myself float on its waters. I didn’t care if I drowned. I didn’t care what became of me. I was hurt, I was angry, and I didn’t care what that meant for the future. I just wanted everything to stop. I was too much of a coward to commit the ultimate selfish act… but I thought about it.

  A hand drops on my shoulder, squeezing once and drifting away. I keep my eyes closed.

  There were times I wondered just how easy it would be to fill up my pockets with stones, oh Lord, and walk into the river and let myself drown. I wondered how hard it would be when the river closed over my head and the light became murky and I opened my mouth to inhale the water. It would have been easy, I think. It would have been hard, I know. But it would have stopped the pain. It would have taken me away from my head and heart. It would have only taken moments for it to be over, and that seemed easier than a lifetime of agony.

  More touches, to my shoulders. My face. My hair. My back.

  But he came, when I was at my darkest. I prayed him down from the sky, and he came in a flash of blue fire that lit up the heavens. I know he came by his own choice, but he came because I called him. He came when I could no longer take the weig
ht of the world on my own. He came when I needed him the most. He came and saved me from myself, saved me from the waters that rose up to my chest and over my head.

  The shuffle of feet. The whisper of voices. So many whispers.

  He made me believe I was stronger than I ever thought I could be. He showed me how to chase away the dark. The sun rose every morning because he made it so. He broke me down into tiny pieces and then picked them back up and shaped me into something… different. I understand now, I think. We’re tested. We’ve always been tested, and we always will be. It’s not meant to be cruel. It’s not meant to be some dark malevolent thing, even though it might seem like it. We might not always understand why things happen the way they do. We might not always agree. We might hate it. But they happen regardless. We could allow ourselves to become buried by it. Or… or we can rise above it, learn from it, and allow ourselves to see something more. I want to see more. I want to see more so badly I can taste it.

  More and more footsteps. Tears. Sighs of relief. Of reverence. Beauty. Truth. I am touched over and over again, until my skin vibrates from it. I don’t think I can take much more without breaking.

  My father told me it’s better to have something burn bright for a short amount of time than to never see it burn at all. If that is true, then so be it. I will have loved with my whole heart. With my whole soul. I gave as much as I was able, though it might not have been all of me. I can see that now. I can see the burden he was to carry. I can see the fear and loneliness in his own heart. It weighed on him. It held him down. But still he pushed on. Still he cared for more than just me. He cared for all of us. He cared for us because we are his. You gave him to us, and even if you take him back, you can never take that away from us. We will remember the time, however short it was, when we came alive. When we felt the fire in our chests, the wind in our heads. The earth beneath our feet and the water against our fingertips. We will remember him always.

  But what if….

  What have I been taught? What have I learned? I don’t believe this is a game. Not anymore. Michael said he didn’t understand why me, why God had picked me to do what he’s done. He didn’t understand why this tiny little part of the world, so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. His focus is on the destruction of a world I don’t know, of a mankind that can manipulate the elements. A world of a child flash-burned into a wall of a room so white, of a man named Seven who might be the one to save us all. He didn’t understand what importance we might have. And maybe, in the long run, it won’t matter. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe the point of all of this is not what will happen in the future, but what will happen now.