The River (11 page)

14

After the last bell, Gretchen and I retreated to our locker. She bused it home in the afternoons and Tomás and I drove together, hours later, after practice.

Tomás was already at our locker now, wadding up pieces of notebook paper and lobbing them, jumpshot style, into a trash can. I couldn’t help noticing his grace and upper arm definition. He seemed, as always, like the opposite of quick. He seemed to be moving so slowly, it was as though he were jumping under water. But each trash can shot went in.

“Are you behind the three-point arc?” Gretchen asked, fiddling with the combination lock.

He appeared to consider this. “Nah, that’s the cafeteria,” he said, and his face was so serious, it took me a second to realized he’d made a joke.

He turned to me. “So when are we going out again?”

Gretchen looked at me and her lips curled into a sly smile.

“It’s not what you think,” I said.

“Ronnie and I are just exploring the river. You know, the way she used to do with Karen?” And this made so much sense I wanted to smooch him. He didn’t say
Ronnie’s deranged
or
she needs closure so we have to humor her
.

Gretchen wrestled textbooks into her backpack. “You’re kidding, right?” she said. “It was an accident, Ronnie. Let it go.”

I sighed and retrieved my gym bag. I didn’t want to let it go. Letting go meant having everything that I loved about Karen drift out to sea. I wanted the opposite of letting go. I wanted to grip her memory so hard I could haul Karen herself up out of her fate. “Whatever,” Tomás said, communicating with the curl of his lips how unfazed he was by her opinion. “I take it you’re not coming with us.”

Gretchen slammed the locker shut. “No, I am not because the whole thing is ridiculous. Do you have any idea what you’re looking for or where to look?”

I shook my head.

“And even if you did, it’s been pouring buckets for the past three days. Don’t you think if there were any sign of what happened to her it would be washed away by now?”

I didn’t have an answer. Tomás just stuck his hands in his pockets and scuffed the floor. Talk about pouring buckets. She’d just dumped a reservoir on my state of mind.

It must’ve shown on my face because Gretch let out a sigh that sounded a lot like a huff.

“Listen, Ronnie,” she said. “I know you’re hurting. But what you’re thinking about, it’s too futile. There’s got to be some other way to get over this. Bake something. Knit a hat. Just not trolling the banks. All you’re going to get is wet.”

I looked between Gretchen and Tomás, one who didn’t care if what I did made sense, and one who did. Which one was the better friend? The answer was: neither. They were both good friends, but neither of them wielded the power over me that Karen did. I didn’t need to follow either one. I would listen to them, then I would make up my own mind.

Gretchen closed our locker and looked away. “I’ll catch you guys after practice,” she mumbled. “Stay inside.”

Stay inside. Stay safe. Don’t try to do this or that. Don’t reach for something you don’t understand; don’t try to retrieve what you lost.

I couldn’t stand the idea of being more isolated than I already was. It made me want to leap and bound like wildlife. It made me want to break free.

I had every intention of sticking with track practice through the end, then going home like I was supposed to, but that changed when I got out onto the field and saw how little daylight I had left. If I were going to explore today, I had to do it now.

I went up to Ranger Dave, who had a whistle around his neck and was writing something on a clipboard. He was wearing a thin windbreaker against the rain and shorts, not sweats. I should probably mention that, even though I hated myself for noticing it (he was my coach after all), his thighs were impressively solid and lean. There was an inverted “v” shape just above the knee where tendon met muscle. They were the legs of a serious runner.

Thighs or no thighs, Ranger Dave was a good guy and I hated lying to him but I was about to do it. “Hey, coach,” I said, trying to appear breezy.

“Ready to go?” he said without looking up. “Why don’t you warm up with an easy fifteen hundred? Then we’ll do some wind sprints.”

“Sure. A bunch of us wanted to know if we could do our fifteen hundred cross-country. We’re getting tired of the track.”

He smiled to himself. “I hope not. The season’s just started.”

I said nothing, just stood there waiting.

He sighed. “In a group?”

“Just Allison and Nolan and me.” I pointed to where Nolan Chapman and Allison Lehman and some other fast twitch guys were still lunging and pushing against walls.

“All right. To the Tiki Hut and back. Okay? Stay to-gether and whatever you do, don’t stop for cocktails.” I half laughed with him. I’d seen what people looked like after Tiki Hut Scorpion Bowls. They were usually puky. And handcuffed if they tried to get into a car, thanks to Sheriff McGarry.

“Got it. No cocktails,” I said.

I jogged around the track, trying to make it look as though I was headed toward Nolan Chapman and Allison Lehman while I was actually running past them. When I was on the opposite corner of the field, and Ranger Dave had his head down studying a stopwatch, I ducked out the gate and onto the Santiam River Road. And then I sprinted like a buck till I was out of sight.

At least there was no danger of my getting tanked, because the Tiki Hut was not my destination.

Much as I hated to admit it, Gretchen was right about one thing: I had no method. I was just stumbling along, hoping I’d trip over something. So today I thought I’d try a different approach. I began at the mouth of the river, where the blue-white water churned and frothed before becoming the placid oily surface of Detroit Lake. I’d found Karen upstream from here, so I didn’t expect to find anything. I just wanted to have something to chart, proof of where I’d been.
See, Gretchen? I’ve covered this. I can be systematic.

Combing this part of the river was much slower than above the inn, because this stretch had houses along it. Not many, but enough that I didn’t feel comfortable tramping through backyards. Sometimes I did it anyway.

I’ll know what I’m looking for when I find it.
Maybe there was something of Karen’s still ensnared, circling the current. Did she have shoes on when I pulled her out of the river? A hair bow? I couldn’t remember. I just wanted something that the river had kept, something that left a trace.
Here. Karen was here.
But it wasn’t just traces of Karen I was looking for—it had to be Karen combined with something else, a larger footprint, a casually dropped match. Something that would ignite the whole town and light the way to what really happened.

Alas, as the sky went from gray to indigo, I came to the sad conclusion that the river was still harboring its secrets. I found traces of pollution but nothing to light the way. Just empty cold medicine wrappers, one Happy Meal toy, a smashed and rusted can of Bud Light, and something that looked like a purple plastic zucchini.

I was between yards, in a section of land that was huge and weepy with old growth, when I heard thrashing in the bushes and caught sight of something large and brown that looked like Tomás’ poncho.

“How did you find me?” I called.

No response from the bushes. Just more thrashing.

A cold current of fear shot through me. “Tomás?” I tried again.

That brought about a noise. Not speech. This was low and rumbly and sent tremors to the ground under my feet. Definitely not Tomás. Tomás didn’t growl.

I froze. Out from tall grass and horsetail ferns stepped the biggest hellhound I had ever seen in my life. It was the color of mud and its head was the size of a watermelon. It curled its lips back in a snarl.

Some of my friends love big dogs, always saying what was there to be afraid of, that most of them were giant cupcakes. I was definitely not a big-dog person. Thor was as large a dog as I’d been around, and this beast had a hundred pounds on Thor easily. Second, Sheriff McGarry once showed me this impressive red and puckery scar on her calf from where a rottweiler had dug into her when she was investigating a domestic disturbance.

There was nothing domestic about this canine. No collar, no leash, just a length of rope looped around its neck, its end trailing off into the bushes. He was head-to-toe mud and worse. Red showed through brown. He had multiple scratches and his ears looked like Shredded Wheat. Mud seemed to be the only thing holding this beast together.

And the smell. Hoo-wee! It was as though he’d been rolling in, then eating, a week-old skunk carcass.

We faced off, the beast snarling but not leaping at me, and me definitely not doing what my entire body told me to do, which was turn around and run.

“Hello?” I called hesitantly. “Will someone please come get your dog?”

No response from anyone other than the animal, who snarled louder.

I had no idea how this was going to turn out. I did know that if this creature managed to knock me down I’d have to cover my face and hope that the bites wouldn’t disfigure me. Those were some wicked-looking jaws. And there were ropes of something gelatinous hanging from its snout. I couldn’t tell if it was foam or really thick drool.

And that was when I started counting its ribs. One two three four five… the outlines of them were all clearly visible beneath the hide. When was the last time this animal had eaten? Six seven eight…

“Are you hungry?” I ventured.

No reaction. Hackles were still standing straight up on its back. He still didn’t move.

I rifled through the pockets in my shorts and found a cell phone and a banana-flavored PowerBar. Slowly, I drew it out and peeled back the wrapper.

I held it out to him. “Dinner?”

The beast stared at me. Grrrrr…

“Treats?” I tried again.

No response, but at least he still didn’t lunge. Come on, Ronnie. Mom would know how to make this sound appealing. “Yummy yummy treat. Definitely doesn’t taste like banana-flavored asbestos.”

The dog bellowed and I took one giant step back.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I said, waving the PowerBar around. “I’ve just never had a dog, okay? And this move out here. It’s been really hard. I lost a lot and there’s no one I can talk to about it.”

I wasn’t paying attention to the dog now. Out here in the middle of nowhere, I felt like I could complain and no one would hear me. So I gave myself permission to have a good whine. “I miss midnight movies,” I began. “I miss Starbucks. I miss all-ages shows at the Crystal Ballroom. And guidance counselors. Good ones. Man, don’t get me started on that. You know, I actually tried to go to one of the counselors at Hoodoo High to talk about which safety college I should apply to? I thought, maybe St. Olaf. That one in Minnesota? They have a great choir. And do you know what that guidance counselor said? She said, ‘We just got some information about St. Olaf last week and we threw it away. We never send anyone to St. Olaf. What about U of O?’ Can you imagine? Me at U of O? She meant well, I guess. She was thinking about the track program. But come on. U of O is huge. I mean: what about class size? What about liberal arts?”

In front of me, the animal was silent. Was it my imagination or had it cocked its head? It was almost as though it was studying me.

“But that’s not the worst of it,” I continued. “You know what the worst of it is?”

I paused for a reaction but none came.

“I sometimes forget that Karen isn’t coming back. I’ll be still for a second and think: she’ll come by later and we’ll share a cream cheese brownie and go exploring. And then I remember that she’s gone and it just hammers me, because when Karen was around I didn’t feel so alone.”

I sank to my knees. I had lost the face-off. The dog could pounce now, savage me, scar me for life, and I didn’t care. I probably wouldn’t even feel a thing. I put my head in my hands. “Come on now, boy,” I whispered. “Bring the rain.”

I sat there, empty, and waited for an attack.

It didn’t come. After a while, I heard a snuffling sound and looked up. The empty wrapper on the ground told me the dog had woofed the PowerBar, and was now nosing me in the head and arms as though I were a tasty treat, and I let him. I jerked my head up and looked in his eyes. Close up, they were soft and brown, almost gentle. Then, while I was trying to figure out what to do next, his tongue darted out and drenched my whole face in a disgusting, slobbery kiss.