Dead River

by Cyn Balog

  His wound, the knife slash on his forearm, isn’t bleeding. I point to mine. “Will this ever stop?”

  He nods. “When you’re not thinking on it. Let it alone.”

  “Are you kidding?” How am I supposed to forget about this massive, ugly thing in my middle? The blood is running down my thighs. My intestines could slip out at any moment.

  When I look up, his wound has opened, and blood begins to bubble on the surface. He shakes his head. “I know. Easier said than done.”

  I shiver in the morning air; my teeth are chattering in a steady drumbeat. I’m not cold; my hands are their normal color, not the deathly blue that they sometimes turn in freezing temperatures. Funny that my hands look more alive now. I think of the last sight I witnessed before Trey pulled me to him and I fell asleep in his arms. It was my body, lying off the path. Dead. I don’t want to see it. Don’t want to at all, yet still I find myself craning my neck, searching it out. Maybe if I don’t see it, this will all prove to be a horrible nightmare and I’ll be able to go home.

  Trey puts a hand on my shoulder. “I moved it. Down near the river. Didn’t think you’d want to see it again.”

  I sigh, grateful and sad all at once. “I should have listened to you. You knew he was going to try to hurt me. I just didn’t think …” I swipe uselessly at the tears. “Why? Because he hates my mother?”

  He’s slowly stroking his thumb back and forth over my collarbone. “Don’t worry yourself over the whys. It’s done.”

  Then I say, “Jack told me he killed you. Is that true?”

  He looks surprised for a moment. “Wow. Guess lying never got him nowhere, so now he’s trying out telling the truth. Yeah. It’s true.”

  “He’s a monster. First you, now me.” I shake my head. “He killed you because you turned him in, right? He’d killed someone else? A little girl?”

  His face hardens. “Him? Nah. I don’t like talking about it. Happened a long time ago, so it don’t matter anyway. Let’s see.” Staring at my wound, he unbuttons and removes his shirt. His arms and chest are tan and muscled. I find myself blushing and looking away as he comes close to me and gently presses the shirt against my stomach. It doesn’t hurt, not at all. His hair flops in his face and when he leans down I can smell it. It’s like leaves and fresh wind and woods. And then I see that his shirt is sopping with my blood, and remember last night.

  That horrible, horrible night. I don’t even hate Justin or Ange anymore; I don’t think I ever did. I just miss them. I miss those dull, sloppy kisses Justin used to give me. I miss shopping with Ange. The only thing I ever wore bikinis for was sunbathing at the back of the house, but the last time we went out, I’d found a cute pink one. My first thought when I look at that wound is I guess bikinis are out. Then my mind travels over everything else that’s out, too. Kissing. Shopping. Sunbathing. Talking to Ange. Everything. I fold up into a ball and start to cry again.

  I feel Trey’s arm around me. “Hey, hey, hey. Kiandra. It’s not all bad.”

  “What’s good about it?” I sniff.

  He straightens. “Well, for one, you get to spend time with me. That’s pretty … well, I’ll just go and say it. Great.” He smiles broadly.

  My jaw just hangs open. It’s the first time he’s ever joked. Aren’t the dead supposed to be more … sullen? Hopeless?

  “What?” he says, noticing my surprise. “You think dead people can’t have fun?”

  It never did cross my mind. It doesn’t seem like they have an awful lot to celebrate. “Well, yeah. You’ve always been so—”

  “Before, I was worried about saving your sorry backside. Don’t have to worry about that no more.” He shakes his head at me, and when I start to apologize, he says, “No point in fretting over it now. I’ll catch hell later.” I’m just starting to feel bad again when he says, “And you still got those powers of yours. You want to try them out?”

  “Powers?” I study my hands. “Like what?”

  He stands up. “Like a lot of things. Here.” He reaches down and molds a few wet black leaves together into a small mound. “Go ’head.”

  I stare at him. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Light it on fire.”

  I let out a short laugh. “I can’t—” But before the words come out, sparks fly from the center of it and a fire consumes it, leaping into the air. I can’t even breathe. “I didn’t do that. Tell me I didn’t do that.”

  He shrugs. “You didn’t do that.” Then he grins. “Okay, yeah, you did.”

  I shake my head. “You’re not telling me that all I need to do is think of something and it will happen?” I ask, horrified. Because how often have I thought strange things, like wishing that it would be ninety degrees during the long Maine winter, or wanting the Academy Awards to be broadcast from my high school gymnasium?

  “It’s a little more than that. You’ve got to want it.” He looks at the fire. “You got some power, girl. I wasn’t able to light fire for a couple of weeks, at least.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. And that’s a small thing. Just you wait. I’ll learn you. It’ll be fun.”

  “Okay,” I say. Maybe it will be. It won’t be life, but it might be interesting.

  He smiles. “So, you ready?”

  “For what?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t already know the third good thing about being here?” he asks, raising his eyebrows. “I’ll take you across now.”

  I gasp. “What? Now? You mean …”

  “Sure. You want to see your momma, don’t you?” He studies me, then asks, “What’s got you in a tizzy?”

  “I’m fine,” I say, but even as I do my teeth clack together. He tilts his head to one side and his expression says, Level with me. “It’s—it’s just that I’m cold.”

  I know he’s the type to remove his shirt and give it to me to keep me warm, but he’s already given me his shirt, for the wound. I expect that he’ll wrap an arm around me, but he doesn’t. He lowers his head and says, “Quit playing. The dead don’t feel warm or cold.”

  “Oh,” I mutter. But they can obviously feel other things. Fear. Indecision. Regret. Hate. “I just … My mom left me when I was seven. She just left. For ten years, I’ve been without her. And I’ve … I’ve come to …” The words “hate her” are on my lips, but they won’t come out. “I just don’t understand why.”

  He stands there, nodding as if I make perfect sense, which makes me feel a little better.

  “Her powers are dying? Is she … sick?” I ask.

  He crosses his arms in front of him. “Who told you that? Let me guess. No, she’s just as strong as she has ever been. Once again, you go and do something I tell you not to. I told you not to listen to him.” He looks down the path, toward the river. “Look, I been kind of lax in my duties. I got to be going.”

  He starts walking down the narrow path toward the Outfitters. I tremble as he leaves. I don’t want to see Jack again. But at the same time, I do. Definitely, I can still feel indecision and fear. “Where are you going?”

  He turns and smiles, and like he’s reading my mind, says, “There ain’t nothing more Jack wants to do to you now.”

  “Oh.” But that isn’t enough. I’m ashamed of how I acted around him. My behavior with Jack is inexplicable. The force pulling me to him was so strong, and I’m so afraid that even after the horrible things he’s done to me, I’ll still somehow be drawn to him. But I can’t tell Trey that. It doesn’t make any sense, even to me.

  “You can still come with me,” he says.

  I stand, brush the pine needles from my backside, and follow him. As I walk, I marvel at how I can almost see every individual grain of dirt on the ground, at how I can almost hear every insect marching along its path. Now that the sun has risen, everything takes on a warm orange hue, and the entire sky is a shade of lavender I’ve seen only in small streaks during the most colorful of sunsets. The river, once black, now looks clear and inviting, like the Caribbean S
ea. “Everything looks so … alive,” I whisper. I guess compared to me, anything is.

  He turns back. “You’re different. So you see things different.”

  “I feel strange. I used to be so afraid of the river. Now I want to … I don’t know. Dive in.”

  He grabs a stick and starts swishing it through the brush as we walk. “Told you. You’re different. In death, you become what you most wanted to be in life.”

  I wrinkle my nose. “Like what?”

  He shrugs. “You figure it out. Don’t you know what you wanted to be?”

  I think. Shake my head. Before I know it, we’re at the pier near the Outfitters. There’s a different boat there, one I’ve never seen. It’s just a primitive raft, kind of like something out of Tom Sawyer. A line of people, waiting patiently, stretches up the hill. It’s a motley crew, some young, some old. They’re not dressed in wet suits. One man is wearing a Speedo. A little girl is standing there, naked, sucking her thumb and crying quietly. The strangest thing is how eerily silent everything is, though there are so many people there. Most of them look a little dazed. Trey runs his hands through his hair and whistles. “Sheesh,” he mutters. “I’m gonna catch hell, that’s for sure.”

  “What—” I begin, but I know. I know who these people are.

  Trey walks to the front of the line and cups his hands around his mouth. “Proceed in an orderly fashion,” he calls.

  The line moves. Most people put their heads down and walk, ever so slowly, onto the raft. I swallow as I look at the little girl. I don’t care if these people cannot feel cold. I pull off my jacket and hurry to wrap it around her. I notice that it’s no longer sopping with blood, which is good, but the second I notice that, I can feel the wound open up in my stomach with a sickening pop, like a hungry mouth. The little girl is so tiny and thin. When I stand next to her, she eagerly takes my hand and presses herself against my leg.

  The raft fills with people. We all press together. The girl looks up to me gratefully, her dark blue eyes rimmed with tears. I didn’t mean to go across yet, but I can’t leave her. I hear Trey’s voice telling people, “Step to the back of the raft. Room enough for everyone. That’s right. No pushing.” People crowd against us and we’re forced to the very end of the raft, and by the time I turn around, I can no longer see him.

  A confused man, maybe in his twenties, is standing next to me. He’s wearing swim trunks. He smells like alcohol and keeps wiping blood away from his eye because there’s a wound so big, it looks like half of his head has caved in. I wonder if he knows it. I shield the little girl’s eyes from the sight of him when he says, “Where am I? Where are we going?” But nobody answers. Everyone else, like me, seems to know already. Drops of blood slip from his chin, turning pink when they hit the clear water. Even that is beautiful.

  We set off. I expect the river to carry us downstream, as it did when Hugo tried to take me across in the kayak. But it’s like we’re crossing a calm, glassy lake. The boat does not pitch and toss. We simply glide, as if we’re skating across a frozen pond. There is a slight breeze, and from the middle of the river, I see that the sun is bright over the tall pines. This is not what I expected at all. When I look back to the east bank, I notice that the line that looked a hundred people long is now gone. Somehow, we all fit on this small raft. At first I think that’s impossible, but in a world where nothing is as I expected, maybe it is possible. Maybe many things that are impossible in life are possible here.

  The raft comes to a slow, easy stop at the west bank, and people begin to disembark. I wait patiently with the little girl, who is now smiling at me shyly. “Are you an angel?” she asks.

  “No,” I say, smiling at her.

  She says, “Mommy told me the angels would meet me when she put me under the water.”

  I put my hand to my mouth to hide my shock. Instantly the tears start to come. I miss my dad and my friends so much. I miss my bedroom. I will never see it again. I will never see any of them again.

  “I want to go home,” the girl whispers, and I hug her close, because I do, too. This new world is at once beautiful and terrifying.

  When the rest of the people have left the raft, I see them climbing up a path through the forest in a single, orderly line. Trey is standing at the pier. At first he’s happy to see me. “Hey, thought you were staying behind,” he says, but then he sees that I’ve been crying. My face is probably all red, like it usually gets when I cry. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe being dead makes that different, too. He doesn’t bother to ask me what’s wrong. I guess it’s pretty obvious.

  I squint to see across the river. I can just make out a few people, dressed in black wet suits, setting up over there for the new day’s rafting trip. Jealousy tightens my chest. I never thought I’d be jealous of people going rafting, but right now, I’d give anything to be one of them. I’d give anything to be at the beginning of this weekend. Or even better, at the beginning of this week. I’d tell Justin I had a change of heart and now I really wanted to go to prom, and he’d take me, because that’s the kind of guy he is. And Angela would understand, because that’s the kind of girl she is. They love me. When I think about how wonderful they are, how alike they are, more tears fall, so many I know it would be useless to wipe them away with the back of my hand.

  Trey leans down and starts to play got-your-nose with the little girl. She giggles. I think of my mom. “My mom used to play that with me,” I say.

  He nods. “Learned it from her. Good way to get the young ones to calm down.”

  And calm the little girl is. She’s clinging to him now. He must like my mother. Respect her. Why else would he talk about her, learn things from her? I’m not sure if that makes me like him more, or less.

  The little girl climbs up on his back, wrapping her pudgy fingers around his neck. I whisper, “Her mom murdered her.”

  His face is somber, but he nods like it’s nothing unexpected. I guess he’s heard a lot of horror stories in his job. He looks at his palms quickly, then wipes them on his jeans, but not before I see that the scabs there have opened. He leaves ruddy marks on his thighs, but his jeans are dirty anyway, so it’s hardly noticeable. He catches me watching and says, “All in a day’s work.”

  “I thought you said my mother was supposed to lead people across.”

  “Normally she would, but she’s conserving her powers. She needs them all. ’Cause of what I told you.”

  “And you don’t have … powers that can do it for you?”

  “Nah. The Mistress of the Waters might, but not me. I’m just a son of an oilman from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ain’t royalty or nothing, like you.”

  I snort. “I’m not royalty. My dad clips coupons.” He doesn’t say anything, so I say, “Tulsa? Is that where you’re from?”

  “Moved out there when I was six. Born in New York. My daddy was a big-time executive at the Buick Motor Company. You ever hear of them?” I nod. “Well, when I was six he moved us out to Tulsa to start his oil business, and it did pretty well. Guess he was a millionaire. Can you imagine that? Me, a millionaire? We had two cars, believe it or not. We was wealthy. I was on my way to Harvard that fall.”

  I stare at him. “Harvard?”

  He nods. “It’s a university in Boston. You know it? It’s still there?”

  “Um, yeah. I just didn’t … I mean …” I blush because there’s no tactful way to say what I’m thinking, that he was uneducated and poor. “So, what happened?”

  He looks at me like I have three heads. “I died was what. My dad lost everything in the crash. House was too crowded, so after I graduated I got out and hopped myself a train up north. Ended up on the Bel Del, working odd jobs so I could get up to college. That’s where I met up with Jack.” He bows his head, almost shameful. “You know how that all turned out.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, it’s probably a good thing I didn’t go to Harvard. I’d probably end up living in a house like them friends of yours. One that makes your meals
for you and wipes your mouth with a napkin afterward.” He points across the river and laughs. Then he puts his chin to his chest. “Do worry about my momma, though. My body was never found. Not that they looked much.”

  “But you said you became a legend in twelve counties. About the boy who couldn’t swim?”

  “Where I died, yeah. Not where my momma lived. There were a couple of witnesses, but none of them helped me. All too afraid. They all came up with the rhyme to protect Jack, make it look like an accident. My momma’s the worrying kind. Probably spent her whole life wondering what happened to me. I wrote her letters sometimes, when I was alive. But I never saw her again.”

  I think about my father. The thought sends a stab of pain through my chest. I’m never going to see him again.

  The little girl on his back has fallen asleep, and she looks like an angel herself with her eyelids fluttering and her cheeks rosy. I look around as we walk past the cemetery I’d spotted a day ago. It’s an old one. Most of the headstones are crumbling and faded, but I can make out some of the years. Most are from the 1700s. The green of the trees frames all the gray stone, making the place look more romantic than frightening. Trey pays no attention to it, just follows this worn stone staircase up a hill, into a line of trees. “Where are we going?”

  He stops. “That’s right. You didn’t want to see your momma yet. She’s up at the top of the hill. She likes to greet newcomers. You want to wait here while I bring her up?” He motions toward the little girl.

  I look up the pathway, which ends in pine trees the color of new grass, and at the lavender sky. “Does she know about me?”

  He nods.

  I bite my lip. “She doesn’t want to see me. She was trying to push me away.”

  “No, she was trying to protect you, kid. She’ll want to see you. Trust me. Mommas worry.”

  He’s staring at me with eyes so intensely blue, almost the exact color the river is now, I wonder if that’s me perceiving things differently or if that’s the way they’ve always been. Before, they’d been so dark, troubled. I look down and realize he has his hand out for me to take. I wrap my fingers around his, expecting to feel the sores I’d seen before, but, strangely, his fingers are soft, maybe even softer than mine.