Into This River I Drown

by TJ Klune

  He hears the inflection in my voice. “Are you asking me or telling me?” “Car accident.”

  “Oh? When?”

  “Five years ago. Five years this May.” A little over a month away. “That right?”

  I’m uncomfortable, unable to see his eyes. “Why?”

  He ignores this. “Sheriff Griggs still around, huh?”

  “Sure.” It comes out bitter.

  “Not friends, I take it?”

  “Long story.”

  “It usually is. Was your dad a good man, Benji?”

  A short bark of laughter is out before I can stop it.

  An eyebrow arches above the sunglasses. “Something funny?”

  “If you knew him,” I say, my voice growing hard, “you wouldn’t have asked that

  question. He was a good man.”

  “Oh? He would have done the right thing, you think?”

  “Always.”

  He nods.

  “Look, did you need something? I’ve got a customer waiting on me, so….” “Old-timer? Yeah, he hasn’t stopped staring at me since I got here.” Agent

  Corwin waves at Abe, who is still standing at the window. Abe doesn’t wave back. “Nice guy,” Corwin says.

  I wait.

  Finally, “What’s the word on the wind, Benji?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” He cocks his head at me. “This is a small town, right? Doesn’t everyone know everyone else’s business here? Rumors usually spread like wildfire.”

  “Maybe,” I say slowly. “But I’ve never been one to care about that sort of thing.”

  He reaches back behind him, and I think for a moment he’s going to go for a gun, or handcuffs, and I think that maybe I’ve done something wrong, that I shouldn’t have looked into things like I did. I want to tell him I’ve left it alone for a while now, even though it is still there in the back of my head, white noise that won’t ever disappear.

  He hands me a business card instead. The FBI seal. His name. His phone number is listed, and for a moment, I zero in on the last two digits: seventy-seven. “You call me you ever start to care about that sort of thing,” he says. He’s mocking me, but he doesn’t know that I know.

  “Sure,” I say. He asks me to fill up the car and I do. He pays me and leaves without another word. I return to the garage.

  “What’d he want?” Abe asks me, sounding worried.

  “I don’t know,” I say honestly, showing him the card. “Just asked about Dad and… I don’t know.”

  Abe shakes his head. “Big Eddie?” he asked, his eyes wide. “Why’d he want to know about him?”

  “Just… he asked me if I thought Dad was a good man.”

  Abe snorts. “Good man. Big Eddie was the greatest man. Don’t you dare believe otherwise. I loved that man as if he were my own. Blast it all, he was my own. And the only thing you need to concern yourself with is to keep doing what you’re doing. He’d be proud of you, Benji. I just know it.”

  I nod, unable to speak.

  His eyes soften. “We’re the same, you and I,” he says again.

  We are. I really think we are.

  I assure him I’m okay.

  I can tell he doesn’t believe me.

  Throughout the afternoon, a spring thunderstorm etches its way across the

  Cascades. It looked like the mountains would hold the storm off from dropping down into the valley, lightning flashing near the peaks, but as I start to close up the shop for the night, the air smells of rain and ozone. Ripples of thunder peal through the air, crashing and causing the ground to vibrate underneath my feet. There’s no rain, and the air is heavy with static.

  My father was a great man.

  It’s this I think as I sit at a stop sign. The wind is picking up around me, and the thunder has begun to sound angry. Arcs of electricity travel along the surface of the clouds, light up the world in purples and white. And blues. So many shades of blue.

  My father was a great man.

  Straight ahead is the way home. To turn left is to head toward Lost Hill Memorial.

  To turn right? To turn right is to go to the highway. To mile marker seventyseven.

  I told myself I wasn’t going to go there anymore, that there was nothing left at the river for me to see. There was no longer any trace that a man had ever died at seventy-seven. Someone (I don’t know who) had put up a small white cross on the river’s bank shortly after the accident. I saw it for the first time four days after the funeral. It confused me. BIG EDDIE had been written in a childish scrawl across the horizontal bar. I knew what had happened there. I knew now where my father lay. I was certain that having two memorials would trap him, that he’d be stuck between the two, forced to return to the river over and over again, unable to leave.

  I tore the cross from the earth. I broke it in half, then in half again. I threw the pieces into the river.

  No one ever put up a cross again.

  But they could have, I think now, irrationally. These are strange days and strange nights. There are feathers and blues. Dreams and storms. There are things Nina sees that aren’t really there. The script has been broken with Abe. The FBI wants to know if my father was a good man, and I think Little House is haunted. I think I’m haunted and it’s not real. It can’t be real. I am drowning in this river and I don’t know how to stop. I haven’t been to seventy-seven in days. Weeks. Someone could have put a cross back up again.

  It’s no question, of course. I turn right.

  It only takes ten minutes before I am at mile marker seventy-seven. I pull up in

  front of the sign and turn off the truck, the flares of lightning above illuminating the white numbers. They reflect back at me with each pulse from above and it’s like they’re calling me. Beckoning.

  Just gonna make sure there’s no cross , I tell myself. Once I see there’s no cross, I can go home. I can go home and forget about all of this. I need to move on. After tonight, it’s time for me to move on. Just gotta check one last time. Make sure there’s nothing there.

  I hesitate with my hand on the door handle. Before I can stop myself, I reach into my bag and grab the feather, then open the door out into the storm.

  The wind is howling in my ears, almost drowning out the roar from the river below. Another arc of electricity shoots overhead, and I count to two before another crack of thunder blasts the world around me. Just gotta see, I tell myself. I’ll be quick.

  I slide down the embankment, careful not to fall on my ass and roll down the hill. I reach the bottom as another gust of wind blows against me, almost knocking me back. The feather begins to slide from my fingers. I grip it tighter. It pokes into my flesh, giving me a small cut. I ignore it.

  I am at the river’s edge. There is no cross. There is nothing here.

  I breathe a sigh of relief.

  Lightning flash.

  There’s a truck in the water. Upside down. Back end sticking up, at an angle.

  Another flash and it’s gone.

  Another flash and the cry of an engine roaring down the embankment.

  Lightning above and there’s nothing behind me.

  I close my eyes.

  I open them and there are thousands of crosses on the river’s edge, all white and glaring and blazing. Big Eddie! they shout. Big motherfucking Eddie!

  I close my eyes. I open my eyes. The crosses are gone, but the world around me is filled with feathers, billions of them falling from the sky.

  A hand on my shoulder. A breath against my neck. A flash of blue.

  I fall to my knees and cover my ears, the feather in my hand stabbing my skin. I can’t do this anymore, I think, my own voice almost lost in the storm. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t face this on my own. I am drowning in this river and I am haunted in this house my father built and my mind is breaking. It is shattering. I am broken and alone and afraid. Please. Please. Help me. Help me. Oh. Oh, someone please help me. I can’t do this on my own. Not anymore.

  Please.


  There is a final crash of thunder and then silence.

  I open my eyes.

  The river flows in front of me, the surface covered in feathers.

  The ground around me is covered in feathers.

  A sharp pain pierces my head and I cry out, my eyes burning. I lower my head to the ground as my skull threatens to explode. Feathers press against my face. They smell of earth.

  And just as suddenly as it appeared, the pain is gone.

  I open my eyes.

  The feathers are gone.

  There are no crosses. There is no truck.

  The river moves forward.

  And from above comes a blinding flash of light.

  Big Eddie and I sat on the porch of Little House, a few days after it had been

  completed. He handed me a beer with strict instructions never to tell Mom as she’d kick his ass. I promised I wouldn’t. He knocked his can against mine and we both took long drinks and sighed. We sat side by side in a couple of lawn chairs. Every now and then, I’d feel his arm against mine.

  We were quiet, each lost in our own thoughts. It got like that every now and then, when no words were necessary, more a hindrance than a help. Mom said she’d never known any other people who could just be content to sit next to each other and not say a word. It would drive her nuts, she said, all that quiet.

  But there were times when important questions needed to be asked. And when they needed to be asked, we asked them.

  He asked, “Benji? Do you believe in the impossible?”

  I thought for a moment. “I believe impossible things can happen, though we may not always get to see them.”

  He turned my words over in his mind. Then my father said, “I thought this house would be impossible to finish. On the day we started, I thought it would never get done.” He paused. “I thought the life I have now would not have been possible. Your mom. You. None of this seemed like it could be real. Like it could be mine. It seemed impossible.”

  I looked at him funny. “But we’re real,” I told him. “We’re yours. Right? Me and Mom?”

  He looked out across the yard, up toward Big House, a king surveying his domain. He must have liked what he saw, because the sigh he gave sounded of peace. “Yes,” he said quietly. “You are. Impossibly. Improbably. You are.”

  Do youbelieve in the impossible? my father’s voice whispers in my head.

  I do. I do believe in the impossible.

  I believe because high above the treetops, high above the mountains, the clouds have parted and a brilliant blue light is falling toward the earth. The sounds of the world around me are gone. I cannot hear the wind blowing through the trees, causing them to creak as they bend and sway. I cannot hear the sound of the river flowing in front of me, even though I’m only feet away. I cannot even hear my strangled breath, though my chest surely heaves. The world has gone mute, bowing to the blue fire in the sky.

  The light moves like a comet, and the trail it leaves behind is almost as bright as the light itself, leaving an incandescent streak that seems to divide the clouds and the stars left above. There is a low hmmmmmmm that floats through the air, as if it’s vibrating as it falls. The light begins to reflect off the river as it gets closer, the waves throw off flashes of blue and white.

  Oh sweet God, I think wildly. What… what?

  Impossible. Improbable.

  As the falling light gets closer to the earth, the hmmmmmm gets louder and the ground beneath my feet begins to vibrate, the river rocks near the edge clacking together, bouncing off of one another. The vibration worsens and my teeth start to chatter together. The light becomes too bright to look at, and I lower my gaze in fear that I will be blinded. The river rocks rattle violently before they rise into the air, floating four feet above the ground. Thousands of them, as far up and down the river as I can see. There’s a crack across the river as massive pine and maple trees groan against the earth, pulled up, their roots snapping underground.

  Coming from the previous silence, this destruction is ear-shattering, massive. The world begins to roar around me and I can do nothing but watch. The boulder that my father’s truck had struck, causing him to flip, begins to split, the divide running down the side like a fault line. It breaks in half and both sides rise into the air.

  The light is brighter now, and I hazard a glance, terrified, but unable to look away. For the split second I allow myself to look at it again, my mind registers the light for what it is—fire. Blue fire tinged with arcing lightning, snapping and sizzling. The hmmmmmmmmm has become HMMMMMMMM. My teeth vibrate in their sockets, my bones quake in muscle. The noise crawls along my skin, hairs stand on end, my spine straightening as if electrified. I cry out as I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t know how much more I can take, I don’t know how much more I can stand, because I’m about to be blown apart and I’m sure all that’ll remain of me, my only mark on this earth, will be a fine red mist that falls into the river.

  It gets worse before it gets better, a cacophony where all my cells and the membranes of those cells are pulsing and screaming and boiling. My flesh is alive as it crawls, and behind the blackness of my eyelids, the blue light penetrates and explodes, at its brightest now, fireworks blasting in the dark.

  I hear the light smash into the ground and feel the earth roll underneath me harshly as if absorbing the blow. A second later, I’m pummeled by a hot blast of air that knocks me off my feet, end over end. I cry out as something scrapes up my back, and then there’s another bright flare in the dark. I land sitting upright, my back pressed against the embankment.

  Open your eyes, I tell myself, panting.

  No.

  Open your eyes!

  No! Just my luck, that was a fucking nuclear bomb and there’s a mushroom cloud forming right in front of me and I’ll—

  OPEN YOUR EYES!

  I open my eyes.

  Trees have been uprooted and lay on their sides, their needles and leaves smoking, but not burning. The ground is littered with stones. The river is covered in debris, ever flowing. And across the river, a pillar of smoke is rising just inside a clearing beyond a hill. My shirt is singed. In my right hand, impossibly—

  improbably

  —is the blue feather. My blue feather. From a dream so far away from now.

  A meteor? Was it a meteor? That’s all it was.

  But a sense of urgency befalls me. I want to see it, whatever it is. I want to find out what causes the sky to light up blue and fall to the earth. I want to find it first. Others will have seen it. Others will have heard it. Others will come. I don’t know why, but I know I need to see it first.

  The nearest bridge is ten minutes away. I won’t make it in time. People are probably already piling into their cars and trucks, wanting to collect themselves a piece of space rock for their very own. Did you see that? they are asking each other excitedly. Did you feel that? Load up, boys! Let’s go see what the fuck that was! More and more of them will come and whatever it is that fell will be for everyone and not for me. I don’t know why I think it’s important for me to find it first but—

  oh someone please help me i can’t do this on my own

  —I can’t shake the feeling that I must get there. I must get there now.

  No time to cross the bridge.

  The river. The river is shallow here. Unless you’re trapped.

  I can do this. I can do this.

  I strip down to my boxers, fold the clothes, and hold them under my arm, the feather safely tucked inside. I leave my shoes on the bank. The night air should be cool, but there’s heat radiating from across the river. The water is cold, freezing really, still carrying a melted winter down from the mountain. My nipples pebble and my teeth chatter. The water is up to my knees. I pause as a thick tree branch floats by. Heat pulses against my face. The rocks are slippery against my feet. Another step. The water rises to my groin, and the cold against my testicles is mind-numbing, wiping out all thought in a wave of ice and pain. I gasp…
but take another step. And then another. And then another. The water is up to my chest. Another piece of tree floats by, a long thin branch reaching out and scratching my right cheek before I can turn away. It stings.

  Another step. Mid-chest, halfway, and through the cold, through the thought of pushing toward a light that fell from the sky, and although I have so many memories to choose from in my twenty-one years of life, only one thought occurs here, midway through the river.

  I’m standing where my father died.

  Pain threatens to rise, and I’m so cold that I almost let it. There’s still heat against my face, but it’s nothing compared to the cold of the river. I think… I think about dropping my clothes and letting them drift away. I think about lowering my arms. I think about submerging myself in the water, the river closing up and over my head. I think about opening my eyes under the water, opening my mouth and lungs underwater. I think about lifting my feet and letting the current sweep me away. I am here now. I am here, having chosen to walk into this river, and I could drown. I could so easily drown. It would be simple, really. It would just take a moment. And then it would be over.

  Another step. I take another step and then another and another until I’m pushing through the river as fast as I can, the water spraying up all around me. The current is swift against my legs, trying to pull me back, telling me to stop running, to just stop, but then it lowers from my chest, to my stomach. From my crotch to my ankles. And then I’m on the other side, shivering, the warmth of the fallen light like a blanket. I take a shuddering breath. The knot in my chest releases.

  I dress quickly and shove the feather into the waist of my jeans. There can’t be much time left.

  Whatever it is, it has to be big. As I jog up the hill to look down into the clearing, I can see the trees that have been uprooted from the impact, having collapsed in an outward circular pattern as if blown out. My breath quickens. My heart races. I reach the crest of the hill. I close my eyes. The air smells of dusty earth. It’s overwhelming and it invades my senses, but all I want to do is inhale the scent until I’m intoxicated from it, till I’m high off of it. Another shudder rips through me. My head is pounding. I feel inside out. Sweat drips down my face. I open my eyes and look down.