Into This River I Drown (54 page)

“Look away,” Abe says, his voice calm. “Look away, Benji.”

“You hush,” I say hoarsely. “Please. Please just let him go. There’s no one else. I swear. I would tell you if there was. I swear.” My knuckles catch the blade, and I pull. It doesn’t open.

“You’re lying,” Christie says, taking a step back. “You want to watch him die in front of you?”

“Benji,” Abe says. “Look away.”

“Please. Oh, God, please. Please believe me. I wouldn’t lie. I can’t lie. Christie, you
know
me. Please. You don’t want to do this. I’ll do anything you want.” I pull on the knife again, and it opens.

“Who else knows?” Griggs snarls. “The ATF? The DEA? Your mom? Nina? Mary?”

Christie’s eyes grow dark at the mention of her sisters, but she doesn’t stop him.

“No,” I croak. “How could I tell them what I don’t know? Take me instead. Please.”

“Benji,” Abe says softly. “Listen to me.”

I look at him as my eyes start to burn.

“They won’t believe you, no matter what you say,” he says steadily. “It doesn’t matter. Not anymore. They’re too far gone to pull back now.”

Michael! God! You fuckers! Help me!

“Don’t hurt him,” I whisper. “You just can’t.” I pull the knife all the way open and hold the handle between my fingers. I curl my hand up until I feel the blade poke against my wrist. I twist it until it touches the plastic of the zip tie.

“Benji, look away,” Abe says. “Don’t watch. Look away.”

“Tell us what we want to know!” Griggs shouts, digging the gun into Abe’s head again. “I’ll kill him right now if you don’t fucking tell us!”

“Please,” I try again. “I didn’t. I swear it. Please.”

Christie sighs. “I think he’s telling the truth.”

“The fuck he is,” Griggs snaps. “He’s just like his fucking father.”

“Benji,” Abe says. “It’ll be okay. You know why?”

I shake my head, tears falling on my cheeks. I turn the knife until the blade is flat against my wrist and slide it up between my skin and the plastic. I cut myself, and blood trickles down my wrist.

“It’ll be okay, because I’ll see
her
again. My life. My love. My Estelle. I love you, boy, but I’m tired. I think I have been for a while. I’m ready to go home. I know I promised you, but it’ll be okay.”

“No,” I moan. “You can’t leave. You can’t leave me here alone.”

“Last chance,” Griggs says.

“You are
never
alone,” Abe says. “Your father has always been with you. And you know Cal has always been with you. Always. When I see that boy of yours, I’ll tell him you’ll see him soon. And when you’re ready, we’ll be waiting with open arms.”

“Who. Did. You. Tell,” Griggs says quietly.

Nothing I can say to Griggs matters, so I say the only thing that
does
matter. “I love you, old man.”

“I know,” Abe says with a strong smile. “Look away, Benji. For me. Please. Close your eyes and look away.”

The knife falls to the ground behind me. I look away as my chest heaves.

“George, wait,” my aunt says, sounding unsure.

“No,” Griggs says. “This ends now.”

“I’m coming, Este,” Abraham Dufree says with relief in his voice. “I’m coming home. I’ve missed you, Lord knows I have. Our Father, who art in heaven—”

“George,
don’t—
”

“—hallowed be thy name—”

“I’m done fucking around!”

“—
thy kingdom come
—”

I squeeze my eyes shut and scream.

“—
THY WILL BE DONE
—”

The gunshot is flat in the shack. It does not echo above the rain.

memories like knives

On the
third day after my father’s death, I awoke from a difficult sleep. I felt groggy, my eyes gummy and stuck together. I groaned out loud. I was thirsty. My stomach rumbled. My mouth was sour. And then everything hit me at once.

He’s gone
.

The thought was like an explosion in the dark, and I gagged, just once, only then remembering being sedated three times in the last three days—each time I’d awoken, screaming. Ranting. Raving. I had tried to hurt my mother. She’d sat next to my bed the first day, and I’d opened my eyes and tried to launch myself at her, convinced everything that had happened was her fault. It wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t rational. I was lost under a wave of black, and I didn’t know what I was doing. All I knew was that
she
had been the one to tell me; therefore
she
had been the one to make it so.

So when I opened my eyes on that third day, I tried to keep all my emotions in check. I didn’t want to sleep again. I didn’t want to float in the black. I wanted to feel the pain, I wanted it to burn. I wanted to feel grief squeezing tightly around my heart, because that was the only way I would know it was real. Being in the black was confusing. It was deceptive. It was easy. If I stayed there for too long, I’d never want to come back.

“Easy there,” a voice said. That voice I knew.

I turned my head to the right. I was in my room at Big House. In my bed. My back was sore. I was sweaty. I needed a shower. I needed to stretch my arms and legs. I needed get out from under the comforter.

“You need to just breathe,” Abe said, as if he could read my thoughts. He sat in a chair next to the bed, watching me with sad eyes. There was no one else in the room.

“Water,” I croaked out. “Thirsty. Please.”

He nodded and lifted himself up from the chair and moved out of sight. I heard the faucet in the bathroom a moment later. Only then did I allow a tear to fall from my eye. It tracked its way over the bridge of my nose and fell to the pillow. I thought, for a moment, about asking to be put back to sleep, for Doc Heward to come back and give me another injection so I could go back into the dark and float. I pushed this thought away as the fog from the drugs began to clear from my head.
Too easy
, I thought.
It’d be too easy.

I saw a flash of blue out of the corner of my eye, bright and warm. I looked, but there was nothing there. I thought it an aftereffect of the sedative.

Abe came back and helped me sit up in my bed. He handed me the cup of water and then sat back in the chair with a sigh.

“Where is she?” I asked finally, the silence too loud.

He didn’t have to ask who. “With the Trio,” he said quietly. “Christie told me they’re thinking about staying here. For a while, at least. To help with Lola. And you.”

“I don’t need to be taken care of,” I snapped. “Neither does she. Not by them. I can do it. We don’t need help.”

His words were pointed, but kind. “Benji, you haven’t been in a position to help anyone these last few days.”

I said nothing. He was right, of course. I looked away. I hurt all over, a pain that seemed to be buried deep into my bones.

“Has the funeral happened yet?” I asked gruffly.

“Of course not. Lola would never do that without you. You have to be there.”

“He’s still….” I couldn’t finish.

Abe knew what I was asking. “Yes. He’s still at the morgue. They had… they had to make sure there was nothing wrong with Big Eddie. Do you understand?”

Yes. Yes, I did. They had to make sure there was nothing wrong with him so they cut him open and dug around on his insides. They desecrated the body of my father in search of the truth. Had it been Doc Heward? No, I thought not. It would have been the medical examiner, the one who’d been out of town on the day I saw my father in that freezer. I nodded at Abe and asked him what they found, because they
would
have found something. There
would
be something there, because the only way my father would leave me would be if he was forced to. This was not going to be something as cosmically simple as an accident. He didn’t slide off the road because the pavement was wet. He didn’t swerve to miss a deer. No. To rid this earth of my father would take something darker than that. A conspiracy to take him away. They would find something, because Big Eddie was too big to go out because of something as mundane as a car accident. He could not die because of something so artless.

“What did they find?” I asked Abe.

He shook his head. “They haven’t said yet. It takes some time for the tests to be done. Tox screens, blood work. They’ll want to make sure there were no drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of the accident.”

Stop saying accident, you old bastard. It wasn’t an accident.
“Big Eddie wasn’t like that,” I said sharply. “He would never have been so stupid.”

“I know, Benji. It’s routine. They have to check. To make sure.”

I have to go to Eugene. Meet up with some friends. I’ll be back in the afternoon.

“He told me he’d come back,” I mumbled as I started to shrink back in on myself. “He said he’d come back.”

“I know he did, boy. Big Eddie was a man of his word too. I’m sure he would have come back just as soon as he could have.”

We were silent, for a time. Then, “Did I hurt her?” I asked in a small voice.

Abe sighed and grabbed my hand. His old skin felt soft against mine. “No. Scared her, yes. But hurt her? No. You didn’t touch her, though it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Doc Heward is a lot quicker than he looks, I’ll give him that.”

There was no recrimination in his voice, but I still needed him to understand. “I wasn’t… I didn’t want to hurt her,” I said. “She… she was the one… I just can’t stop thinking that she took him from me.”

“But she didn’t,” he said. “Lola had nothing to do with it. She’s in just as much pain as you are, Benji, and she’s going to need you as much as you need her.”

He was right, of course, but still I was stubborn. “She has the Trio,” I said bitterly.

“As do you, but it’s not going to be the same. The Trio will love you and will hold you, but they can’t ever understand completely what you and your mom are going through.”

It hit me then, the grief, and I felt awful. “But you can, can’t you. You know. You know as much as we do.”

He looked down at his hands. “This is such a shitstorm,” he said quietly.

I snorted. Truer words had never been spoken.

He didn’t look up at me when he spoke. “I know it’s going to be hard, boy. Lord knows I do. People will tell you pretty words about how Big Eddie is at peace now. That he’s with God and all the glory of heaven is shining down on him. They’ll say you should remember the good things about his life because it will help you find some measure of solace. Maybe they’re right. Maybe that’s the right way to go about it. Maybe that’s exactly what you need to do. Think about how wonderful your father was, how much he loved you. How much you loved him. Maybe that can carry you through the darkest hour. Maybe it will be enough.”

My breath hitched in my chest.

“But you know what? It may
not
be enough. You will be angry. You will be sad. You will think the world is crashing down around your ears and there is nothing you can do to stop it. After… after my wife died, I was lost. I was lost for such a long time. Estelle was
everything
to me, and I didn’t know what to do without her. There were times I would forget she was dead and I would turn to tell her something, only to have to remember it all over again. And each time I had to remember, it was just as crushing as when she first died. People told me their pretty words, gave me their sympathy, but I didn’t want to hear it. They didn’t understand that she was
mine
and she was
gone
.”

I began to weep.

“And then one day, Big Eddie came by and told me he just wanted to sit with me on the porch, and that if I wanted to talk, he’d be there. Otherwise, we could just sit. And that’s what he did. Day after day. Always on his break from the store. Forty minutes. Every. Day. And we didn’t talk, most of the time. We just sat and let the world go by, and I was okay with that.

“But eventually, I couldn’t take the silence anymore and began to talk, and I told him everything I was scared of. I told him everything I missed about her. I told him she was the most wonderful woman to have ever existed and how every day in the time I knew her, I still couldn’t believe she’d chosen me above everyone else. I didn’t have money. I wasn’t the most handsome. I wasn’t the funniest, or the classiest. But she still chose me, and
I didn’t know why
. And do you know what Big Eddie said, Benji? Do you know what he told me?”

I covered my face with my hands as I cried.

“He told me memories are like ghosts, that they will haunt you if you let them. He said it’s okay to be haunted for a time, because it’s the only way a person can grieve properly. ‘But you can’t let yourself drown in them, Abe,’ he said. ‘There is going to come a time when ghosts are all you’re going to know, and it may be too difficult to find your way back.’”

Abe got up from the chair and put his hands on my shoulders. “So you grieve, Benji. Lord knows you’re entitled to. How could you not? Big Eddie was the greatest man I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. I have no qualms in saying that he was like a son to me. Hell, he
was
my son. And I hurt because of that. I hurt because he was my son. And your mother hurts because she was his wife. This whole town
hurts
. But you? Benji,
you
hurt because you lost your
father
. Big Eddie might have meant much to all of us, but it’s going to be hardest for you. He was more than just a father to you, I know. He was your friend. I don’t think I’ve seen a boy love his daddy as much as you loved him, and the same was true in reverse. So if there is ever a doubt in your heart, you remember this: Big Eddie loved you. He loved you, boy, because you were his. So you grieve. You grieve and let the poison out, and you
remember
him. But you cannot forget that memories are like ghosts, and they will
drown
you if you let them. That’s not what Big Eddie would have wanted from you.
For
you.”

I grabbed at him blindly, feeling the bones under his thin frame. “You’ll help me?” I gasped at him. “Please say you’ll help me. I can’t do this on my own.”