Into This River I Drown (19 page)

“What?”

He leans onto the counter, flexing his big arms, the fabric of the shirt straining against him. “I’m pretty much bigger than anyone here,” he says confidently. He flexes again. He watches me watching him and the smile grows. “Many people told me how big I am. How strong I look.”

“Did they?” I manage to choke out.

“Yes, there was one lady who wanted me to take her to dinner. She told me to call her. I told her I don’t have a phone and she said that was okay, we could just go around back where no one could see us.”

I see red. “
Did
she?” I snarl, unable to stop myself. I bet it was that stupid
bitch
Suzie Goodman who works at the pharmacy. That fucking
slut
—

“No,” he says, eyes sparkling. “That was a joke. I found out today that I enjoy humor and I can tell jokes after all. It turns out I am pretty funny. Isn’t that great?”

I look away. “Bastard,” I whisper.

“Look at me,” he says, his voice changing, becoming deeper, stronger.

I can’t stop myself. I don’t want to stop myself. He looks into my eyes and I hold my breath. “Yeah,” he finally says with surety in his voice. “You’re looking at me differently.”

Dammit.

“Why were you telling people I belong to you?”

Cal grins. “Because you do. All of you here do. I am the guardian angel of Roseland. It is my job. You all belong to me.”

“Oh,” I say, unable to stop it from sounding like I’m disappointed.

He turns away from the counter to pick up his bags. “But especially you,” he says over his shoulder as he heads for the small office in the back.

I stare after him.

I can see it in your eyes,
my mother whispers in my head.
Even now, there’s something there.

He will need you as much as you’ll need him,
Big Eddie says.

You’re looking at me differently.

I am so fucking screwed.

revelation

I am
at mile marker seventy-seven.

The gray sky opens up and rain falls down.

I stand on the river’s edge.

Feathers. Crosses.

A truck crashes and flips into the water, its rear angled up.

I am in the river.

A shadow of a figure stands on the road, watching.

“Benji,” a voice calls. It is not my angel.

My angel
, I think, confused.

The water is up to my chest. It’s cold, causing my teeth to chatter. The mud in the riverbed is up to my ankles and is as strong as it’s ever been. Each step is nearly impossible. My legs strain against the suction and current.

“Benji,” the voice calls again.

It’s coming from the truck.

A strong arm around my chest and I’m pulled away, away, away.

I am
wary of him over the next few days. There are times I wake up in the middle of the night and he’s gone, following threads only he can see, the nest outside my bedroom door empty. These are the moments I feel relief I won’t admit to out loud, a small part of me thinking it might be okay if he doesn’t come back. This can’t last long, I tell myself. People will begin to ask questions. My mother and the Trio will begin to ask questions. How long can the name Cal Blue and the person behind it hold up to inspection? He can only end up bringing my carefully constructed world crashing down, and I don’t know if I have the strength to build it up all over again. So it’s good, I think, looking down at the blankets on the floor outside my door.
It’s good he’s gone. He doesn’t belong here. He’s an angel. I am a little speck of dust that means nothing. This won’t be any more than that. He is big and bright and strong and powerful. And I am nothing.

But that’s only a small voice.

Inevitably, I’m up and pacing the floor in the living room in the dark, glancing out the front windows every few moments into the night, hoping to see a large figure ambling up the driveway toward Little House. The longer it takes, the more I begin to eye my keys hanging on the rack.
What if he’s hurt?
I ask myself more than once.
What if he’s lost? What if he’s trying to find his way back to Little House and he can’t? What if he needs my help?
And, as if he can hear me thinking, as if he understands I’m about to break, that is the moment I see him, a flash of the red rust on his head, his creamy skin illuminated by the moon and stars. Relief washes over me. These are strange feelings, new feelings, feelings I don’t think I can or even should be having. I watch him for a moment as he moves toward me. I think how handsome he is, how strong he looks. I think how the small voice that wants him to leave is undoubtedly right, but I will ignore it for as long as I can, because I don’t think I can go back to the way things were. Being alone, being haunted. I allow myself to think these things for just a moment, because any longer will be too much for me to handle.

As he approaches Little House, I melt back into the dark, down the hall, stepping over his blankets and then shutting the door behind me. I crawl into bed and lie on my side, facing the door. Moments later, I hear footsteps walking down the hall gently, as if he is trying to be quiet so he doesn’t wake me. Shadows shift across the floor as he stands in front of my bedroom door. And then his voice, softly saying, “I’m back, Benji. I’m here.”

The first night he said this, I was sure he’d seen me in the window, that he knew I was awake. But then he said it again the next night. And the one that followed. And the one after that. Finally, on the seventh night, I stayed awake as long as I could, to see if I could hear him when he left. It was just after midnight when he stirred. He stood and leaned against the door. “I’ll be back, Benji. I promise. I will come back.”

But regardless of when he leaves or when he comes back, he knocks on my door shortly before dawn, waking me from a fitful doze I’ve just fallen into. “Benji?” he says. “It’s almost time.” And then he walks down the hall and out the door.

There are moments when I tell myself to stay in bed, that I don’t need to put myself into this any further.
It doesn’t mean anything
, I argue with myself.
It can’t mean anything.
But then my feet find the floor and I’m standing before I can even think about it. I walk down the hall. I take my father’s jacket from the coat rack and slip it on. I put on the old work boots by the door. I go outside, the sky already beginning to lighten in the east. The grass is slick with dew. The stars are still visible overhead, though they are now fading.

I reach the ladder and climb up one rung, and then two. There is movement above me and I look up. The angel Calliel is there, hand outstretched. There is no hesitation now as I reach up, his big paw engulfing mine. He pulls me up the rest of the way and then moves back to his perch at the edge of the roof. I sit a few feet away from him, but by the time the sun shoots itself above the horizon, with that first blinding ray over the Cascades, I’m pressed up against him, his arm heavy across my shoulders, my head in the crook of his neck.

I asked him once why he wanted to see the sun rise every morning, what it was that caused him to be out here at the crack of dawn every day.

He watched me for a moment before looking back at the horizon. “Its beauty,” he said. “It reminds me every day that there is beauty in the world. That even though it may feel like we are alone sometimes, we are never truly alone.” The sunlight hit his face and his red hair and beard turned to fire. He looked down at me again, pressed up against him. “Why are you here every day?” he asked.

I looked into his dark eyes and said the first thing that came to mind. “Because you’re here.” I immediately blushed, realizing how the words sounded. The smile that bloomed on his face was bright and knowing. I looked away, but not before he pulled me tighter against his chest.

The times he disappears during the day are more difficult, because those are the times I worry most about his visibility. He tells me he’ll be fine, that he isn’t doing anything that will bring more attention to himself, but that does little to calm me. Whenever the threads call, he follows. There are times we’re in the middle of a conversation when he breaks off, staring off into the distance. “I have to go,” he says after a moment of silence. “I’ll come back, I promise.” Sometimes he asks for the keys to the Ford, but most of the time he takes off on foot. I watch him and contemplate following. I even tried to, one time, but he moved so quickly I lost sight of him within minutes.

He never tells me what he did, and I never ask. I don’t feel it is my place to, nor do I think I have a right to know. But things happen around Roseland that I can no longer associate with normalcy. The Wallace family was displaced after their house burned down one night, a freak electrical thing. They escaped through the window. The house burned to the ground, but the Wallaces were safe. Mr. Wallace later said that he’d awoken because of what he thought was a hand on his shoulder, but no one had been there.

How lucky! breathed the town. How fortunate! said its residents. God
must
have been watching over the Wallace family that night—it’s the only explanation!

I thought there might be another explanation, as Cal had come home that night smelling of smoke.

Little Becky Newhall went missing after she went outside to play two days after the Wallace fire. Her parents were frantic, and a large mass of people gathered, ready to comb the woods for any sign of the girl. But even before they could all set out, she was discovered on the porch swing at her house, covered in a blanket, her arm clutched to her chest. She’d fallen into a small sinkhole, she said later. The fall had broken her arm. She cried for a long time and screamed for someone to get her, but she grew tired and tried to sleep. She woke sometime later and she was being carried by someone who told her everything would be okay. She went back to sleep and when she woke again, she was on her porch at her house.

Who saved her? the town cried. Surely the hero would come forward and receive the praise and blessing of Roseland? No one came forward. It’s the will of God, some said. He works in mysterious ways, others whispered. Little Becky Newhall surely had her guardian angel watching over her, all agreed.

“It’s the threads,” Cal tells me when he comes home, slick with mud and grime. “I follow the threads.”

I say nothing as I turn on the shower, getting the water scorching hot, knowing he likes it that way.

It’s
been over a week since Cal arrived. I can’t even tell which way is up anymore, in a dizzy, antigravity kind of way. Floating is probably the best way to describe it. I feel like I’ve been floating in a haze of deep blue, something that is pleasant and at the same time alarming. It’s been eight days since he fell out of the sky, and I’m already having a hard time imagining the way I lived my life when he
wasn’t
here. It was routine wrapped in grief. It was monotony disguised as security. I feel like I was blind and am now able to see for the first time in years. Everything is bright. Everything is shiny.

And it scares the hell out of me.

It seems like everyone has met Cal in one way or another. People still stop by the store daily, either to see him and chat him up, or to tell me something that he’s done. Of course, a lot of the news is still of the Wallace fire and little Becky Newhall. I’m waiting for a single person to make the connection between Cal and those two events, but so far no one has said a thing. The people of Roseland will typically say whatever they are thinking, so I don’t believe anyone is trying to hide it, but I still feel some anxiety every time the bell dings in the store.

I can feel the FBI agent’s card burning a hole through my wallet. I’ve taken it out every now and then and stared at it, trying to work up the nerve to dial the phone number and relay what I heard at the sheriff’s house to him. I don’t know why I think it’s important that Agent Corwin knows about Griggs and Walken and Smoker, but the timing of the agent’s visit and what I heard can’t be coincidence. What stops me, though, is the sheriff’s voice in my head:
Nina’s so trusting, isn’t she? She most certainly is. Why, I bet she’d get in a police car if she was asked. Such a sweet,
sweet
lady
. I see her in my mind, the way she looks at the man she calls Blue every time she sees him, her smile so brilliant, her eyes dancing. I can see the way she waits for us every night, the way she rushes out to hug me first and then him. “Blue,” she always sighs. “Benji and Blue.”

Agent Corwin’s card goes back into my wallet. But I know it’s there.

So almost everyone, it seems, has met Cal, with the exception of the one I knew would probably get the biggest kick out of him. Abe didn’t even call to schedule his usual appointment. Instead he just walks in this morning and looks around, trying to be nonchalant, but failing miserably.

“Looking for something, Abe?” I ask as I unload cartons of cigarettes and slide them into the racks, trying to keep a smile from forming.

“Oh?” he mutters, looking down each aisle. “What was that, dear boy?”

I roll my eyes. “Thought you’d be in here a lot sooner than this.”

“Yes, well,” he says distractedly, peering around the counter where I stand. “I had those doctors’ appointments in Eugene, you know. Specialists that need to poke and prod to tell me what I already know so they can charge Medicare up the wazoo: I’m an old man, and I’m not getting any younger.”

I’d forgotten about his appointments. “How’s your blood pressure?” I ask as he opens up the cooler, peering between the shelves to see back into the freezer.

He scowls as he closes the door. “Nothing my lisinopril won’t be able to handle.”

“And your heart?”

“Beating like I’m twenty-five!” He cups his hands to his face and looks through the window into the empty garage.

“And how’s your colon?” I ask, trying to keep from bursting out laughing.

He turns and narrows his eyes at me. “Benji, the day you ask me about the status of my colon is the day I know you are trying to keep something from me.”