Into This River I Drown

by TJ Klune

  There’s something else. Something, just out of reach.

  Gooseflesh tickles its way up your arms. The hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Lightning flashes down your spine in low arcs. There’s something else, isn’t there? Something else in the air. Something else carried on the wind. Something… unexpected. Something… different. Something is coming, you know, though how you know is a question you cannot answer.

  I don’t feel it. Not really. Not yet enough to name it. I’m still buried in grief. Lost in myself.

  But soon.

  I walk back to you and hand you your card. Our fingers touch for a moment, and you feel like you should say something, anything. I smile quietly at you as I tell you to have a good night, and I’m about to turn and walk away when you stop me.

  “What’s your name?” you ask, your voice coming out in a rush.

  I appear startled at this. Hesitant. Something flashes behind my eyes and again you think lonely. You think blue, but it’s the color, not the emotion, and you don’t know why. Everything is blue.

  I tell you my name. Slowly.

  “Big Eddie?” you ask faintly, wondering why you are saying anything at all. Your passengers listen raptly, as they feel it too now, though later none of you will admit it to each other.

  I glance up at the neon sign circling above us. And I smile. You see much in that smile, illuminated by the light. There seems to be a measure of peace there, if only for a moment. There is strength, you think. Hiding somewhere under all that sadness.

  And expectation. Like I’m waiting for something. Something to finally happen. Something to come along and say you are still alive, you are still whole. There is no reason for you to be alone because I am here with you.

  Then the moment passes. “That was my father,” I say. “Have a good night.”

  You nod.

  “Let’s get out of here,” one of your passengers whispers. “I found a way back with the GPS on my phone.”

  You nod again and watch as I go back inside and sit down behind the counter on a stool. I’m watching my hands when you finally pull away.

  Years from now on a very ordinary day, something you see triggers a memory

  of a time you stopped in Roseland, Oregon. You’ll think of me for the first time in years. You remember my name, but only just. You’ll wonder, as your heart starts to thud in your chest, if something finally happened. If things changed for me. If that look of longing, of waiting, led to something more. You’ll think on this fiercely, a slight ringing in your ears that you won’t be able to ignore. But then you’ll be distracted by something mundane and I will slip from your mind. An hour later, you’ll have forgotten that racing of your heart, the sweat under your arms. You’ll have forgotten the little things you saw, that feeling of knowing, knowing something was about to occur.

  But I have not forgotten.

  My name is Benjamin Edward Green, after my father, our first and middle names transposed. People call me Benji. Big Eddie wanted me to carry his name, but felt I should have my own identity, hence the switch. I never minded, knowing it bound us further. It was a gift from him. Because of him, and everything that is about to follow, my time of waiting is almost over. Events have been set in motion, and once started, they will not stop until it is finished.

  This is at once a beginning and an end.

  This is the story of my love for two men.

  One is my father.

  The other is a man who fell from the sky.

  in this town i live, in this house my father built

  I watch your taillights fade as you leave. Part of me wonders where you are

  going, but like all things, these thoughts come to an end. It’s dark now, and getting late. I’m tired and want this day to be over so the next one can begin. I go back into the store and pull the till from the register and take it to the back office. The money is counted and logged and put into the safe, ready for pick up by the bank tomorrow morning. The receipts are separated and placed on top of the money. I close the door, and the electronic keypad flashes at me. I enter the code and it locks.

  I leave the office and lock the door. I set the alarm. I turn off the spinning neon sign. I turn off the lights inside and it goes almost dark, the only light from a streetlamp. I stand in the dark and take a deep breath as I close my eyes. I wait, to see if it will happen.

  It does.

  A hand drops on my shoulder. I know I’m imagining things. I know it’s not real. It can’t be real. But then there’s a puff of air on the back of my neck, warm and soft, like a gentle caress. The hand on my shoulder squeezes gently, and as I open my eyes, wondering why I am not scared, standing in the dark with someone behind me, I see a flash of blue, like light, like lightning. But it’s gone before my eyes are opened all the way and the hand on my shoulder departs. I turn, already knowing there’s no one there. There never is.

  The store is empty behind me, of course.

  It’s not the first time this has happened.

  It’s not uncommon, I’ve been told (over and over again), to feel a loved one nearby after they pass. They are not really there, of course, but a manifestation of what our mind begs us to feel. We hope for this to be true, that they aren’t actually gone. That they are some kind of guardian angel, with nothing better to do than watch over us. It’s a stage of grief to wish that those we loved never actually left us.

  It’s the stage I’ve been stuck in for five years.

  The first time I felt that presence, I figured I was losing my mind, having just returned home for the first time in over three months. The second time, I decided my sanity was long gone. But then it happened again. And again. And again. Eventually, I accepted it, even if it’s just my imagination playing tricks on me.

  It is always the same. A hand on my shoulder. A breath on my neck. The gentle grip on my shoulder. A flash of blue. It doesn’t happen every day, or every other day. It’s not even once a week. But when I am at my darkest, when I am sure I can’t take another step, it happens. Every time I don’t think I can go on, it happens.

  I lock the front door of the station and get into the 1965 Ford F-100 that my father and I restored painstakingly. Lovingly. Light blue with white trim. Whitewall tires. White interior. Original dash and radio that never gets any reception. My father’s old coat is always draped along the back of the seat. “It’s cherry,” Big Eddie used to say.

  “So cherry,” I agreed.

  “So cherry,” I say now to the empty air around me.

  Except it doesn’t feel empty. It feels heavy, like anticipation. Like expectation.

  I wait for it to depart, but it doesn’t leave.

  Eventually, I fire the truck up and head for home.

  Roseland is quiet this late at night. Granted, it’s always quiet, but when the

  sun falls and the stars come out, the quiet becomes a palpable thing. A slumber that can only be erased by dawn. I think a normal person would probably go insane living out here. There’s no excitement. There’s nothing to hold you here, unless your roots are entrenched deep into the earth like mine are. I feel lost in cities like Portland or Seattle. Buildings rise up out of the ground like metallic trees, impersonal and cold. People that you have never seen before and will never see again pass you by, ignoring you in favor of themselves. You bump into someone and get a scowl even as you fumble with an apology. I don’t handle that very well.

  I drive past Rosie’s Diner on the corner of Poplar and Bellevue. Rosie herself moves around inside. An old guy in a tweed jacket and fedora who only goes by Mr. Wade sits in a corner booth, sipping his coffee and eating his pie as he does every night around this time. They both wave as I drive past. I wave back as I continue into the night.

  The other shops are dark, closing before the sun goes down. The Safe Haven, a bookstore owned by a pair of old dykes. A hardware store owned by Mayor Walken. An Italian restaurant owned by Mayor Walken. A secondhand clothing store owned by an Armenian immigrant family
. Doc Heward’s office. A real estate office, owned by no one, boarded up and empty. A gift shop where I’d gotten—

  A blue light flashes behind me in the rearview mirror.

  My breath catches.

  But then the blue light is followed by a red one, spinning in a lazy circle. Dammit.

  I pull over to the side of the road, the whitewall tires crunching the gravel near the ditch. The lights continue to swirl behind me as the car pulls up within kissing distance of the Ford’s back bumper. He’s doing this on purpose, I know.

  The door on the car opens, and I can see the seal on the side, DOUGLAS COUNTY SHERIFF written in the middle. Boots hit the ground with a thud and he lifts himself out of the cop car with a grunt. He shuts the door and flicks on his highpowered MAG flashlight, sweeping it back and forth. He pauses to look in the bed of the Ford. There’s nothing there. It’s sparkling. It’s immaculate. He knew it would be.

  “Sheriff,” I say as he reaches my rolled-down window.

  “Benji,” Sheriff George Griggs says, his voice a deep bass, filled with undeserved authority. The definition of his face has been lost to fat, his cheeks soft jowls covered in black stubble. His balding head is hidden beneath the wide brim of his hat. “You’re out late.”

  “You know I’m not. I just closed up the station, like I do every day at the same time.”

  He narrows his eyes. “Is that so?”

  I barely can contain the urge to laugh. “Yes. Why do you care?”

  “Someone’s got to keep an eye on you, boy.”

  “I’m not your boy.”

  He ignores the harshness in my voice. “Been drinking tonight?”

  Now I laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”

  He’s not kidding. Or, he’s just trying to fuck with me. “No,” he says.

  I can play this game. “No, I haven’t been drinking.”

  “Is that so?” he says again, the beam of the flashlight piercing my eyes. I squint and look away. “I thought you were swerving a bit back there. You high, Benji?”

  “No,” I say, trying not to grit my teeth. “I’ve never been high. I’ve never been drunk. I’ve never done a damn thing wrong.”

  He leans in, resting his arms on the door to the Ford. He smells like sweat and aftershave. His scent invades my space. “Everyone’s done something,” he says. I can feel his eyes on me as I look straight ahead.

  “What have you done?” I ask before I can stop myself. I don’t miss how he flinches, a subtle intake of breath, the beam from the flashlight wobbling before it steadies.

  “You know,” he says finally, “a smart mouth like that is apt to find its owner in trouble one day.”

  “Oh?”

  “Serious trouble, Benji.”

  “Can I go, Sheriff, or is there something else you needed?”

  He watches me for a moment more before he knocks the flashlight against the door: a sharp rap that I know will have chipped the paint. “You be careful, you hear me?”

  Before he can move away, my mouth opens on its own again as I turn to look at him. “You find out who killed my father yet, Sheriff?”

  His eyes are hard, his face reflecting red, then blue. Red. Blue. The skin under his eye twitches; he tightens his jaw. “It was an accident,” he says quietly. “Big Eddie lost control of his vehicle and flipped into the river. Simple as that.”

  “That simple?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have a good night, Sheriff.”

  He’s been dismissed and he knows it. His mouth opens as he grunts. I think maybe he’ll say more, but he spins on his heel and walks back to the cruiser, opens the door and spills back inside. We sit there for a moment, me watching him in the rearview mirror, the lights twirling.

  Eventually, he spins out behind me and leaves me in the dark, the ticking of the Ford’s engine the only sound I can hear.

  I stay still for a moment. I breathe in and out.

  A hand falls on my shoulder again, there in the cab of the Ford. Another flash of blue.

  “I know,” I say to what does not exist. “I know.”

  I tried to leave for college after I graduated high school, but it didn’t take.

  I hadn’t even wanted to go to begin with, but Mom somehow wrangled a promise out of me that I would at least try. Lola Green is not above guilt and manipulation in order to get what she wants, especially if she feels it will benefit those around her. On the167th day before I graduated high school, I told her no way was I leaving her alone with the store—I was the man of the house now, I meant to take care of her, and this discussion was over.

  Many things ran across her face before she spoke: fear, laughter, horror. Love. So much love through it all. But then her eyes hardened, her mouth narrowed into a thin white line. Little lines appeared around her eyes and on her forehead. I knew that face. That face said that I had overstepped my bounds. That face said fifteen words were enough. That face said I had no choice and I would be going to college in the fall.

  “Now you listen here,” my mother said with a snarl. She is a little thing, just coming up to my chin, and I’m only five foot nine. But when she needs to be, she’s all spit and fire and teeth and claws. Big Eddie always said if he ever had to brawl, he’d only need her at his side. “Your father and I worked our asses off to make sure you would never want for anything. You are not going to sit there and tell me that you’re not going to school. You’re going, end of discussion.”

  I glared down at her as she tried to get up in my face, poking me in the chest with a lacquered nail. “I’m doing nothing of the sort,” I growled at her. “You can’t watch the store all the time. You’ve got other things going on.” And she did. She had run a small bakery out of our house for years before Big Eddie died. He always pushed her to go bigger, to think beyond Roseland. Word of her talent had spread to other towns around us and she seemed poised to break wide open. But then, of course, her husband drowned in six feet of water and put a hold on her future. It wasn’t until the Trio had arrived and put us back together as best they could that she started up again. At the time of our… discussion about my future, she and the Trio had just launched a website for the bakery. Lola’s Goods. It was getting more popular by the day, which meant less and less time for anything else. She knew this. But even better, I knew this.

  Her eyes flashed. “Oh, no,” she said. “There’s no way in hell you’re using the station as an excuse. I don’t care if I have to send one of the Trio down there, or hire a townie back on. I don’t get why we just don’t sell it. The bakery is doing—” She stopped herself. She’d gone too far, said too much. This was a thing never discussed, and never was to be discussed. A sort of unspoken truth had come after Big Eddie died: she would handle her end and I would take over for my father. Big Eddie had always planned on me taking over for him one day. I’d been there with him at the station since I could walk: in the garage, the store. I helped him with the pump. He lifted me up to wash the windows with the scrubber. The first time he’d left me at the store to handle things by myself, I’d been fourteen. After a stern lecture of no goofing around and no giving my friends any pop for free, he’d rubbed a rough hand over my hair and told me how proud he was.

  “Starting today,” my father had said in that deep voice of his, “you’re officially my partner here, okay? It’s you and me from here on out, Benji. Think you can handle it?” He held out his hand toward me, waiting.

  I was thrilled. Elated. Moved to the point I thought that if I opened my mouth, tears would fall and my voice would break. But Big Eddie was telling me I was a man. Real men didn’t do any of that. So I grunted, snapping my head up and down once, twice. I reached out and shook his hand. His grip was tight, his hand warm.

  The next day, he had old Mr. Perkins (the only attorney within fifty miles), draft up the paperwork. I didn’t know then he also made a change in the event anything should happen to him. If it did, the store would pass to me.

  Which, of course, it did. And
my mother knew this.

  “It’s my store,” I reminded her.

  “I’m your mother,” she snapped, and the argument was over.

  I was in Eugene at the University of Oregon for three months before I came

  home. I didn’t speak to her the entire time I was there. I studied. I went out. I got laid. I took tests, read books, stayed out until the sun was coming up. When I figured enough time had passed and my point had been made, I packed up my things, said good-bye to the few friends I’d made, and drove back to Roseland. She didn’t look surprised when I showed up at the door, my arms crossed. The Trio ran over, squealing, covering me with fluttery kisses, their mingled perfume so much like home I had to blink the burn away.

  My mother watched me for a moment from her spot by the sink in the kitchen while the Trio backed away, waiting to see what would happen. “You tried?” she said finally. “And?”

  “It didn’t take.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  She pursed her lips. “I suppose you’ll be wanting Little House, then?” No. I don’t know if I could handle that.

  Little House had been built by my father. He had thought it would be a place for

  a workshop, a garage where he could have his own space to do with what he wished. But the moment he started building, he knew it was going to be bigger than that. Set further down the road than Big House, it had become my father’s life work. And since life doesn’t stop because he had something that he loved doing, it took us six years to finish. The hardwood was placed and varnished, the white paint with blue trim completed. Electricity and plumbing done. When finished, it was two bedrooms, one bathroom. An office. It was small. But then it too became mine. After.

  “It’s like a littler version of our house,” I’d said once he’d finished. “Oh, is it?” he’d said, grinning at me. He reached over and grabbed me, putting me into a headlock while he rubbed my head with his knuckles. “A little house, huh?”

  “Size doesn’t matter,” I managed to choke out in laughter.