Into This River I Drown (12 page)

He looks up from our hands, where he’s nearly turned mine into mush. “Yes, little one?”

Her eyes sparkle. “I am so very happy to meet you.” She blushes again and runs up into the house, then closes the door behind her, shutting off the porch light and leaving us in darkness.

I stand there, staring after them, trying to collect my thoughts.

“Benji?” he finally says, sounding bemused.

“What?” I say tiredly.

He hesitates. “They seemed nice,” he offers.

Oh dear God. I drop his hand and move back toward the truck. “Let’s go, Blue or Cal or whatever your name is. We have a shitload to talk about.”

“I can’t wait to tell you things,” he tells me seriously, which causes me to roll my eyes. “Well, what I can remember, anyway.”

I reach the Ford, ignoring the tingling in my hand and just how empty it feels.

it came from outer space!

The
ride to Little House is quiet. I don’t know what I would say even if I could speak. Two thoughts are running through my head, both of which are cause for panic. First, if I’ve gone insane, then apparently I’ve pulled Nina into my delusional psychosis, since she seems to see the same things I do. Beyond that, she apparently has seen it (him?)
longer
than I have (
what did you
do
?
). She didn’t seem to fear the outline of wings that had formed on Calliel as she held him. Although I don’t know what there was to fear besides the fact that there
were
the outlines of wings.

The second thought?

The second thought is one I’m trying to push away. The second thought is one that I’d rather not focus on because it doesn’t make any sense. I don’t even know
why
I’m having this second thought. Out of everything that has happened in the last twenty-four hours, why is this on my mind?

The second thought: the way my hand felt in his. Engulfed. Sheltered.

This is a thought I don’t want to have. I
can’t
have it. I tell myself it has been the lack of human contact lately. I tell myself it’s because really he’s not unattractive (though the moment I think this, I am horrified and shove that away). I tell myself it’s because it’s been a while. I tell myself maybe it’s time I take a trip to Eugene. Roseland isn’t exactly filled with available men, not that I would be looking if it was. There’s too many other things I need to focus on.

And I don’t even know if he’s gay. Or human.

It’s a good thing I just told everyone he’s staying with me.

“Little House.” He grins, stopping the Ford and then turning it off. He seems to hesitate for a moment but then reaches over, handing me the keys. “You going to let me drive again?” he asks, almost shyly. “I do like driving, I think. Even if you make me drive way too slow. What’s the point of having the dial go up to seventy if you can’t go that fast? It seems ridiculous.”

I take the keys from him. “We’ll see,” I mutter, unsure why I’m not just saying no flat out, why I’m not telling him to get the hell out of my truck and out of my life. I seem to be unsure about a whole hell of a lot. I’m pressed up against the passenger door again, trying to put as much space between me and him as possible. It doesn’t help that I have to clench my fists together to keep from taking his hand in mine again. It doesn’t help that in the dark, in my father’s jacket, his shape is familiar, almost surreal.
Yeah, I don’t have daddy issues at all
. I shake my head.

“What?” he asks me curiously.

“Nothing,” I say. I reach for the door handle.

“This would be so much easier if I could still read your mind,” I hear him grumble

He follows me up the porch and into Little House. I hang the key on the rack and flip on the light, then hold open the door and wait for him to walk through. He seems to hesitate at the entryway, which of course leads to the most random thought (
you always have to invite them in first
), but then he takes a deep breath and crosses the threshold, his gaze taking in everything, everywhere. His hand goes to the door as he passes it, letting his fingers run across the wood, tracing the bumps and whorls from the cedar my father crafted and shaped. The look on his face is one of such reverence that I have to look away before it has the chance to become something more.

He closes the door behind him, then immediately opens it again, swinging it back and forth before closing it a final time and latching the lock. I start to head down the hallway, assuming he’ll follow. But he speaks in a low rumble and I stop, keeping my gaze toward the floor. “I was here when you and Big Eddie broke ground that first day to build this house, you know.”

Fear returns, thunderously bright.

“Oh?” I manage to say.

“Yes. That first pick he took to the ground to break up the earth. You sat on a cooler just a little bit away from him.” He sighs. “He said you couldn’t help just yet because your mother would tan his hide if she saw you with the pickax. He told you not to worry because there’d be plenty of work to do. But you still helped. Every time he stopped to catch his breath, you ran over to bring him some water from the cooler. He’d smile at you and you’d smile back at him and it would start all over again.”

I shudder.

Then a hand falls on my shoulder.

A breath near the back of my neck.

I whirl around. For a moment, I’m sure there is a flash of blue, but I only see Calliel standing right in front of me, our bodies almost touching. He’s looking at me closely with an intensity I can’t quite accept. The hand on my shoulder, the feeling of someone always just out of reach that I’ve experienced ever since I returned to Little House. That touch I’ve ignored, passed off as a figment of my imagination. That touch that happens here, and at the station, in my truck, in my room.

Everywhere. It happens everywhere and only when I need it.

I take a step back, unable to keep the distress from my face. Calliel sees it and looks as if he’s going to reach up and grab me, to stop me from moving back, but he apparently thinks better of it and drops his hands back down to his sides. I stumble and fall back, hitting the wall and then slumping against it, trying to stay standing. He doesn’t move.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says finally, sounding almost hurt. “Why would I?”

“I don’t fucking know what you are,” I snarl. “I don’t care what Nina says or what she sees or what anyone else sees. I don’t know you.”

“But I know you,” he says simply. He takes a step toward me.

“No,” I gasp. “You stay right where you are. I want some goddamn answers. Tell me the fucking truth.”

Calliel cocks his head at me and frowns. “I already told you, Benji. I told you almost right away.”

“Just tell me the truth,” I say weakly.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. With that breath comes a feeling of heat bursting softly throughout the room, the air growing thicker. When he opens his eyes, he seems taller somehow. Bigger. His eyes are almost completely black, the white peeking out around the edges. For a moment, I think I see an outline of wings again, but I blink and they’re gone.

He speaks, almost as if in recitation: “I am the Throne Angel Calliel of the second Heaven, in service of God, our Father, descended from On High. I am the Guardian of Roseland and its inhabitants. These are my people, my charges, the ones who have been entrusted to me. I protect them. I carry their fears. I lift up their prayers. I hear their calls and I answer if it is within my power. I do not pass judgment for I am not God. God judges sin and the follies of man, not I. I do not intervene with the plans of God. I do not avenge the plans of God. I am an extension of him and his will, for he is my Father and he is divine.” He pauses, almost glowering at me, daring me to refute him.

“Oh,” is all I can think of to say.

The charge gathering in the room dissipates as quickly as it arrived, cold sweeping back in.

He follows
me as I move down the hall toward my bedroom. He touches everything he sees with that same wonder, as if he’s never felt such things and he finds them extraordinary. There are little grunts of pleasure at particular things that seem to tickle him for some reason: the thermostat on the wall that he cranks up to ninety before scowling at the vent that blows down from the ceiling; light switches which he flicks on and off, the light above flashing bright then going dark. I am almost horrified by this, a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach as I mull over asking him if they have light switches and heating ducts where he comes from.

Because,
I think as I watch him study himself in a mirror,
he obviously doesn’t come from around here. And if he’s so fascinated by something as simple as a light switch, chances are he’s probably not from around anywhere else, either.
I wonder if there is still a chance that this is a dream
.

“Isn’t that a sin?” I ask him as he stares at his reflection, obviously pleased by his appearance. He runs his hands over his head, touches the auburn scruff on his face.

“What?” he asks as he pulls his ears out and grins at himself in the mirror.

“Vanity.”

He rolls his eyes, which seems unbecoming of someone in his position. “Everything is a sin if you think about it,” he says, looking somewhat surprised at his own words. “Nobody is perfect.”

“So says the man who claims to be an angel.”

He glances over at me. “Perfection is a flaw in itself,” he says. “And I don’t
claim
to be anything. I
am.
” He looks almost insulted. “Nina believes me. Why can’t you trust like she does?”

“Nina’s… different,” I sputter. “She’s different from the rest of us.”

“You speak of her triplicated chromosome?”

“Sure,” I say, suddenly forming a plan. “Why not? Let’s speak about that. Why would your God allow that to happen to her? Why would he let her be like that?”

He looks confused. “Like what?”

“Disabled.”

“She looked perfectly able to me.”

I scowl at him. “You know what I mean. She has a mental handicap. Why would he allow that to happen? Why would God do that to her?”

“Is she not happy?” he asks, leaning against the wall, my father’s jacket bunching up as he crosses his arms.

“This isn’t about her happiness,” I snap at him. “Answer the question.”

“I just did,” he says. “I asked you if she was happy, and you implied by deflection that she was. If she is happy, who are you to say she’s not how God wanted her to be?”

“She doesn’t know any better!”

“And how can you? Do you think you know better than she? Than God? That
is
a sin, to presume the will of my Father. For all you know, she’s exactly the person she is supposed to be, even if she is different. You of all people should know that, Benji.”

Tears sting my eyes. This is too much. All of this is too much. “Don’t you dare talk to me like you know me, you bastard.” He takes a step toward me, but I shake my head and take a step back. “I don’t know who the fuck you are, aside from your creepy-stalker bullshit. I want to go to bed so I can open my eyes tomorrow and see that this was all a dream, because it
is
a dream. I’m going to wake up and I’ll still be at the station, or I’ll be lying by the river, but you will be gone, because you’re just a fucking figment of my imagination. Things like this don’t happen. Things like this aren’t real. You’re not fucking real.”

“And yet, I’m here. Because
you
called me,” he says, his voice hard. It sounds like an accusation.

“Don’t you
dare
put this on me. I don’t fucking know you!”

A memory, rising:
Oh, someone please help me. I can’t do this on my own. Not anymore.

“You’re lying,” he says, dawning comprehension lighting up his eyes. “This is you lying.”

“Get the fuck out of my house.”

“But—”

“
Get the fuck out of my house!
” I bellow at him. Without waiting to see what he does, I go into my room and slam the door behind me.

Memory.

My earliest memory is from when I was three years old. My father had taken me to the park, affectionately named the Blue Park, given the color of all the equipment. It sat on the edge of the Umpqua about ten miles upriver from where he would drown thirteen years later. I don’t remember going there. I don’t remember getting out of the car or walking to the park. I don’t remember what happened after we left. I can’t even be sure what my next real memory is. What I can be sure of is my father sat me on his lap on the merry-go-round, kicking his feet in the sand, causing us to spin slowly. In his other hand, he held a paper cup that was orange and white, containing a vanilla milkshake. He put the straw to my lips as we spun in a lazy circle and I took a deep drink. Cold flooded my mouth and a sharp pain pierced my head, a brain freeze from the ice cream. I cried out. My father whispered soft words that I can no longer remember, then pressed a large hand against the top of my head and rubbed the pain away.

We kept on spinning.

For
some reason, it’s this memory I think about as I lie in my bed, still fully clothed, unable to sleep six hours after I’ve slammed my bedroom door. Nothing about that day pertains to anything that’s happening now, but it’s the only thing I can focus on that makes sense. That flash of pain I felt that day has never slipped from my mind and even now I can remember what it felt like, blinding and cold. It let me know I was
alive
, that I was
real
. It tethered me to my father in such a way that only death could break. Maybe not even then.

I don’t know why I thought the touch on my shoulder that I knew wasn’t there was my father. I don’t know why I assumed the breath on the back of my neck that wasn’t real was his. I don’t know why I hoped it would be, even though I knew it couldn’t be real. For someone who spent a lot of time actively denying what he hoped to be true, the disappointment I feel is a surprisingly palpable thing. Some part of me had to have believed that Big Eddie still roamed this house in one way or another.