The Same River

by Lisa M. Reddick

  As they danced, the rhythms drew Jess into the center of the spiral, where a stone bowl filled with water sat. The water reflected the night sky, visible through a large opening in the roof of the cave. Three women stood around the bowl, waiting. Jess met the eyes of the Native American woman holding her hand; for a moment they felt like the same person.

  “Miko?” she called out. “Hey, boy, c’mere.”

  She was lying in her room, sweat streaming down her chest. She rolled over and pushed the sheets away, using them to dry her arms and legs.

  What was that?

  Miko shuffled into her room and laid his big head on the edge of the bed next to her. He was so good. “Miko, my boy.”

  Her hand was shaking, and she used him to steady her. Her face trembled, and her leg throbbed. She sighed and rolled over to hold on to her dog.

  Where had she just been? It seemed like the desert. New Mexico. She could still smell the sage, feel the damp clay road, her long body gaunt with hunger. Where was the cave? The echoes of the ancient dance resonated within her; the Native American woman, her father, her sister, and even Miko had been there. Her brain swung her thoughts around with confusing and contradicting meanings. Images in her mind crashed like two waves coming together, crosscurrents splashing.

  She stood up naked and walked into her dark bathroom. The floor was cold, and her damp body shivered. Miko slunk in behind her and plopped down at the bathroom door. It was four o’clock in the morning. Feeling sick, Jess grabbed a dry towel to keep her warm and took it back to bed. Miko lay down next to her, and Jess rested her hand on his back.

  Her body felt stiff and foreign to her, and she shifted to try to get comfortable. She thought about taking some sleeping medication the doctor had given her but decided not to.

  It had happened a year ago today. Her mind swung in a wide circle around the memory. The stones, the river, Miko barking, the mountain lion. Jess felt her scars tighten, and she curled against the strain of them. She wanted it to stop, all of it.

  She needed to go back. The idea tugged at her. There was something waiting in the streambed. She needed to go back today, to the river, to the dam, to the stones. She stretched her legs out under her sheets and fell back into a deep, restful sleep.

  BARBARA

  Barbara looked down at her hands. How had they aged so much? They looked old, like her mother’s hands late in life, folded by arthritis permanently into a clawlike shape. She had often wondered what her mother had tried to hold on to. She remembered that as her mother had slipped through the layers of Alzheimer’s disease, she had imagined that she was clinging to her own mother’s calico-print skirt or her father’s freshly starched and pressed collar. Barbara looked over at her mantel and the scattered photos there, remnants of family members living and dead. For a moment, she was lost among them, different ages at different times, feeling the fleeting independence of her teenage years and the woven dependence of her marriage.

  She got up and picked up a picture of her young girls. One was just six, and the other a sassy ten. Their blondish hair whipped around their faces as they held up two prized shells they had found while scouring a beach in Hawaii. That vacation had been so much fun. Barbara had been in the fullness of her life—two amazing daughters and a husband who had helped her become the mother she longed to be. As she looked into the picture, the ginger-flower smells and shapes of Hawaii wafted around her. For a moment, she was there again, away from what her life had become. Her hands grew sore as she realized she was gripping the picture, embedding the feeling of the sand under her feet, the salt wind of that place and that day, and the beauty of her young daughters.

  Pain poured through her like molten lava as she put the picture back into its place on the mantel. She stepped back and imagined that beautiful blond hair tangled in a snag at the bottom of the river, an image that would never leave her. In her dreams, she braided Monica’s hair, tangled with leaves and sticks from the river bottom. Over and over, Barbara told her how beautiful she was and how strong she needed to be.

  All at once, she felt the floor fall out from under her. She stumbled back to her chair and sat. Tears ran down her face, the sobbing racked her, and she felt as if there was no stopping what was happening to her. A cold sweat covered her, and her panic became a sudden drive that her body could hardly contain. She thought she might need to call 911, but then, remembering what the counselor had taught her, she closed her eyes and focused to steady her breathing. Waves, the sound of waves on the beach, always helped to bring her back. And she knew she had to come back, for Jess.

  When the doorbell rang, she started. Then she brushed her hair back and wiped her hands on the rough-knit afghan she was holding. The person started knocking, and Barbara shouted out to wait a minute. Who would be visiting this time of day? Usually her days lay down in front of her, lazily uneventful but not very inviting.

  She opened the door and was startled to see Suzie. Barbara had heard from Jess about her involvement with the attempt at bombing the dam and her disappearance right after Jess lost her job. Her once-dark hair was dyed white-blond and cut very short. She wore all black and had several piercings along her left ear and a small gold ring in her nose. Barbara stepped back, hardly recognizing her and a little afraid of her.

  “Suzie, oh my gosh . . . I’m surprised to see you. It’s been a while . . .” Barbara stepped back into her house and tried to take in what this young woman might want.

  “Hi, Barbara. Yeah, I’ve been away, but I heard from my dad about what happened to Jess. I’m so sorry.” Suzie paused and looked past Barbara into the house.

  “Jess isn’t here—but she is home from the hospital. Does she know you’re back?”

  “No. I’ve . . . well, kept my distance, so to speak. But it’s weird, because I was working on a book, and in the book my character is attacked by a mountain lion. It actually came to me in a dream, only I was the one who was attacked. I came back to see Jess and to try to find out more about what happened to her, and maybe why.”

  “Her injuries were very, very serious. She’s getting better, but her therapy takes a lot of her energy. Where have you been? Jess said you just left one day, and then she didn’t say much more after that.”

  “Yeah, Dad mentioned that and sent me the link to the story in the paper. I’ve been lying low after what happened with Mink and the others. I was glad they weren’t able to find out anything about Jess that could have gotten her in even more trouble. Losing her job and Jeff must have been hard . . .”

  There was a strong, awkward silence, and then Barbara, realizing she liked that for a moment she wasn’t alone, stepped back from the doorway and asked, “Would you like to come in?”

  Suzie made a popping sound with her tongue in her cheek and sat down on the worn arm of the floral couch in the living room. Barbara remembered the sleepovers Suzie and Jess had had in middle school; each girl would have her end of the couch and they would scare themselves silly watching old Twilight Zone episodes. Barbara had always felt a little uneasy about Suzie; she knew that Suzie had not been close with her family, and then her suicide attempt in high school had left everyone on edge about her.

  “Yeah, there was a lot going on, and I had to . . . I had to go for a while. I heard what happened to Jess but didn’t think I would be any good to her here or wherever I was. What happened to the cat?”

  Barbara sensed Suzie being evasive and kept any more questions to herself. She was still shaky from her panic attack and didn’t have the energy to navigate an entire conversation with anyone, especially this woman. “They hunted her down and killed her. She was a big cat, almost eighty pounds. You know Jess—she must have fought as hard as she could have.” Barbara reached back to her neck where Jess’s wounds were. She was haunted by her own ache, imagining the roughness of scars, of the misshapen parts of her daughter’s still-healing skull fractures.

  “Does anyone know why the cat ran away and left her?”

  “No,
could have been Miko barking, but no one has really talked about that. It must have been a horrible night for her, so cold. Miko was a total wreck when they found him. Thank God the power-company workers start so early. It’s lucky Jeff wasn’t the one to find her.”

  “They broke up, right?”

  Barbara was finished with the inquiry but didn’t have the energy to try to stop it. She stood, thinking of asking Suzie to go, but it was as if one of her old photographs had come to life—there was a person, a friend of Jess’s who had at one time meant a lot to her, right in front of her.

  “Yes, they did. Would you like some tea or something?”

  “Sure, that would be great.” Suzie reached out and petted Barbara’s black cocker spaniel, Nifty.

  “How’s the garden going this year?” Suzie half shouted to Barbara, who had left to go into the kitchen and get some tea.

  “It’s okay. With everything that’s happened to Jess, I haven’t had the time or energy to do too much, but I do have a small vegetable garden and my usual blueberries, which don’t need much attention.”

  Opening her kitchen cupboard, Barbara felt her heart dip as her hand brushed Jess’s favorite lemon-ginger tea. She reached instead for English breakfast and put two cups of water in the microwave.

  “I remember this picture of Jess,” Suzie called from the living room. “Wasn’t this the picture they used in the papers when they printed the story about her being attacked?”

  Barbara’s heart clenched in her chest again as she recalled that day, the news reporters invading her heart, her home, the calls from the neighbors, the concern . . .

  Barbara walked back into the living room with the tea. “Yes, that’s the one. It was taken when she was working with her friend Leslie in the Wind River Range, doing some kind of activist work. It’s a good picture of her—even though it was years ago. I guess the paper didn’t care about that.” She paused for a moment, then said, “So, why did you come back, Suzie, and why to see me? Why didn’t you just go to Jess?”

  “I wanted to find out how she was doing first. And to . . . well, see if you were okay. I heard from my dad how rough it’s been for you.”

  Suzie’s eyes seemed too bright, too interested, in a way that was uncomfortable for Barbara. The loud ticking of the old grandfather clock in the hallway filled the silence between them.

  Finally, avoiding Suzie’s comment, she said, “Jess is doing better. Her leg is mostly healed, but there were some other injuries that are taking longer.”

  “Does she have brain damage?” Suzie’s question seemed too invasive and flat.

  “You know, Suzie, I would be much more comfortable with your asking these questions of Jess herself. I’m trying to be careful about what’s happening with her condition and the details of her injuries. She’s around these days, working from home, mostly.”

  Suzie looked into her teacup. “I’ll go see her. This must be so hard for her. Jess was always, you know, the strong, brave one. Hiking with her was always more of a charge up the side of the mountain, or she would dive into the fastest part of the river . . .” Suzie stopped, and Barbara seized the opportunity to redirect the conversation in a way that would encourage her to leave.

  “Do you still have Jess’s cell phone number?”

  “Yeah, I do, if it hasn’t changed.” Suzie walked over to the mantel and put back the picture of Leslie and Jess. “Well, maybe I should go. Thanks again for the tea. I’ll give Jess a call. See ya!”

  Suzie swaggered out the front door—like a pirate, Barbara thought. She closed the door and locked it. Sitting back down in her chair, she pulled her afghan around her and called Jess’s cell phone. She wanted to warn her, for some reason. It was as if Suzie were the cat, looking for Jess, the way her body moved. Yikes, had she been stalking Jess even back then?

  She got Jess’s voice mail: “Hey, it’s me! Leave me a message!” She sounded so . . . well, so Jess, and Barbara took comfort in her confident voice.

  “Hey, Jess, it’s Mom. Look, sweetheart, I just had a very strange visit from your old friend Suzie. She said she was going to call you, so I just wanted to let you know. By the way, what are you doing for dinner on Thursday? Robert’s in town, and I thought you’d like to see him while he’s here. I think he said you were having lunch with him on tomorrow. Anyway, sweetheart, let me know. I love you.” She hung up and stared at the phone for a minute. She felt tired and decided to lie down, rechecking the locked door on the way to her bedroom.

  She fell asleep quickly, her body tired from being so scared all the time.

  She woke up an hour later, shaking from a disturbing dream. Jess had been playing with a baby mountain lion. The mother was nearby and didn’t seem worried. The scene had been Disney-like, cartoonish. Suddenly, Suzie jumped out from behind a large boulder, laughing. She grabbed the baby cat and slit its throat. Jess cried out, but her cry wasn’t human; it was the cry of a mountain lion.

  Barbara got up and washed her face with cold water in the bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw the fear in her eyes. They were lined deeply at the edges, and her mouth turned down at both ends. What had been taken from her had been too much. She could see in her face a diving downward, as if gravity were holding her so she couldn’t fly off and leave, so she couldn’t ascend into the arms that were taking her out of this life, her young daughter’s, her husband’s, and now that of her eldest daughter, who seemed suspended between the worlds. It was time, she thought—time to find a means of holding on in a way that wasn’t so painful, so wrecked all the time. Those first days after the attack, the same sheriff’s car pulling into her driveway, the same news reports, had felt like a mantra repeating itself, over and over, in her life.

  She opened the mirrored door to the medicine cabinet and pulled out the bottle of Valium her doctor had prescribed after Jess had been attacked. Just one, she thought. Just one. Barbara closed her eyes and saw her mother’s clawlike hands holding hers as she passed away; the clenched hands of her husband, lying in the backyard; the continuous, movie-like image of Monica grabbing for the grasses along the riverbank; and Jess’s hand, so weak, so small, holding on to her. They were pulling her down with them into the dark pool. She needed them, just for a moment, to let go.

  PART III

  JEFF

  The house was quiet in the dark early morning. Stirring his coffee, Jeff looked through the morning paper, letting the ominous weight of the day settle around him like a cloak. He sat there, staring at the paper, until he looked up at the red glow of the digital clock on his microwave. Shit—I’m going to be late again. He knew what would be waiting for him: the latest report on the decline of the salmon.

  He felt unable to breathe normally, and he stayed too long in the hot steam of the shower. As he waited for the water to work on the stiffness in his back, he knew he had been wrong to believe them and he felt grief binding him like a metal band. The water wouldn’t help. Not this morning.

  He dried himself and dressed slowly. He was alone, vividly alone. The dark in his room seemed to stretch out for miles, to where Jess was, he imagined, curled with Miko, arranging her thoughts in careful rows, and he wondered if he was woven into them.

  Jess had been attacked a year ago today. Just after they had met for coffee at the Nesika Lodge. She had been so ardent, so clear, in asking him for help, but he had sensed that maybe there was more to their encounter. He felt bad that he hadn’t been able to figure out how to be with her in the hospital, how to be a friend. Now he knew what to do, how to give Jess what she had asked him for that day.

  Pulling into the gravel parking lot, Jeff felt apprehension rise in his chest, and he waited in his quiet truck before going in. He poured himself a cup of coffee in the kitchen, then made his way to his small cubicle, where he had built a name for himself with a now-international company. His walls were covered with posters, pictures of the river, and an old bumper sticker from the Nesika Fly Fishers, saying KEEP THE NESIKA WILD. Ironic,
he thought. A picture of the Green Springs dam hung right under it, the river reduced to a funnel of spray below the concrete wall. Keep her wild, he thought, shaking his head as the constant contradiction rose in his chest.

  “Hey, Jeff, how’s it going?” Mack Dempsey sidestepped into Jeff’s space and half sat on the edge of his desk, pushing the report aside and looking down into Jeff’s eyes. Jeff felt as if he had suddenly been called in to the principal’s office.

  “Fine, Mack, I’m okay, but these new reports are kinda startling. I’m really not sure what to think—other than that what we’ve come up with isn’t working.”

  “Yeah, it’s not as good as we hoped, is it? But what I want to talk to you about is how the company is going to respond to these new reports and the media flare around it. One thing we don’t need right now is to give any fuel to those environmental groups. Word has it they’ve been in contact with this environmental law group, Planet Justice. We can deal with this with . . . well, facts of our own, if you know what I mean.”

  Jeff felt his stomach drop. Just the week before, he had talked with Jess over lunch about the case with Planet Justice and had wondered how his company would respond. He looked up at the small framed picture on his desk of Jess with Miko, the Nesika, like a poised relative, flashing in the background.

  Jeff pushed the report on his desk closer to Mack. “Look, Mack, the population counts are what they are.”

  Mack leaned back against the wall of Jeff’s office. “Well, Jeff, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. It’s real sad that it isn’t different, but you and I both know that this can all turn around in a season.”

  “That’s not true—the facts are the facts here, and to misrepresent them would undermine our credibility and destroy my reputation as a scientist. No, Mack—that’s not something we can do here.” Jeff felt his face grow hot, and he shifted back in his chair.