Rivers: A Novel (26 page)

“I know.”

“I swear,” she said and she was in a full shiver and Cohen stepped to her and wrapped his arms around her. He couldn’t tell if she was crying or only shaking but it didn’t matter to him. His chin sat on top of her head and he felt her shivering against him and he saw Evan standing alone staring out into the storm and he looked out at the truck where the women sat with the baby. He held Mariposa and it crossed his mind that it had been years since he had held on to anyone like this. He thought to let go once, twice, but he didn’t. He let her cry or whatever it was she was doing. He held on to her until she stopped shaking. He let her move away from him.

And she finally did. She wiped her eyes. Wiped her face.

“We better go,” he said and she nodded and sniffed.

Brisco raced by and shot Cohen with each hand. Pow, pow, pow, he cried with each shot. Evan had turned to see what he was doing and he stomped over to Brisco and yanked him up and yelled, “Don’t you do that shit!”

Brisco yelled ouch and Cohen said, “Calm down. He don’t mean nothing.”

“You let me be. He ain’t yours.”

“I know he ain’t but he’s playing.”

“That ain’t no way to play,” Evan said and he shoved Brisco away. “I mean it, Brisco. Quit that shit.”

“Jesus,” Cohen said. “Settle your ass down. We got enough shit going on.”

“You settle down,” Evan said and he told Brisco to come on and get in the truck. He took the boy by the coat arm and dragged him out into the rain.

Mariposa called out to Evan but Cohen said let him go. Let him be for a while.

“What’s wrong with him?” Mariposa asked.

The storm roared now and it was damn near dark. They had to get somewhere. Cohen tugged at his beard, looked out at the weather and looked back at Mariposa. “What’s wrong with him?” he said. “Only the same thing that’s wrong with all of us down here. Come on.”

They got back into the truck cabs. Mariposa wiped her face again with her hands. She noticed Cohen’s anxious look and she asked him if he was all right.

“I got to go back,” he said.

“No you don’t.”

“Yeah. I damn sure do,” he said. Son of a bitch. He was sick for not thinking about the Jeep when it mattered.

Mariposa said, “You don’t need anything down there. We’re almost there.”

“We might be almost there.”

“We are.”

“If you were to look at a map, we are. But it doesn’t matter where we are or what’s between here and there, I got to go back.”

She moved closer to him on the seat and said, “You don’t. Really, you don’t.”

“Really,” he said. “I do.”

She moved closer. “I don’t understand.”

He fidgeted in the seat. “I just have to go back. It’s my Jeep.” He wrapped his hands tightly around the steering wheel and stared out at the weather. She touched his arm, pulled at him some. He let go of his grip on the steering wheel and she pulled his arm to her.

“You don’t have to, Cohen,” she said. “I know you want to but you don’t have to.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek delicately, almost undetected.

Cohen didn’t move. Didn’t look at her. He cranked the truck and started out and said, “Let me think.”

Despite the rain and wind, they had luck the first ten or so miles, moving up Highway 49 with nothing more to navigate than the occasional fallen tree or light pole. Kudzu had overlapped the highway here and there like a green rug meant to beautify the rough asphalt. They passed through the tiny communities of Saucier, McHenry, Perkinston. The road signs were bent and twisted and they saw random cars but little else.

The first trouble came somewhere between Maxie and Dixie. A bridge had been washed out by what was once a creek but was now more like a flowing marsh. They had to backtrack six miles to try and detour around it but found another washed-out bridge along the cut-through and they had to backtrack again. No one was familiar with the roads in this part of the country but they knew north from south and they kept trying to get themselves north on nameless back roads or strips of forgotten highway. It was all but dark and the storm was gaining strength and even with headlights it was almost impossible to see. Cohen was in front and when it was too much, he stopped and ran back to Evan and the others and said, “Let’s find shelter for now and try again in the morning. I know it’s hard but if you see something flash or honk or something.”

In another slow mile, the other truck honked and Cohen stopped. He looked around but didn’t see what there was to honk about. Evan ran up and hit on the door and Cohen cracked it open.

“Back across there, did you see it?” Evan yelled against the rain.

“Where?”

“Right back over. That gravel lot. Looked like an old store or something back some. Looked like it had a roof.”

“All right,” Cohen yelled back. “Get in and back up and we’ll see.”

He shut the door and Evan ran to the truck. Both vehicles moved in reverse for twenty or so yards, then stopped. Like Evan described, to the right was a gravel parking lot and back from the road was a small brick building. Cohen turned and shined the headlights on the building. Crossbars covered the empty windows and there was no door. A
rusted ice machine stood guard and a sign had been ripped from the front awning, but it looked like the roof was intact and it showed no sign of living things.

Mariposa leaned forward with her hands on the dash. Cohen flashed his lights on bright but it didn’t change anything. “Might as well go see,” he said.

He took a flashlight and made sure the pistol was in his coat pocket and he got out. The four headlights shined on Cohen and the old store and the rain fell sideways through the yellow beams. He stepped into the door and momentarily disappeared from sight, but then he waved for them to come on. Mariposa killed the ignition and Evan killed the other truck. Brisco hopped from the seat into Evan’s arms. Kris held the baby and Nadine held Kris by the arm and they stepped carefully to the doorway.

“Careful, it’s slick,” Cohen told them as they came in one by one. He shined the flashlight out across the linoleum floor that was wet and black with dirt and scattered with overturned stock shelves. Along the back wall of the room glass coolers once held beer and Cokes for the workingmen who had spent the day in the field or on the job site. The doors were open and the racks still there as if waiting optimistically for the day when the bottles and cans would once again sit inside and be greeted by thirsty eyes. It was a small store and the weather came through the windows but it seemed like it would do.

They congregated in the middle of the room, the fallen shelves around them. Evan kicked at one and it slid and banged into another. Nadine jumped and said, “What the hell.”

Brisco hugged Kris around her leg.

“It’s gonna be a long night,” Nadine said.

Cohen continued to move the light around and they watched, standing closely together, a tension binding them, as if only waiting for the moment they would be shocked by what the light revealed. In the back corner of the store was another door and it was closed and locked with a padlock. The cream-colored walls were spotted with mold and the
ceiling sagged from water leaks and there were drips here and there but no holes.

Evan looked around and found a couple of folding chairs and a short bench behind the counter. The women and Brisco went and sat down. Evan and Cohen moved over toward the locked door. Cohen held the light on the padlock.

“That door don’t look like much,” Evan said. “Not if you really wanted to get in.” He shined the light up and down the metal door and there were footprints about waist-high and indentions up and down it.

“Maybe it’s tougher than it looks,” Cohen said.

“Probably ain’t nothing,” Evan said.

“Probably not.”

“You gonna get it open?”

Cohen shrugged. He turned and walked to the counter and Evan followed. They both hopped up and sat on it. Cohen shined the flashlight around again and then turned it off. Nadine said let me take a turn and Kris handed her the baby. Then each of them sat still and quiet. It rained and the wind came in gusts.

As they sat there in the dark, the weight of it all began to collapse around them in the confined space. The storm muted all and left them suspended in the absence of sound. A steady, heavy drone. Mariposa slumped in her chair and Brisco lay across her lap. Nadine held the baby, her head bowed and resting on top of the tiny bundled body. Kris stretched out her legs and rested her hands across her stomach. Evan stared at Brisco. Cohen stared at his hands. Quiet, fatigued silhouettes.

They were small things against this big thing. Against this enormous thing. Against this relentless thing. Small, exhausted things whose lives had become something so strange and extraordinary that it didn’t seem possible that they could be anywhere but sitting in this abandoned building in this abandoned land in this storm-filled night in this storm-filled world. They sat still and exuded exhaustion. Maybe
even hopelessness. Maybe even helplessness. The day had begun with the idea of a finish line, but that idea was being washed away in this torrent of despair.

Cohen stood up from the counter and folded his arms. He walked away from them and stood in the center of the floor between fallen shelves. He listened. Looked around in the dark. Water dripped all around him. He thought about the baby and what would become of his life. Or would he have a life? Would he live to see another place? A normal place where lights shined and refrigerators kept food cold and beds were soft and sometimes the sun came out and people rode in cars and had jobs and if you needed something you went to a store to get it and the sound of thunder didn’t sound an alarm but only meant nourishment for rosebushes and the front yard. Would he live to another place? And if they managed to get him somewhere, who would change his diapers and teach him his colors and ABCs and would he have friends and would he go to school and would he ever call anyone Momma and would he ever call anyone Daddy? Would he ever play T-ball or learn to ride a bike or not have to worry about being hungry? Would he ever know the story of how he was born and where he was born and who his father was and what a miracle it was that he was alive at all and would he ever know the story of the group of misfits who somehow managed to get him across the Line? He was a long shot. They were all long shots. In every direction, a long shot.

Cohen uncrossed his arms and looked at his hands and he thought of the knife in his hands and the baby’s mother and her screaming and her pleading and her blood. In this blackest night, her blood flowed across his mind and turned his thoughts crimson, and he saw crimson on the walls and on the floor and dripping from the ceiling and puddled on the floor and blowing in from the windows and he felt it dripping from his beard. He saw crimson and he heard her begging for somebody to do something and then her voice became his voice and he heard himself cry out as he sat on the road with Elisa’s head in his
hands, crying out for somebody to do something but there was no one who could do anything as it had already been done. The choice for her to die and for the baby to die had already been made and there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do about it. He heard his own voice and now the blood that flowed in his mind was Elisa’s blood and he felt it on his hands and he felt it across his legs and he cupped his hands and felt her head resting in them and he begged for help but there was none and he felt her heartbeat disappear and then he felt the heartbeat of his little girl disappear.

He brought his hands to his face and he touched his fingertips to his cheeks as if to make sure that he was real. He held them there. Closed his eyes and the spirit of renewal that had filled him earlier in the day was buried under all else.

She sat in the seat with her legs crossed while they drove on Highway 90. Summer sun and the windows down and they went to Ocean Springs and parked downtown and walked to a patio bar and sat down and drank draft beer and ate crab claws and then they got up and walked to another patio bar and drank more beer and ate boiled shrimp. A white-bearded man sat on a stool in the corner and played his guitar and the day faded and when they were done they got up and walked again, underneath the moss trees and past the two-story houses and once or twice they exchanged waves with people sitting on an upstairs balcony. They walked on, pushing and pulling at each other, laughing at stupid jokes and stopping now and then to kiss and then slapping and grabbing at one another as they walked on and then they came to the beach and it was getting dark. They left their flip-flops at the sidewalk and stepped into the white sand, holding hands and smiling devilish smiles at one another. A mother was corralling the kids and packing up towels and plastic buckets and shovels and some teenage girls sat in a circle and passed around a cigarette. The two of them walked on until there was no one around and then they sat down in the sand and watched the last of the light drift away. The stars appeared and he lay on his back and she lay her head on his stomach and
stretched out and they made the letter T. The water washed gently onto the shore. Down the beach somewhere a dog barked. Elisa hummed a song he didn’t quite recognize. He slipped his hand into his pocket and eased out the ring box. He reached over and lifted her shirt and ran his hand across her tan stomach, and then he set the ring box on her bare skin. She stopped humming. Sat up and looked at him and smiled and he smiled back and she didn’t open it but squeezed it in her hand and fell back on top of him and they rolled in the sand, laughing and kissing and crying a little.

Cohen moved his fingertips from his face and opened his eyes. He opened his coat, reached inside, and took out the pistol. It was cold in his damp hand. Everything was cold and damp in his hand. Everything was cold and damp. Or cold and wet. Or cold and soaked. Or cold and underwater. Or cold and wet and knocked over. Or cold and wet and shattered or cracked or busted or gone. Or just gone. Everything was gone. Everything was gone but for his very real Jeep and it was his very real chance if they ever got the hell out of here but none of that mattered because he had panicked and left it behind. He had to go and get it, wanted to go and get it, but the chance of getting back down there and out with it didn’t warm him with confidence. It was his and he didn’t have to share it. He had his chance and missed it and now here he was, with them, stuck in the middle of this, and somewhere was his life, but he didn’t know where.