I now knew what I had to do. Maybe the river would take me, too, and maybe it wouldn’t. I didn’t know. All I knew was that it had its own kind of justice, and that it needed me to extend its reach.
I pulled myself up behind the Douglas fir. The river was behind me, eating at the banks.
And here came Keith running half-blind, carrying a pistol. I didn’t move; didn’t breathe. Everything depended on his not seeing me until it was too late.
He drew nearer. Ten yards. Five. Two. One. I let him get one footfall ahead of me, grabbed him from behind, and pulled us backward into the current.
Whoosh! La llorona did her part, sweeping us away as soon as we hit the cold. I let go of Keith and tried to get my head above water. I came up gasping, my lungs making an unnatural sucking sound. And then I went under again. I was above water long enough to see that log floating ahead with all the jagged branches sticking out. There was a scratch and I heard something break, I wasn’t sure if it was part of me or a branch.
I tried to grab hold but the log just rolled with me underneath. I pushed free and tried to surface. I opened my mouth and felt muddy water fill my lungs. I was drowning. But then at the last minute I was able to bob up. Slam! I impacted with something that wasn’t moving, something slick. Even as I tried to get a handhold and claw my way up, my legs started to drift to the side. I felt myself slipping down, but with a last effort was able to get my upper body over the rock and stay there.
All around me la llorona smiled and leaped and reached out to me with watery hands.
I thought I heard someone calling my name. Ronnie!
I told the river to shut up. It had me already.
Ronnie!
There it was again.
I looked up. There was Tomás standing on the banks, more solid than water. He was wearing his brace but his arm was out of it, so it looked like he had a white scarf draped around his neck, a bad fashion statement.
“Take my hand!” He was grasping a tree branch and leaning out in the current.
“Your collarbone!” I called back.
“Just take it!” his voice was louder now, more shrieky and urgent. And with that, he let go and leaped in.
“Jesus!” I said. What an idiot. Didn’t he know he could get himself killed like that? I had to get him.
We reached each other halfway between the shore and the boulder. He grabbed my hand and pulled me to him. The two of us rode the current, up and down and up again. When I went under, we both went under.
“This isn’t working!” I yelled the next time we surfaced.
“I’m not letting you go!”
Then we stopped. Had he hit another rock? That couldn’t be it because slowly we began to make progress toward the shore.
I felt someone haul me up and slap me down on the grass. I looked up. I saw everything through a veil of rain but they were all there, muddy and wet, a human chain that didn’t break. Red rover. Red rover. Send Ronnie on over. There was Mom and Dad and Ranger Dave, Tiny, Sheriff McGarry, the Brads. And at the front, half submerged but still standing, his eyes darting with panic, was Mr. Armstrong.
One the bank, someone turned me on my side and whacked me on the back over and over again. I spat up what tasted like a gallon of muck.
“She’s been shot. Stanch the bleeding. Call 911.”
Mud and pebbles came trickling from my mouth.
“Other side,” I said. “Look for the rowboat.”
“It’s going to be all right, Ronnie,” I heard someone say. Then: “Get the damn ambulance!”
“Wait!” Evil Brad said, then leaned in close. “What did you say, Ronnie?”
I repeated myself. “Find the rowboat. Up to the timberline.”
I saw a look pass between the Brads. “We’re not going anywhere until the ambulance gets here,” Good Brad said.
I shook my head: no no no. “It’s a mobile home. They can just drive off.”
Dad broke the stare-down. “We’ve got her! Go!”
The Brads sprinted upstream. “They shot Petunia,” I tried to call after, but Tomás hushed me as his mom had hushed him last night. “Ya, gordita,” he said, cradling my head in his lap. “Ya ya ya.”
I felt someone tie something off my leg just above my knee and there were pinpricks and stars all over—especially in front of my eyes. Off in the distance I thought I heard wailing. But it wasn’t la llorona this time—it was sirens.
“Is that for me?”
“I hope so,” Tomás said.
The sirens, instead of growing louder, grew fainter. I felt as though I were going under. Before I blacked out completely I saw something drift past us in the current—could have been a branch, could have been an arm. But it had to have been a branch because nobody moved to pull the arm out.
Mr. Armstrong watched it drift by.
Tomás just gripped me tighter.
I am sitting on the banks of the river, which is once again low and gentle. I am contemplating a smooth stone in my hand. It seems important but I can’t remember how. What am I supposed to do? How do I cock my arm? Do I throw underhand, like a girl? Do I try to put topspin on it?
Across from me, Karen steps out of the woods, kicks her flip-flops off, and wades across in surefooted strides.
Wordlessly, she sits down next to me. I can’t see her whole face. I only see her profile. I can feel something swell up, filling my throat like a thunderegg. This isn’t right. She shouldn’t be next to me. It’s what I want, but it’s not the way things are supposed to be.
She picks up a stone, cocks back her arm, and lets it fly. Skip. Skip. Skip. Plunk.
Now I remember. That’s how it’s done.
Why are you crying, Ronnie?
I feel her voice rather than hear it.
I failed you, I say.
How?
I was supposed to go with you, remember? That one day? You wanted to cross over but I wouldn’t let you?
Ahhhh… she says, the gentlest sigh, caressing my ears like a breeze. You were a good friend.
You’re just saying that because I gave you chocolate.
She reaches into the current, selects a flat, smooth stone and lets it fly. I did like the chocolate, she says. But I liked that you spent time with me, too. Some people used to get me confused with my brothers and sister. Not you.
No, I say. I never wanted you to be anyone else. You were special.
She nods. And that’s why I came back. It’s time to let me go now, Ronnie.
I know, I say. It’s just so hard. I’m afraid I’ll forget you.
You won’t forget me. Look, you remembered how to skip a stone, didn’t you?
That’s different, I say.
No, she says. No different. I’m in your blood now. Like river water.
She gets up and starts forging her way back across.
Karen?
She stops.
If you want, I can go with you. I’m not afraid anymore.
She half turns to me. I know you’re not, Ronnie. But you can’t.
She takes another two steps, then stops. You will tell them, won’t you?
Who?
Mom and Dad. Tell them it’s okay. There’s lots of territory to discover over here. It’s really just one more frontier.
It is my turn to sigh. It makes a certain kind of sense, this dream-logic.
I’ll tell them, I say.
Karen, satisfied, turns to me full on. I can see all of her and she isn’t shining and glorious, she is just Karen and I miss her and I will never get her back. She smiles sadly, squares her shoulders, and waves goodbye. I count her steps like skips of a pebble. One… two… three. Nine steps to make it to the other side.
Nine steps and she is gone.
23
One… two… three… nine steps.
Nine steps down from the courthouse to the street. I’ve gotten good at judging distances, when I should use the crutches and when I should just hop. This time I choose the crutches and am able to ste
p-swing those nine steps down without losing my balance and toppling forward into a Tri-Met bus.
I look up. The courthouse is one of the funkiest buildings in Portland, all geometric tile, as if a kid had built it from blocks. On its front is the second-largest bronze statue in the United States. Portlandia. She’s huge, a goddess with wavy hair holding a trident in one hand, reaching down with the other to scoop boats out of the water with the other. From where we are, I can only see the bottom of one massive bronze hand.
Gretchen stands on one side of me, lighting a cigarette. It’s a nasty, stinky vice, but it could be a lot worse. She takes a drag and I look at her profile. She’s filled out a little, not much, but at least there’s color in her cheeks. She’s lopped off the purple fringe in her hair and now looks almost ordinary.
She has two arms. She’s wearing short sleeves and the scar on her right elbow is not colored in. She usually likes to doodle on it, decorate it with ivy like a Victorian stencil, but Dad has threatened her with incarceration if she tries to make it look any less ghastly than it is.
“I think that went well,” she says.
I turn around and look back inside. Dad is still in there, talking to his old cronies, even though now he’s no longer one of them. He’s a prosecutor now, and he’s a nasty one. The jury’s just been given their instructions. Phil LaMarr has been escorted somewhere far away from civilized people. When the jury comes back, I hope to hear the word remanded.
We are back in our home in the city, Mom and Dad and Petunia and I. I’d forgotten how small our house was. The dog takes up half of it. She was my biggest worry that day on the river. I kept crying for her on the Life Flight helicopter all the way to Portland. Or so they say. I remember the tears, I remember being frantic. Then I remember Dad, trying to calm me, saying, “Trust Ranger Dave to fix her.” I remember thinking, “Oh, yeah,” and passing out again.
The next thing I knew I was waking up in the hospital, Tomás asleep on the visitor’s chair. I took a good long look at his profile. He wasn’t wearing a baseball hat so his dark curly hair circled his head like a halo of question marks. Holy cow, those were pronounced cheekbones, steep as embankments. And that Sheriff of Nottingham goatee? I must’ve been an idiot to find that threatening. He wasn’t the Sheriff of Nottingham. He wasn’t even Robin Hood. Robin Hood was an outlaw. I’d had my fill of outlaws.
No, he was more than that. He was Good King Richard, home from the Crusades, ready to put everything right in the land.
And I cried then, because I’d come so close to missing this that I felt like I’d already missed it. That woke him up. He and asked me what was wrong, I didn’t have any snappy answers. Then he surprised me. Instead of calling a nurse for more drugs, he gently lifted my head and put his arm around me. Without speaking, the two of us together drifted off.
Gretchen and I are still standing under Portlandia when Tomás comes trotting up to us. Clean-shaven for the day. I run my fingers over his smooth jaw. I miss the scratchiness.
“Don’t get used to it, babe,” he says. “I’m growing it out as soon as the trial’s over.”
“Got the beeper?” I ask.
Tomás tosses it like a jump shot and catches it. “Your dad said to stick around,” he says. “He doesn’t expect them to deliberate long.”
Gretchen points to a Starbucks across the street and I step-swing over. They are faster than I am. I try not to mind. With a little luck and physical therapy, I should be able to run again in the fall.
“That was smooth, your dad having you wear a miniskirt,” Gretchen says as she scores a table for us outside on the red brick sidewalk. In front of us on the street, Tri-Met buses stop and start, peppering us with exhaust.
I look down at my leg, the one in the Frankenstein-like brace. There’s a pin holding my tibia together. In two weeks the cast will come off and I’ll get a boot. And even though Keith’s dead, I’m still mad at him, shooting my leg so full of bone shards they found some wedged in my uterus. At least that’s what Dr. Zegzula said. I think he was trying to make a joke.
Today, Dad insisted on the miniskirt so everyone can get a gander at what Phil LaMarr’s dead stepson did to me. Dad kept saying something about the swing vote, and how jurists who might be interested in cutting Phil a break are less likely to after the parade of misery, Gretchen’s testimony, my testimony, the Brads’ testimony. The list of charges against Mr. LaMarr is long. He’s an accessory to murder, but that seems to be the least of it. The big ones are masterminding a meth lab and owning unregistered firearms to protect it.
“Usual?” Tomás says, and goes in for caffeine: tall latte for him, mocha for me, Venti cappuccino for Gretch. I watch him progress through the line inside.
Out here, Gretchen lights a new cigarette from the butt of her old one. “Before I forget, I’ve got something for you,” she says, reaching into her book bag. She draws out of pile of paper folded in half, and slides it across the table to me.
“What’s this?”
“I was online the other day and I Googled la llorona.”
I groan, embarrassed I told her about that. I only mentioned it in passing in Group one Sunday at Riverside. I thought she’d get a kick out of it. You think you’re the only freaky one? Get this: I was so delusional I thought the river was sending me messages.
I unfold the paper she’s slid toward me and see a stack of printed-out articles. Dark Beginnings of La Llorona. La Llorona Sighted by Border Guard. La Llorona And Elvis Have Demon Baby in Wal-Mart.
“Thanks,” I say unenthusiastically.
“She’s a witch in almost every story. But in one of them she’s a curandera. A healer. You know, helps lost children find their way out of the woods. That kind of thing.”
She takes a drag on her cigarette, then stubs it out under her heel.
“It makes sense if you think about it. I mean, weren’t the European witches really midwives? Then a bunch of men decided they had too much power? I think la llorona may have just gotten a bad rap.”
I wonder if Gretchen is right. I try to remember: did la llorona ever try to lure me in? Or did she warn me, encourage me? Run, Ronnie, run! Maybe there’s truth to what Gretch says. I don’t know, but I’m glad she looked it up for me. The Gretchen from a year ago would’ve rolled her eyes and barked at me to let it go.
When Tomás comes back out he’s smiling huge, carrying our drinks in a tray. “Up and at ’em. We’re being beeped,” he says. This is a good sign. They haven’t even been deliberating half an hour.
We hobble back to the courthouse, under Portlandia, through the metal detectors, and up the elevator to our courtroom. Dad is sitting at the prosecutor’s bench, waving at us as we all file in. On the bench behind him sits the Armstrong family. Mr. Armstrong squeezes over to make room for us. They do not look optimistic—not even the surviving kids. They know, as we all do, that this is not a happy day. But an undercurrent, deeper than optimism, has driven us here to witness it.
We are together for the first time since the day they pulled me up onto dry land: Mom, Tiny, Ranger Dave, Gloria Inez, Mrs. Kinyon, the Brads, Gretchen, Tomás, and me.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to Phil LaMarr, but whatever it is, it won’t be enough. Karen is gone, and those of us left are scarred, patched together with pins and braces and memories—all thanks to this man and his cottage industry that cost us so much.
I close my eyes, drowsy with heat and fatigue, and listen for something I know I won’t hear. We’re too far away.
But I don’t really need the river. Because now I know the important stuff. I know that the Armstrongs might recover, encircling their remaining children like a mountain range, but they will never be the same. I know that Tomás and I are in love but we’re living in separate cities, so staying together is impractical. I don’t care, though, because when faced with something much stronger than us, we held on to each other and survived. I know how hard Gretchen is fighting for her future, but I also know that th
e statistics for people recovering from her particular brand of poison aren’t good. If she wants to stay straight, she’ll have to exert her will every day for the rest of her life. It is far from a perfect existence.
“All rise.”
We stand for the judge to come in, then have to stay standing for the jury. It seems like a long wait, and I list like a tall tree in a high wind.
But at last the jury files past, and one of them darts a poisonous glance at Phil. Even before they deliver their verdict I know what they’re going to say.
Mr. Armstrong reaches for my hand and squeezes it hard.
I listen for the Santiam but don’t hear it.
This is the most important thing: those of us left standing are wobbly, but at least we’re standing together.
It’s enough, the river would whisper. It’s enough.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Once again I had the good fortune to have the backing of a great independent bookstore. A giant thank you to the Pages and co. at Island Books for moral support and letting me tinker on this project in the children’s department.
Another big thanks goes to Lieutenants Autumn Fowler and Lisa Flores of the Bellevue Police Department for letting me ride along and opening my eyes about how bad the meth epidemic really is.
Kit Close of Ranch Records in Salem, Oregon, graciously supplied me with the original Tiny story that sparked my imagination but unfortunately didn’t make it into the final novel. If you’re ever in Salem, stop by the store and have him tell it to you. It’s a good one.
Steven Chudney is a wonderful agent. I’m glad he’s on my team. I’m also really fortunate in Jennifer Hunt and T. S. Ferguson at Little, Brown, who saw an earlier, amorphous version of The River and took a chance on it even though it needed gutting. Thanks for a) staying with me and b) giving this project its shape.
The River Page 14