Into This River I Drown (3 page)

I think a normal person would probably go insane living out here. There’s no excitement. There’s nothing to hold you here, unless your roots are entrenched deep into the earth like mine are. I feel lost in cities like Portland or Seattle. Buildings rise up out of the ground like metallic trees, impersonal and cold. People that you have never seen before and will never see again pass you by, ignoring you in favor of themselves. You bump into someone and get a scowl even as you fumble with an apology. I don’t handle that very well.

I drive past Rosie’s Diner on the corner of Poplar and Bellevue. Rosie herself moves around inside. An old guy in a tweed jacket and fedora who only goes by Mr. Wade sits in a corner booth, sipping his coffee and eating his pie as he does every night around this time. They both wave as I drive past. I wave back as I continue into the night.

The other shops are dark, closing before the sun goes down. The Safe Haven, a bookstore owned by a pair of old dykes. A hardware store owned by Mayor Walken. An Italian restaurant owned by Mayor Walken. A secondhand clothing store owned by an Armenian immigrant family. Doc Heward’s office. A real estate office, owned by no one, boarded up and empty. A gift shop where I’d gotten—

A blue light flashes behind me in the rearview mirror.

My breath catches.

But then the blue light is followed by a red one, spinning in a lazy circle.

Dammit.

I pull over to the side of the road, the whitewall tires crunching the gravel near the ditch. The lights continue to swirl behind me as the car pulls up within kissing distance of the Ford’s back bumper. He’s doing this on purpose, I know.

The door on the car opens, and I can see the seal on the side,
DOUGLAS COUNTY SHERIFF
written in the middle. Boots hit the ground with a thud and he lifts himself out of the cop car with a grunt. He shuts the door and flicks on his high-powered MAG flashlight, sweeping it back and forth. He pauses to look in the bed of the Ford. There’s nothing there. It’s sparkling. It’s immaculate. He knew it would be.

“Sheriff,” I say as he reaches my rolled-down window.

“Benji,” Sheriff George Griggs says, his voice a deep bass, filled with undeserved authority. The definition of his face has been lost to fat, his cheeks soft jowls covered in black stubble. His balding head is hidden beneath the wide brim of his hat. “You’re out late.”

“You know I’m not. I just closed up the station, like I do every day at the same time.”

He narrows his eyes. “Is that so?”

I barely can contain the urge to laugh. “Yes. Why do you care?”

“Someone’s got to keep an eye on you, boy.”

“I’m not your boy.”

He ignores the harshness in my voice. “Been drinking tonight?”

Now I laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”

He’s not kidding. Or, he’s just trying to fuck with me. “No,” he says.

I can play this game. “No, I haven’t been drinking.”

“Is that so?” he says again, the beam of the flashlight piercing my eyes. I squint and look away. “I thought you were swerving a bit back there. You high, Benji?”

“No,” I say, trying not to grit my teeth. “I’ve never been high. I’ve never been drunk. I’ve never done a damn thing wrong.”

He leans in, resting his arms on the door to the Ford. He smells like sweat and aftershave. His scent invades my space. “Everyone’s done something,” he says. I can feel his eyes on me as I look straight ahead.

“What have you done?” I ask before I can stop myself. I don’t miss how he flinches, a subtle intake of breath, the beam from the flashlight wobbling before it steadies.

“You know,” he says finally, “a smart mouth like that is apt to find its owner in trouble one day.”

“Oh?”

“Serious trouble, Benji.”

“Can I go, Sheriff, or is there something else you needed?”

He watches me for a moment more before he knocks the flashlight against the door: a sharp rap that I know will have chipped the paint. “You be careful, you hear me?”

Before he can move away, my mouth opens on its own again as I turn to look at him. “You find out who killed my father yet, Sheriff?”

His eyes are hard, his face reflecting red, then blue. Red. Blue. The skin under his eye twitches; he tightens his jaw. “It was an accident,” he says quietly. “Big Eddie lost control of his vehicle and flipped into the river. Simple as that.”

“That simple?”

“Yes.”

“Have a good night, Sheriff.”

He’s been dismissed and he knows it. His mouth opens as he grunts. I think maybe he’ll say more, but he spins on his heel and walks back to the cruiser, opens the door and spills back inside. We sit there for a moment, me watching him in the rearview mirror, the lights twirling.

Eventually, he spins out behind me and leaves me in the dark, the ticking of the Ford’s engine the only sound I can hear.

I stay still for a moment. I breathe in and out.

A hand falls on my shoulder again, there in the cab of the Ford. Another flash of blue.

“I know,” I say to what does not exist. “I know.”

I tried
to leave for college after I graduated high school, but it didn’t take.

I hadn’t even wanted to go to begin with, but Mom somehow wrangled a promise out of me that I would at least
try
. Lola Green is not above guilt and manipulation in order to get what she wants, especially if she feels it will benefit those around her. On the
167th day before I graduated high school, I told her no way was I leaving her alone with the store—I was the man of the house now, I meant to take care of her, and this discussion was over.

Many things ran across her face before she spoke: fear, laughter, horror. Love. So much love through it all. But then her eyes hardened, her mouth narrowed into a thin white line. Little lines appeared around her eyes and on her forehead. I knew that face. That face said that I had overstepped my bounds. That face said fifteen words were enough. That face said I had no choice and I would be going to college in the fall.

“Now you listen here,” my mother said with a snarl. She is a little thing, just coming up to my chin, and I’m only five foot nine. But when she needs to be, she’s all spit and fire and teeth and claws. Big Eddie always said if he ever had to brawl, he’d only need her at his side. “Your father and I worked our
asses
off to make sure you would never want for anything. You are not going to sit there and tell
me
that you’re not going to school. You’re going, end of discussion.”

I glared down at her as she tried to get up in my face, poking me in the chest with a lacquered nail. “I’m doing nothing of the sort,” I growled at her. “You can’t watch the store all the time. You’ve got other things going on.” And she did. She had run a small bakery out of our house for years before Big Eddie died. He always pushed her to go bigger, to think beyond Roseland. Word of her talent had spread to other towns around us and she seemed poised to break wide open. But then, of course, her husband drowned in six feet of water and put a hold on her future. It wasn’t until the Trio had arrived and put us back together as best they could that she started up again. At the time of our…
discussion
about my future, she and the Trio had just launched a website for the bakery.
Lola’s Goods
. It was getting more popular by the day, which meant less and less time for anything else. She knew this. But even better,
I
knew this.

Her eyes flashed. “Oh, no,” she said. “There’s no way in
hell
you’re using the station as an excuse. I don’t care if I have to send one of the Trio down there, or hire a townie back on. I don’t get why we just don’t
sell
it. The bakery is doing—” She stopped herself. She’d gone too far, said too much. This was a thing never discussed, and never was to be discussed. A sort of unspoken truth had come after Big Eddie died: she would handle her end and I would take over for my father. Big Eddie had always planned on me taking over for him one day. I’d been there with him at the station since I could walk: in the garage, the store. I helped him with the pump. He lifted me up to wash the windows with the scrubber. The first time he’d left me at the store to handle things by myself, I’d been fourteen. After a stern lecture of no goofing around and no giving my friends any pop for free, he’d rubbed a rough hand over my hair and told me how proud he was.

“Starting today,” my father had said in that deep voice of his, “you’re officially my partner here, okay? It’s you and me from here on out, Benji. Think you can handle it?” He held out his hand toward me, waiting.

I was thrilled. Elated. Moved to the point I thought that if I opened my mouth, tears would fall and my voice would break. But Big Eddie was telling me I was a man. Real men didn’t do any of that. So I grunted, snapping my head up and down once, twice. I reached out and shook his hand. His grip was tight, his hand warm.

The next day, he had old Mr. Perkins (the only attorney within fifty miles), draft up the paperwork. I didn’t know then he also made a change in the event anything should happen to him. If it did, the store would pass to me.

Which, of course, it did. And my mother knew this.

“It’s
my
store,” I reminded her.

“I’m
your
mother,” she snapped, and the argument was over.

I was in Eugene at the University of Oregon for three months before I came home. I didn’t speak to her the entire time I was there. I studied. I went out. I got laid. I took tests, read books, stayed out until the sun was coming up. When I figured enough time had passed and my point had been made, I packed up my things, said good-bye to the few friends I’d made, and drove back to Roseland. She didn’t look surprised when I showed up at the door, my arms crossed. The Trio ran over, squealing, covering me with fluttery kisses, their mingled perfume so much like home I had to blink the burn away.

My mother watched me for a moment from her spot by the sink in the kitchen while the Trio backed away, waiting to see what would happen. “You tried?” she said finally. “And?”

“It didn’t take.”

“No?”

“No.”

She pursed her lips. “I suppose you’ll be wanting Little House, then?”

No. I don’t know if I could handle that.

Little House had been built by my father. He had thought it would be a place for a workshop, a garage where he could have his own space to do with what he wished. But the moment he started building, he knew it was going to be bigger than that. Set further down the road than Big House, it had become my father’s life work. And since life doesn’t stop because he had something that he loved doing, it took us six years to finish. The hardwood was placed and varnished, the white paint with blue trim completed. Electricity and plumbing done. When finished, it was two bedrooms, one bathroom. An office. It was small. But then it too became mine. After.

“It’s like a littler version of our house,” I’d said once he’d finished.

“Oh, is it?” he’d said, grinning at me. He reached over and grabbed me, putting me into a headlock while he rubbed my head with his knuckles. “A little house, huh?”

“Size doesn’t matter,” I managed to choke out in laughter.

He’d lost it then, and by the time he was able to wipe the tears from his eyes, Little House it had been named.

I gestured toward the Trio, unsure of what they’d want. Unsure of what to say. Mary and Christie had been staying there since they arrived. I couldn’t find the words to say
no
,
no
I don’t want Little House
.
I can’t stay there. I can’t live there. I don’t want to live there.

She shook her head. “They can stay here with me.”

I balked. “There’s not room here for all of you. It’d make more sense to just let me go back to my old room. They can keep using Little House.”

“Benji, it’s okay to—” Christie started, but she stopped when Mom raised her hand toward her, causing her to fall silent.

“It’s yours,” my mother said, her voice hard. “Big Eddie built it for you. You’re obviously grown up enough to gamble with your future, so you will take the house and you will live in it. You will clean it, you will handle the upkeep. You will pay for the utilities. You want to grow up so fast, fine. You’ll act like an adult. That’s what you want? Fine. Have at it. Do what you want.”

The Trio tried to leave the room quietly, but Nina, ever the klutz, ran into the door, causing it to fly open, smashing into a kitchen chair that fell over and skittered across the tile. My eyes never left my mother’s and hers stayed on mine. “Sorry,” Nina said hastily.

“Good God, Nina!” Mary huffed. “So much for a smooth exit. We’re trying to not make this any more awkward than it already is!”

“Really,” Christina said. “Do you have to run into
everything
?”

“I didn’t see it!”

“You never do,” Mary said, their voices fading as they left the kitchen.

I waited.

Lola Green broke eye contact first and moved to the center island and pulled open her knickknack drawer. She dug through it for a moment, her brow furrowed. She sighed when she found what she was looking for and placed it on the counter in front of her and stepped back again.

She waited.

The silver key reflected a beam of sunlight pouring in from a window and flashed over my vision, and it was like my father was standing next to me. I could hear him chuckling on his way to breaking into full laughter. Everything about him reflected back at me from that key, that tiny key that was meant to be mine.

A little house, huh?

Yes.

I sighed and closed the distance to slide it into my hand. For a moment, I felt as if there was a warmth there, a flash of heat. I shook my head. Just from sitting in the sun, I told myself.

I didn’t know what else to say, if there was anything left that would make things right again. I had turned and started to walk away when she grabbed me by the wrist, her touch gentle but firm. Insistent.

I said nothing.