The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) (21 page)

All I could hear was the high-pitched buzzing of the plane, which sounded a lot like a weed whacker. I would have given anything to know what Kyle and Dorian were saying. If their postures didn’t seem friendly, they at least didn’t seem hostile. They looked like two men waiting for a bus, chatting to break the boredom. On occasion, Kyle was capable of having a calm head, and I desperately needed this to be one of those times.

The violence in Kyle, the rage, I’d felt it before, lingering on his breath and beneath his twitching fingers. But I’d never seen it. Charlie had never seen it either, or at least that’s what he’d said: “He’s decent to me most of the time, never hit me or anything like that.” But Charlie also told me that the rumors were true, that Kyle had indeed broken a bottle over a kid’s head at a party, that he’d definitely pulled his butterfly knife more than once, and that he’d come home countless times with bruises and scratches that he explained away as injuries from pickup football games.

So when the rage came, it didn’t come as a surprise, but it gutted me nonetheless. Kyle lifted his right arm and brought it down like a scythe and cut the remote control out of Dorian’s hand. The remote control hit the ground, rolled, but didn’t break. It stopped a couple of yards from Dorian, upside down in the grass. The two men faced each other, fists clenched.
Buzzzzzzz
went the plane, now spiraling out of view.

Dorian tested the tension of the air, bending his knees and leaning forward, ready to pounce. Kyle peeled the left half of his jacket from his body, showed me the outside and Dorian the inside. I saw nothing and I couldn’t say for sure what Dorian saw, but I could easily guess. Dorian stopped, raised his hands, and drew back.

Buzzzzzzz …

Crack!

It sounded like a tree trunk broken in a storm. Glass splintered, veins formed. Red! In my face and then falling away. I flinched, not knowing at first whether it was a bird, a bullet, or what. It was the model plane. It had crashed into the windshield and was rolling down to the hood. The buzzing was gone. The plane was broken, dead.

And I could hear voices now.

“Two in the skull! That’s all it will take!” Kyle yelled. Hands up, Dorian trembled.

Kyle zipped his jacket, turned back to me, and started walking. It was no longer a swagger. It was a march, methodical and tight. Over Kyle’s shoulder, I could still see Dorian, bloated and scared and not doing a thing, and through the windshield, on the hood, I could see the wing of the plane. It was clear now. This was the wing I spied poking out from beneath the towel in the front of Dorian’s truck that night. It wasn’t some kid’s toy. It was
his
toy.

When Kyle reached the van, he grabbed the broken plane and flung it sideways like so much trash. The key was poised in the ignition, and I reached over and gave it a twist.

Ca … ca … caaaaa …

Nothing. Kyle opened the door, slid into the driver’s seat, stomped the clutch, and employed his expert touch.

Pu … pu … pu … purooooom.

“Pathetic coward,” he growled, and he fed the truck gas and jammed it into gear. The wheels spun for a second in the mud, gripped and dug, and then we flew backward. Kyle spun the wheel, slapped the shift, and we were off.

*   *   *

At the Skylark, Kyle bought me a piece of apple pie and a coffee, which I loaded with sugar until it tasted more like hot chocolate. School was out of the question by now, but we hadn’t yet concocted a suitable lie to explain my truancy. We needed some time to right our heads.

“Why won’t you tell me what you said to him?” I asked.

“Didn’t say much,” Kyle replied as he forked the yolks of his sunny-side-ups. They bled yellow across the plate until a wall of sausage dammed them up. “Actions speak louder. A picture paints a ton of words.”

“You didn’t leave it in the van, did you? You still have it on you right now, don’t you?”

He dipped a corner of toast in the yolk and pointed it at me. “Not another peep about it.” He chomped the toast like he was killing it.

The Skylark was full of old people and a few workmen who sat at the counter and ate efficiently. No one seemed to be listening in on our conversation, but I understood Kyle’s hesitation.

“Thank you,” I said. “For everything.”

Kyle chewed and nodded. He lifted his mug and clinked it against mine. Then he dug into his pocket and laid its contents on the table. Keys, coins, a napkin, and a paper clip. At the end of our booth was a miniature jukebox. Kyle continued to gorge himself as he turned the knob and flipped through the little pages of songs. When he found one he liked, he fed the machine a nickel.

A guitar riff, playful and quick, shuffled out and across our table. This was the type of music my parents listened to, and even though Kyle had only six years on me, choosing a song like this made him seem so much older.

“That thing I told you a little while ago,” he said between bites. “It might be happening sooner rather than later.”

“Oh.” I had wanted to forget about “that thing,” but I couldn’t. Every move Kyle had made in the last two weeks I had associated with his desire to escape Thessaly in one way or another.

“Not because of this morning,” Kyle went on. “It’s just time.”

“You spent your money, though,” I said.

“Some of it. An investment. Will make me more cash in the long run.”

I didn’t ask him to elaborate. I didn’t want to know. “I took Fiona here the other night,” I told him instead. “It was a date, I guess.”

“You pay?”

“I did. Well, with a gift certificate.”

“Good enough.”

“She appreciated it,” I said. “She appreciated just being here and knowing what was going on with me and hearing stories about Thessaly.”

Kyle eyed me suspiciously. “Your point?”

I took a bite of pie as the singer sang about his one true love. “It’s not such a bad place.”

With a contemptuous sniff, Kyle said, “Someday you’ll be telling that to the mirror. And the mirror ain’t gonna buy it either.”

*   *   *

We drove forty minutes to the nearest multiplex, bought two tickets for a matinee, and spent the rest of the day hopping from screen to screen, checking out the latest movies. There were talking babies and a movie about a bear and one about a guy made of electricity. They were okay, but after the third one I was getting pretty bored and I pitied Kyle if this was his typical day.

Driving home, we didn’t say much, mostly kept our comments focused on the one-liners and the explosions. Kyle dropped me on the edge of the neighborhood where no one would see us.

“If Uncle acts up, you know my number,” he said as I stepped down from the van.

“I’m sure you scared him straight,” I said. But I wasn’t sure. If I was wrong about the plane, then what else was I wrong about? And as Kyle drove away, I began to go over every little incident in my head. Our rides in the van. My talks with Fiona. Dorian in the backyard, Dorian the deviant. The sleepover and the box in the road. The wake. Halloween. Today.

At the library, there was a shelf of Choose Your Own Adventure novels. Charlie liked to read those books backward, searching for the happy endings first and figuring out the path of least resistance. I always read them the correct way, and I’d invariably find myself lost in a cave or bitten by a scorpion. I rarely made it through without a misstep.

If only I could read my life backward,
I thought.

When I got home, the sun was still up but low. Keri was in the driveway with a can of silver spray paint, coating a group of Cabbage Patch Kids that were laid out on a sheet of newspaper.

“What in the heck happened to you?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Mom and Dad are crazy worried.” She held her nose and deployed another layer of paint. “Don’t worry, though. I’m not a snitch. I didn’t say a word about your ride with the Fonz.”

“Thanks.”

My parents were in the kitchen, speaking to each other in hushed tones. As soon as the door shut behind me, they clammed up. They looked at me like I was a stranger.

“So?” my dad said after a short silence.

“I know, I know, I know.”

“You know?” my mom said with a gasp. “I’m told you never showed up for school. I call home. No answer. I drive home and you’re not here. And you’re telling me you know?
You know?
”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve had some tough things going on.”

“Skipping school is your solution?” my dad asked. “Where’d you go?”

“I don’t know. Nowhere. Walking.”

“Walking? All day?” my dad asked.

“And what’s this Mrs. Carmine is telling us about a fight on Halloween?” my mom added.

“Oh come on, like you’ve never made mistakes!” I snapped.

“Of course we have,” my mom said. “But this is not you.
This?
So not you.”

“Who is it, then? Who am I?”

When they didn’t answer right away, I stormed out of the room. “There will be consequences,” my dad yelled to me, but I kept moving.

The cordless phone was sitting on the dining room table. It rang as I passed, and I snatched it up and barked, “Hello.”

“I’m sorry. I need you to know I’m sorry.”

I didn’t respond. The timing of the call couldn’t have been worse.

“Alistair? Are you still there? You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. But we’re best friends, and best friends are honest with each other. I don’t know why I do the things I do sometimes. I never mean to hurt anyone. I don’t mean to hurt you.”

I couldn’t listen to this anymore. I pulled the phone away from my head and held it at arm’s length.

“Screw you, Charlie!”

I hung it up.

My room was the only place I felt safe, and I stayed there all night. I skipped dinner, and every time my mom or dad came to my door saying “We need to talk to you” and “Everything is going to be okay” and “We’re not angry as much as we’re concerned,” I responded with “Please leave me alone!” over and over again.

Not long after dark, I turned off my light and crawled into bed. I punched my mattress to burn away my anxiety and I flopped onto my back, closed my eyes, and tried to listen to my pulse as my blood pumped through my neck, across my temples, and into my scalp. I have no idea what time it was when I finally fell asleep.

S
ATURDAY
, N
OVEMBER
4

There’s another story my dad often tells.

It’s about his college friend Peggy. After graduation, Peggy got her doctorate in botany with a concentration in desert plants. Botanists do a lot of fieldwork, and the young scientist spent a good chunk of her time in the American Southwest. She preferred to work alone and without the hassle of permits, so she often parked her car along dirt roads and set out on foot with a pack of supplies that could sustain her for a few days.

On one such solo expedition, she was eight miles south of the U.S. border when she came upon an interesting collection of cacti. She didn’t have the time to study and collect samples and make it back to the car before dark, so she laid out a sleeping bag for the night. No tent was needed. Rain and bugs were rarely a problem, and she preferred a roof of stars to a roof of nylon. Sure, it could get cold, but she had a wool hat and, as every boyfriend had told her, her body always ran as hot as a furnace.

When Peggy woke the next morning, her body was running hotter than ever, particularly in the abdomen. She unzipped the bag to let the cool morning breeze waft away the heat, and there, to her surprise and horror, was a rattlesnake on her belly.

Peggy had heard about snakes sneaking under the hoods of cars and soldiering through cold nights by sleeping on warm engines. This predicament, however, was something she had never contemplated. The snake was probably six feet long and as thick as Peggy’s dainty wrists. Curled up—its head tucked down in the center and its rattle draped over the top of the coil—it was about the size of a dinner plate.

She was lucky that the snake was a sound sleeper. Opening the bag had done little to rouse it. Peggy didn’t want to take any other chances, so she held her breath and clenched her muscles. Unfortunately, this had the opposite effect. Her breathing—the up and down motion of her stomach—had been like rocking a cradle. Once it halted, the snake stirred.

The rattle rose first, a periscope seeking out a disturbance in the water. Peggy could feel the body expanding and spreading, and she could see the scales moving to accommodate the new shape. It would be only a matter of seconds before the head popped up to say
good morning
. Thinking fast and acting faster was of the essence.

Three. Two. One.

Peggy grabbed the rattle and tore the beast from her body. The snake snapped like a whip, and Peggy released it at the ideal moment. It somersaulted, its body undulating in the air, and it landed on the bend of a giant saguaro cactus, where the needles impaled the reptile’s soft underbelly.

Gasping, Peggy jumped to her feet and ran her hands all over her body. Everything was intact. Tears and laughter burst forth, and she pointed at the creature that was now writhing away its last moments of life, pinned to the cactus.

“I win! I win, you slithering piece of—”

And another snake bit Peggy on the ankle.

It was a little bugger and its bite felt no worse than a bee sting. Peggy shook her foot in annoyance, but when she saw the other snake stealing away into the brush and she noticed the two red marks near her heel, she knew that fate was having a grand laugh.

She rifled through her pack to find her first aid supplies. Tearing them open, she remembered a note held by magnets to her refrigerator door:
Buy snakebite kit.

The note was still there. Like so many errands, it was one Peggy neglected. With no towns nearby, her only hope was to walk the eight miles to the border, then the other three to her car. Peggy might have been a procrastinator, but she was no quitter. Once her tears had dried and she had gulped down a full quart of water, she set off.