Riley Park (6 page)

Water surges to my ankles, so cold I gasp. I look down to see roses floating on the water. The ice gives way under my feet.

For a second I scramble, trying to find ice instead of water, running on a backward treadmill as the ice slithers away. First I slip to my waist, and I can still feel ice with my hands. I dig my fingers against the hard surface, willing the ice to hold. But it doesn't. I hear it groan, then crack. There's nothing to grab but water, cold water, so cold that it hurts. The weight of my clothing pulls me down. Water crawls over my head. The river consumes me.

I have no breath. My lungs shrink and stick to themselves, useless. The cold is like metal. I feel metal in my blood, threading up the back of my neck into my skull. It feels like the cold could lift my skull. I close my eyes against the pain.

My runners are weights on my feet. My jeans are like steel plates. My coat flaps like steel wings, and everything, my runners, my jeans, my coat, everything drags me down. With a furious kick, I stop my downward plunge. With another kick, I feel air again on the top of my head. I throw my head back, clearing my nose and mouth in time to pull one breath into my lungs, and then I'm under the water again.

With the other foot, I peel one runner off my heel and shake my foot free. I feel the toe of my sock wafting loose. I manage to pry off the other runner. I kick, hard. Again, I'm able to breathe. Wind blows the water over my head.

I fumble with my coat zipper. My fingers are stiff, already frozen, but I get the zipper partway down. I shrug the coat off my
shoulders, and for a second I'm trapped in the sleeves. The oxygen is long gone from my lungs. Frantic, I rip one arm out of the coat sleeve, then the other, and claw for the surface.

I take two breaths. I scream. One more breath and roses swirl around my head. I grab for the ice but it breaks under my arms. My coat is still around my waist, like a weight belt. As I struggle to pull myself onto the ice, my legs and body pull me under it. Under my hands, the ice breaks away in shattered panes. Shards jab me in the face. My teeth chatter so hard that I am afraid I will bite my tongue. The wind freezes my hair into spikes. Then water closes over my head and flattens my hair to my skull. My eyelashes are ice, then water, then ice.

Underwater, my heart beats in my ears. I open my mouth to scream, and cold water fills me. I gain the surface again and cough, wanting only to breathe.

I need to break the ice until it won't break under my weight. Then, maybe, I can climb out. But the ice keeps breaking. I'm getting
too weak. My arms and legs grow rigid in the cold. I'm tired, so tired.

I hear my name. Water pours into my ears. My teeth stop chattering. It's quiet. I tip my head back. Around me, roses turn. I slip under the water.

In the ring of roses above me, I see her face. Rubee. Her hands reach down into the water. I see the red stone at her wrist, back and forth, floating across her wrist. If I reach up, I could grab her hands. I could pull her down under the water and she would die here too.

But I won't. Anger leeches out of me and I'm empty.

I see her mouth my name. She's calling me.

I'm not cold anymore. I feel warm, as if the water is the same temperature as my body.

Rubee's dark hair floats on the water with the roses. Her hands flash like fish. I feel her fingers on my head, and then they are gone.

If I kicked, if I tried, maybe I could breathe just once more.

My legs are powerless against the weight of water. But I try. I imagine I am water and that my legs are water too.

Do I hear her? Is she screaming my name?

Rubee's face is water. Behind her, the sky is white. Around her face, her hair is dark waves in the water.

Kick.

Her face vanishes and reappears.

Kick.

I feel her fingers on the back of my collar.

Kick. Help her.

She's gone. My eyes are open. I feel water in my eyes. But it's black. I blink, trying to see, but I can't see. My air is gone. My blood is water.

I close my eyes.

Something warm covers my mouth. I wait for water. But it's not water. It is air, warm air, rolling into my lungs. I'm underwater, but I'm breathing air.

My eyes fly open. I can see in shades of gray. Rubee's fingers close my lips and she retreats, her hair flowing away. It was Rubee—her air is in my lungs. I feel the strength of the air, and it begins to fade. I need more. I hold Rubee's breath, willing my cells to wring from it every bit of oxygen.

Rubee appears again. She covers my mouth with hers. Her lips are closed. I'm hungry for her air, but she won't open her mouth. I reach my hands to her face, and if I could move my fingers, I would lace my fingers in her hair.

Breathe for me, please. I cry the words, and air bubbles pour from my mouth and nose.

Then I feel her fingers pinch my nostrils. She opens her mouth over mine, and now I understand. She had to wait for me to breathe out.

She exhales, and her breath fills me. My vision clears. Again she retreats, and I think she won't appear again. I hold her breath in my lungs, imagine her breath weaving into my body, becoming mine.

Above me, I see another face, a man. He drops a loop of webbing around my chest. I feel it tighten, and I'm being lifted. I feel hands on my shoulders. My face breaks free of the water. I suck a breath, and another. I hear dogs barking. My back scrapes over the edge of the ice. I hear voices. “Pull!” I'm sliding on the ice. It's a dog leash around my chest, a purple dog leash.

Rubee huddles on the shore. Someone wraps a blanket around her. Cold pours into me and suddenly I'm shivering. My bones clatter. People strip off my clothes. They cram my arms into a dry jacket still warm from its owner. Someone covers my head with a hat.

Rubee kneels by my side. Her wet hair freezes in dark icicles. Around her face, fine hair frosts white. She's wearing someone else's jacket too. She wraps her blanket around my legs.

I say, “You brought him roses.” I can hardly speak for shivering. “I saw roses here before—you brought them too.”

She says, “Every day, I brought roses.”

“For Darius,” I say.

She nods. “Yes.”

The man who pulled me out of the ice won't let Rubee drive. He says that I have hypothermia and I'm lucky to be alive, like I haven't heard that before. I'm beginning to believe it. Rubee and I are sitting in his van with the heater going full blast, waiting for the ambulance. He's outside with his dogs. I'm still shivering. It seems like a long time that Rubee sits without saying anything, just looking at her hands in her lap. Then she says, “I had no idea he would go after Darius.”

“Your boyfriend.” I'm shivering, so it's hard to talk.

“My ex-boyfriend, Quinton,” she says. “I knew Quinton was jealous—he wouldn't let me go anywhere by myself—but he was the one who broke up with me. He didn't want to go out with me, but I guess he didn't want anyone else to either.”

I say, “You were here? You saw what happened?”

“No. He must have followed me when I came here after work. He must have seen me with Darius. I think he came back later and waited for you guys.” She pauses. “Corbin, I'm so sorry.”

“I thought you might have been here.”

“I wasn't. He was parked outside my house when I got home. He said he was sorry, that he was an idiot for breaking up with me.”

“And you took him back?”

“I agreed to go out with him the next day, and I did. We went for ice cream. Ice cream! I hadn't heard about Darius. We sat eating ice cream, and Darius was dead.” She wraps
her arms around herself. She says, “I knew Quinton was in a fight—his face was pretty messed up. He's been in fights before, never when I'm around. When we were going out, he'd drop me off and then go out and party or do whatever he did. Anyway, I didn't give it too much thought. But then I went to work and I heard there was a fight at Riley Park—that Darius had been killed. I didn't believe it, but then it was on the news. So I asked Quinton if that's where he got in the fight.” She lowers her eyes. “I still couldn't believe he had anything to do with it. He was always so nice to me. But he got mad.”

“And then you knew.”

“He told me that no one would believe me. He said that I wasn't there and how could I know anything.” She starts to cry. “He said if I talked to the police, he'd make me pay.”

I touch her cheekbone. Under her eye, I see a red line where her skin has split open.

She says, “Now I think back on things that happened when we were going out, stuff I just ignored because it didn't have anything to do with me. I just didn't know who he was.”

I say, “It's not your fault.”

“I feel so bad,” she says. “Every day I come here, put my flowers on that pile and remember Darius. I didn't know him long, but he was so full of life.”

I nod. He made me feel alive.

She says, “I saw you head out on the ice. People were walking their dogs and they saw you too. The man who pulled you out, he told me that it was too soon to be on the ice, that where the water flows, the ice is still thin. So I called you. You didn't hear me.”

“I did hear you,” I say. “I thought I was imagining it.”

“Then you broke through the ice. I crawled out on the ice on my belly so I wouldn't break through. The man too. He hung on to my ankles so that I could reach you. But I couldn't lift you.”

I say, “But you could breathe for me.”

She says, “I saw you drowning, and it was like Quinton was holding you under the water, and me too. That's when I knew it had to stop. I couldn't be afraid anymore.”

I stand at the boards, watching the team of six-year-olds do their best to skate from one side of the ice to the other. Officer Rex's kid, Ben, can actually skate. Ben is a nice kid. If he knows he's the star, he doesn't show it. I play all the kids the same. All of them think they're going to the nhl.

Who doesn't?

I skate a loop around the team. Coaching this level is a bit like crowd control. One of the players face-plants and slides on his belly,
laughing. I lift another player out of his way.

“Okay, guys,” I call, “that's it for practice. See you Sunday for the game.”

I skate over and open the gate. The players tumble off the ice.

Jason waits on the other side of the boards for the kids to clear the gate. He's in his skates, no pads. He says to me, “I heard you were coaching.”

“I'm not playing much hockey these days,” I say. “And coaching counts for community service.” That was my sentence for resisting arrest.

Jason nods. “The kids look like they're having fun.”

I say, “You're here early. Your team isn't booked on the ice for another two hours.”

He says, “It's your team too.”

I rub the back of my head. “Maybe you didn't hear. I lost my spot in the lineup.”

“I heard you were on the injured list.”

“Same thing,” I say.

The last kid clears the gate, and Jason steps out onto the ice. He says to me, “Let's skate some laps.”

He doesn't give me a chance to say no. He skates away and I follow. I have to skate hard to keep up. I say, “I used to be faster.”

He finishes my thought. “You used to be faster than me. You had a better shot too.”

“I hate not playing.”

For a time, he's quiet. Then he says, “It's not right, what happened to you.”

I think about Darius's mom answering his cell phone. I think about the pile of flowers at Riley Park that keeps growing, and the girls at school who still cry.

I say, “It's not right, what happened to Darius.”

“Manslaughter and aggravated assault.” Jason shakes his head. “The guy should be going to jail for murder.”

I think about Rubee, and how she and her family moved away. She said they needed some distance from the boyfriend, from everything. Rubee's testimony placed Quinton at the scene. The prosecutor couldn't prove Quinton intended to kill Darius, but Rubee's testimony was enough to get the manslaughter conviction. I have to go to court
one more time for the sentencing, to give a victim impact statement.

I say, “At least Quinton won't walk.”

“We can hope he gets the maximum sentence,” Jason says. “What about the other two guys?”

“Officer Rex says he's working on them. Apparently I tried to kill them and they were just defending themselves.”

Jason laughs. “You probably did almost kill them.”

“I used to be good at fighting.” I think about that day at Riley Park when I took a swing at Jason. I say, “I used to be good at fighting you.”

He says, “Fight me for your spot.”

My shirt is stuck to my back with sweat. I say, “Nice thought. You know I'm not coming back. I'll be lucky if I play hockey with old men.”

Jason looks at me. “So don't fight me, then.”

I motion for him to stop skating. I lean over with my hands on my thighs and try to catch my breath. I say, “Fine. I'll stop
fighting you. Maybe now you can stop pissing me off.”

He says, “I don't really think you're an asshole.”

I say, “I still think you are.”

He play-punches me in the arm, and it actually hurts.

He says, “I liked Darius.”

Darius was everyone's friend, but he was all I had.

I say, “Everyone liked Darius.”

He nods and smiles. “We had some good times.”

I say, “I miss him.”

I wait for Jason to say how he misses him too. But he says, “You and Darius.” He shakes his head. “I can't imagine how this is for you.”

The courtroom is packed. Officer Rex stands with me at the microphone, holding a piece of lined paper. It is my victim impact statement. I wrote it out and asked Officer Rex to read it for me. Jason and kids from school stand along the back wall. I wipe my hands on my pants. Quinton sits at a table with his lawyer, waiting for his sentence. He won't make eye contact with me. Officer Rex studies the paper. He starts to read but stumbles on the words. He says, “I'm sorry. I can't read it.”