Hellbender (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 2) (27 page)

She spoke to me, but her eyes focused on the downstream horizon. “The rattlesnakes that bit Billy.”

“Stop it. Tell me what you’re talking about.”

“Katy showed me how to call serpents. I saw Billy’s bandages. I just wondered if he’d been bitten when you saw him?”

“When I found Billy he was almost dead, covered with bites.” She smiled. “It worked? Katy said it would.”

“Stop it. Alex—”

She put her hand over my mouth. I pulled away. “What?”

“I’m part of this as much as you. Janie was like a sister to me too, okay?” She stood up, her smile lingered on her lips for a second more. “I’m ready to go.”

We slipped back into the stream and continued. Waterfalls fell from the cliffs on the left. Tiny little trickles that would disappear in a month. The stream got a little wider, a little faster. I started to worry the current would get too strong to fight. I tried to stay as close to the bank as possible. The stream bent to the left, and we crossed to the other side. As we rounded the bend the stream disappeared altogether. I pulled Alex to shore. “Shit.”

I left her on the bank and scrambled ahead over the loose rocks to the edge of the waterfall.

“What?” she shouted.

Cliffs on both sides prevented us from circumventing the falls. “Dead end.”

Alex scrambled down the ledge and joined me. Just below the falls was a wide pool, then a rocky beach. And beyond that, the forest opened up again. “Let’s jump.”

“You can’t see the bottom. You don’t know what’s down there.”

She didn’t wait to reply. “I’d rather be dead at the bottom than dead by them.”

I nodded. “Take off your boots, and your jacket.” I steadied her as she did what I’d asked. “Put the envelope in a boot.”

I took off my shirt and shoved it into the boot with her envelope in it. Once I made sure her papers weren’t going to fly all over the place, I reached back and threw the boot to the rocks on the far side of the pool.

I stuffed Ben’s pistol and my hat into her other boot, and tossed it the same way. We scurried into the current along the edge of the falls and stood on the lip. Ankle-deep water wouldn’t sweep us away, but it could knock us over and we’d fall to the bottom. Whitewater clouded the view at their base. When it came time to jump I was the one who hesitated.

“It doesn’t matter—when you can fly.” She clasped my hand.

“I’m sorry. You know that, don’t you?”

Alex turned to me. “For what? No more apologies. No more moping. Keep your head and get me through this. We can do anything, right?”

She stepped to the edge of the falls, gently pulling me along.

Before jumping I stole a glance. She turned, her eyes met mine. Then she

smiled. For a moment, I really believed we could fly.

Whoosh!

The impact separated us. Her fingers slipped through mine and away. Water came into my nose. I fought the current to find her, but the falls pushed me down. The weight of the watershed and sky above was no match for two little tadpoles. It easily pushed me into the boulders at the bottom of the pool. I was little more than sediment to be carried off by the stream. Water rushed into my mouth and nose as the falls had their way with me, grinding me into the streambed. The current rolled my body, stray sharp rocks cut my back and shoulders.

I kicked harder to free myself. I tried to follow the bubbles to the top but they kept leading me down. The current tugged my arms, pulling me from my fetal curl. I could never quite find the sun. And the bubbles I was supposed to follow were all moving downstream, like a thousand fireflies released from a mason jar.

Somehow I knew to stop fighting, but my brain wouldn’t allow it. Cold filled my joints, made me slow. My lungs strained from lack of breath. In my mind I saw a blackness spreading from my chest as my need for air grew more desperate. I clawed at the rocks, a lame attempt to put the brakes on. The blackness climbed up my throat and I knew that I had to keep it out of my head if I wanted to live.

Small rocks rushed up through the current. They hit my elbows with bone- jarring thuds. I threw my arms over my head to protect my skull. Bigger rocks kicked me toward the surface, but the current’s downstream flow was always too strong to let me go. The cold, clear water kept me alert, and I tried to turn myself so that my feet were pointed downstream. The only way I’d be able to stay away from the rocks was by pushing off with my feet.

My lungs contracted, then spasmed. I’d been trying so hard to keep from inhaling that I never considered the alternative. Convulsive instinct forced the bad air from my lungs, and the sudden loss of buoyancy let my body fall to the bottom of the river.

Mountains and trees rippled in the sky above, but I couldn’t reach them no matter how hard I swam. My body, mostly water anyway, was insignificant against the torrent. The cold took the fight out of me. My mind told me it was okay to stop fighting.

This is just like a flip at Big Nasty
.

I wrapped my weak arms around my knees and lowered my head. Slowly the opposing current released me to the main flow.

Now swim
.

When I reached the surface, coughing brought me back to the reality of the situation. Again and again I choked on the water in my throat—the violent contractions drowned me with my own breath. Behind the falls on the rocks I thought I saw the white flash of Alex’s dress.

“Alex!”

But it was the sunlight reflecting off a wet slab of shale. I squinted and stared into the foam. A roiling pile of snow-white water confused me into thinking I saw her. “Alex!” I yelled one last time.

Near the base of the falls, just out of the main flow of water, I saw Alex’s dress and hair. She was face down. I struggled to keep her in sight as I swam into the mist. But upon reaching the spot where I’d last seen her, she was gone.

Fighting the current at the base of the falls, I searched frantically. Then, like a brook trout rising for a mosquito nymph, she surfaced next to me. “Alex.”

After a few breaths she sank back into the water. I dove after her, but she waved me off.

I returned to the surface for another breath and she appeared next to me. She caught her breath resting in a back-float, her hair spread on the surface like a cluster of fallen leaves.

I pulled her closer to me. “What are you doing?”

“Looking.” Her blue eyes reflected the sky above.

“For what?”

She slid her hand over my cheek, then wiggled her ring finger.

She twisted it to check the fit, then said, “It wasn’t lost, Henry. Just misplaced. It’s all I have left.”

With a wet embrace she kissed me, her swimming muscles trembling at my touch. Below her flimsy dress I could feel the curve above her hip, the soft skin on the small of her back. When I pulled her toward me to kiss her again she laughed and rolled onto her side.

We kicked ourselves toward shore, and she said, “Rachael only told me two things before I left. One, whatever I did, make sure Odelia didn’t get the ring. And two, whatever I did, don’t lose it.”

Sunshine-draped rocks greeted us. Radiant heat tempted us to bask. Alex laid her head in the crook of my arm and shivered ever so slightly.

“We can’t, Alex. We have to go.”

“Just a few minutes, Henry. Ten minutes.”

I was too tired to respond. The cold water took it all from me. The air, the sun, the rocks, I could’ve just as easily been sleeping with Alex in our own bed. The early stages of dreaming drifted to me as my blinking eyes stayed closed longer and longer.

“No.” I jolted myself awake. “We have to move.”

I pulled Alex to her feet, noting how little more than a few tiny white buttons kept the dress over her shoulders. At that moment I loved her more than I ever thought I could, and wanted to show her.

From up in the gorge I heard a gunshot. I collected Alex’s boots and made sure the envelope stayed dry. I tucked the pistol back into my waistband. I reckoned they were trying to scare us out. That sound, the snap of gunpowder, was the only encouragement I needed.

We left the stream, and went deep into the forest on the side opposite the Lewises. Up. Away. Until the sound of the stream was no longer audible. Nearly to the top of the mountain.

At dusk we finally stopped walking and began searching for a shelter. A roof would’ve been nice, a fire heaven, but a thick bed of pine needles at the base of a cliff was our only luxury. Once Alex got settled I scrounged for walnuts that the fairydiddles overlooked, enough to nearly fill my shirt. I cracked them open, one at a time, for her. She chewed unapologetically, shivering. I would’ve gladly given her all of them if she had asked.

She had stuff from the envelope spread all over the ground and an old sheet of spiral notebook paper in her hand. The edges were still frayed from were it’d been yanked out of the metal rings. “What is that?”

“I don’t know. You wrote it. Janie had it in here with a bunch of other stuff that doesn’t really seem to fit in with the rest. Personal mementos, I guess. Things to help her remember.” She passed the paper to me.

I read it.
Two fireflies, one moon, which is the light that leads them? One is bright and fills the sky while the other barely reaches the forest edge. Rising through hemlock and laurel like wayward summer flurries, a galaxy within the trees. How does an insect know more than the moon? That a shared creation always outshines the work of an individual, even if it isn’t as bright?
I scrunched my nose. “Sorry. Kind of sucks.”

“Henry, don’t be like that. It meant enough to Janie for her to keep it. So it says something about her.”

I said, “Wonder why she liked it?”

“You wrote it. Her big brother.” Alex said, “And because it is magical, too. Words have power, right?”

I nodded, and decided to keep the rest of my words to myself for the time being. When the nuts were gone I took off my shirt and gave it to her. I turned around and said, “Put this on. We’ll hang your stuff up to dry.”

She hung her coat on my finger and I hooked it over the knobby end of a dead limb. I spread the sleeves out as much as I could to air out.

“Here,” she said, and handed me her little dress the same way.

I held it up to my nose for just a second, but her smell had been washed away by the falls and the swim. I spread it over the low, dry laurel that shielded our little alcove from the rest of the world.

“Let me know when I can turn around,” I said, kicking my sandals off. “Okay,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “You can turn around.”

She lay in the soft pine needles, a halo of ferns curled around her head. She’d rolled my shirt into a ball, which she used like a pillow. Her soft skin glowed in the dim evening light. Tiny spruce needles clung to the moisture on her back and shoulders, to the delicate skin on the soft part of her arms, to the rounded curves of her thighs and calves. The needles covered her like a second skin.

Between her legs she held a fern frond so that the tip curled just where her thighs met. She teased the frond between her legs, smiling with her eyes closed. She ran her other hand down her sternum to her belly button. “Don’t your shorts need to dry too?”

I smiled, and stalled, embarrassed that I couldn’t hide my excitement. I dropped my shorts, then kicked them away. I lowered myself to my knees on the soft ground and kissed her. When my bare skin touched hers, lightning ran through my thighs, up to my scalp making my hair prickle. Her smooth skin only felt cold and wet for a second before warming to the same temperature as mine. Then warmer still, as our kiss went on.

When our lips touched I cradled her head in my hand, her hair fell through my fingers. Her lips were softer than I remembered. Suddenly I wasn’t hungry. Suddenly I wasn’t afraid. She smiled at me, playfully, then found me with her hand.

She closed her eyes, and took me inside.

When she opened her eyes again her expression had changed. Her eyes wanted something more from me. Her mouth, no longer content to just kiss, let out a little breath. Then she bit her lower lip. She pulled my face down to her neck. I pushed her hair away with my cheek, her hot breath condensed on my cheek. I kissed her, and she melted, pulling me into her as far as I’d go.

And when we finished I wanted to talk and laugh. But she became a little overwhelmed by emotion and cried. We had to put our clothes back on because the air was cold, even though I wanted to be wild, with her, forever. She finally calmed down, but by then, sleep waited just behind the sunset. I could smell it coming. We’d been trying to picture a life after all this. They were stupid, naïve dreams, but they acted just like a sedative, which was more than enough to erase, temporarily, the stress of these most recent days.

This pause in the chase, this moment to stop and recount those things that I still had left, was the gem upon which I focused. With Alex sleeping, cradled in my arms, I considered what tomorrow and the day after would bring. Some early crickets called, shouting out the arrival of summer with their twitching ankles. Further down the canyon, peepers, gray tree frogs among them, announced they were ready to fertilize eggs. All while I tried to predict the future in a quiet pine grove halfway between the green path and the end of the world.