Into This River I Drown (48 page)

Stay away, Cal
. “Yes.”

We reach the intersection as the Strange Man disappears again. I stop at the stop sign, waiting to see what direction he’ll lead us, though I know in my heart where it will be. The cloudy sky has taken on the peculiar orangish-reddish hue of an approaching summer storm. I can see rain falling far off in the distance, probably over in the next county. The rearview mirror shows rain falling on the mountains behind us as well.

“Odd storm,” Abe mutters, as if he can hear my thoughts. “Falling all around Roseland but it doesn’t look like it’s getting any closer.”

“Maybe we prayed the rain away.”

We look at each other and chuckle quietly, trying not to let our laughter turn into full-blown hysterics. The world has taken on an impossible (improbable) hue, and I barely recognize it anymore. I try to catch my breath, and Abe continues to huff out his laughter next to me, a high-pitched sound like he’s almost crying.

I wipe my eyes and pretend the tears are from laughing too hard as I look all three directions we can take. Nothing. Should I go left and head to the stone angel where my father rests? I don’t know what going there would solve. There’s nothing there I haven’t already seen. I don’t think there are any clues or mysteries buried with my father.

What about straight ahead? Big House and the house my father built await me there. Could my father have put something inside? Secreted away some journal or evidence that would explain everything completely? My father could have written out a final note to me, telling me he was sorry, he never meant for any of this to happen.

But, of course, that’s not how life works. Life is not a series of hopes and dreams cobbled together to make the shapes fit into the pattern, into a design. No, it doesn’t work like that at all. The Strange Man appears off to our right, heading toward the Old Forest Highway, toward mile marker seventy-seven, where so many things came to an end and so many things had their beginning.

I’m not surprised.

I turn right and follow the bald Strange Man, who disappears and then flickers back farther down the highway. I almost choke when I see him raise a single hand and waggle his fingers at me like he’s waving before he vanishes again.

Abe is staring at me out of the corner of his eyes, a determined look on his face, as if he expects me to stop the Ford and tell him to get out. I consider it, to a point, wondering how I can justify needing to protect Cal but be perfectly willing to put Abe, an old man, right in the middle of harm’s way.

“Don’t you even think about it,” he growls at me. “I have the gun.” He shakes it in my direction, his finger near the trigger.

“You wouldn’t shoot me,” I say, hoping that’s true.

“If it meant saving your sorry ass, boy, I wouldn’t bet against it.”

I expect
the Strange Man to stop or even disappear completely as we approach mile marker seventy-seven, so I’m surprised when he continues to disappear and reappear farther down the road, past the mile-marker sign. I slow and think about stopping completely (to do what, I don’t know), but the Strange Man beckons me again, this time almost frantically. He glances over his shoulder as if looking for something and then turns and waves to me again. A visible tremor goes through him, and he grimaces as if in pain. His movements become more staccato, his flickering more rapid. With a sideways glance at the river below where my father drowned, I press down on the gas and continue up the road, which rises up a hill into the Cascades.

“Where’s he taking us?” Abe asks. “Do you know?”

“No,” I say, watching as the Strange Man appears again, this time with his mouth wide open like he’s screaming as he bends over, holding his stomach. “Something’s wrong with him, though. It’s like he’s in pain.”

“Didn’t Cal say they didn’t have souls?” Abe asks, squinting ahead as if that’ll bring the Strange Man into view. “I didn’t think they could feel anything.”

I shudder at the memory of fear in their eyes and voices when Cal had opened the black hole back at Lone Hill Memorial. “They can feel things,” I say quietly as the Strange Man’s mouth stretches wide again before he disappears.

We round an almost blind corner. The Strange Man stands just before the Oakwood Bridge, a steel monstrosity that crosses over the Umpqua River churning angrily some fifty feet below in the gorge. The bridge itself is one lane each way, and a hundred feet long. Cement walkways line either side of the bridge for tourists to stop and take photos, blocked off by metal girders. The roadway is blacktopped, a dotted yellow line running down the center.

The Strange Man is now in the center of the bridge, jerking his arms at his sides. He looks as if he’s having a seizure, still upright but shaking violently, snapping his head back and forth. His white skin has started to redden, as if he’s heating from the inside. He rocks his head back, opens his mouth wide, and a little tendril of smoke rises from his throat into the air.

Any remnants of the sun have disappeared behind the approaching clouds. Even inside the cab of the truck, the air from outside feels electric, like the storm is ready to break open at any moment and plummet toward the ground. It feels more like dusk than midafternoon. I flip on the headlights and the Strange Man is illuminated briefly before he disappears in an intense flash.

And reappears, stock still, on the other side of the bridge.

He waves. And smiles.

Headlights are coming down the mountain road behind him. They hit him briefly and he is cast in shadow before he disappears. We approach the bridge at the same time. It’s another truck.

“Someone coming in for the festival?” Abe asks.

“Maybe.” I frown. The truck approaching seems to be a newer model, its headlights a bright blue LED. I can see a bar of the same LED lights across the top of the cab. A metal grill guard wraps around the front. The truck looks black. The windows are tinted, and given that, and the distance between us, and the lights in my eyes, I’m unable to see anyone in the cab.

Suddenly, everything feels wrong as we drive onto the bridge

I look down at the speedometer in the Ford. Thirty-five miles an hour. I glance in the rearview mirror. No one behind us. The Strange Man has not reappeared.
It’s all wrong. Cal, it’s all wrong.

Everything goes to hell when the light bar across the top of the approaching truck abruptly flashes on and the truck shoots forward. We’re already a quarter of the way across the bridge and I can’t go left or right. I have a moment to decide whether to hit the brakes and try to reverse or to plow forward. I press down on the gas
.
The Ford gives a loud roar and I think about my dad, how he was so proud to find that V8 engine, how he hadn’t let the guy screw him over with the price, because that’s not how we do it around here. The Ford sounds like it’s alive, and it is angry. Big Eddie would have loved that sound.

“Oh my Jesus,” Abe breathes, beginning to brace himself for impact as the black truck crosses halfway over the center line, barreling down the road.

“Trust me,” I say through gritted teeth as I move over to meet it head-on.

As the trucks race toward each other, an eerie calm befalls me, belying the sweat that drips down my back. I can’t hear the wind outside or the scream of the engines. I can’t even hear Abe shouting next to me anymore. All I can see is the light, and it is so
blue
, everything is
blue,
and I think of Cal and everything I should have said. I think of everything I should have confessed to him. I open my mind as widely as possible and think
Cal
. I say
Cal
.
I scream
Cal.

I jerk the wheel to the right at the last possible second. It’s almost a good plan. It almost works. Everything tells me it should work. But physics is an impossible thing.

The Ford whines as we swerve to the right, the tires squealing along the roadway. The front corners of the vehicles miss colliding by inches. There’s a brief moment when everything around me slows down and I look into the driver’s window of the black truck and see the vague outline of a person. They seem to be looking at me as we flash by each other, and then they are gone.

Even as I look ahead to correct our path, there’s a jarring impact on the driver’s side truck bed. The steering wheel jerks in my hands, causing my palms to burn as I struggle to hold on. The bed of the Ford begins to fishtail to the right, toward the cement divider that separates the road from the walkway. This all only takes a second or two, but it goes on forever in my head.
The black truck,
I think.
Must have hit the back. Won’t be able to buff that ou—

The right side of the Ford smashes against the divider, and Abe cries out as he is slammed into the door. There’s a moment when all motion seems to stop, but then the world tilts as the truck flips up and over the divider with a metallic shriek. The windshield shatters. I’m upside down in a haze of sparkling glass before I even know what’s happening. The world tries to right itself as the truck barrel-rolls into the metal girder. The seat belt snaps harshly against my hips, but all I can see is
stars
and all I can feel is
heat
and all I can see is
blue
because sparks have showered in through the broken windshield, pouring onto my face, like a—

cross your heart hope to die stick a

—thousand needles in my eye.

There’s a sickening sense of vertigo as the metal girder splits at the weight and impact of the Ford. The truck starts to slide to the right and catches on something. There’s another pause before I hear another metallic moan and the truck slides again, and the back window implodes in on us as the truck begins to tip at a precarious angle.

Then it’s almost quiet aside from the ticking of the engine. A tinkling of glass.

I’m confused. I don’t know what has happened. I think of angels and wings and rivers. There’s a cross too, a cross I hate because it’s always covered in feathers and I can’t make it stop. I want to sleep. It would be so easy to just sleep. Maybe I should. This is probably just a dream. I dream big. I dream in color. Like my father. Big Eddie is my father. He sleeps under a stone angel in a place with no hills.
Sleep
, the stone angel whispers.
It’s okay just to sleep
.
You’ll feel so much better if you do. I’ll hold your hand and protect you from everything while you sleep. It is what I was made for. It won’t just be for fifteen words that mean nothing. Those fifteen words don’t mean a thing. Just sleep.

I do. I want to. I do. I will. I am falling—

My face feels wet but the moisture is dripping
up
my face. The sensation makes my skin crawl. I open my eyes. I’m upside down, my back resting against the bench seat, held in place by the lap belt. The view out the front of the truck doesn’t make sense. It’s all broken glass and crumbled cement. The sky where it shouldn’t be. Everything opposite. There’s a roaring noise in my head and my left eye begins to burn as a bit of blood drips into it. I open my mouth to say, “Hello?” but no sound comes out, just a weak rush of air. Nothing hurts yet, and I wonder at it. I’m bleeding, but there’s no pain. Maybe I’m not hurt that bad. Maybe it’s not my blood.

My hands are pressed against the roof of the cab. I try to ease myself down, but the seat belt is still latched and it holds me at the waist. I lift my hands from the roof and swing gently in the truck, upside down. The effect is instant. The truck begins to groan and starts rocking slowly, seesawing up and down. Up and down. I quickly reach up and press my hands against the roof again and hold my breath for as long as I can. Eventually the truck stops moving, but not before I feel the truck slide just a
little
bit farther down.

I lick my lips, trying to get them wet. I taste copper. I work my salivary glands, trying to get enough spit in my mouth to swallow. My throat is too dry. It burns. I’m parched. I would do anything for a drink of water. Anything.

There’s movement to my left. Or maybe it’s my right. I don’t know which way is up, so I am pretty sure left and right don’t matter anymore. There’s a man lying against the roof of the truck, almost against the back, where the window used to be. Two black bands hang down around him. Seat belt. Seat belt is broken. There’s cement where the back windshield used to be, jutting into the cab. Maybe it’s…

“Abe?” I croak out. Is that Abe? He was in the Ford with me. Before….

He groans and shifts. The truck shifts with him, beginning to rock again.

I don’t—

Oh Jesus.

It makes sense. It all makes sense, and it’s enough to cause bile to rise. The back of my throat tastes acidic, and I have to fight to keep from vomiting as my stomach clenches and spasms against the clinch of the lap belt. It’s so crystal clear, and I wish it wasn’t because now all I can hear is the shift of the truck and the distant call of the river below.

The truck has flipped. We’re upside down. The bed of the truck has fallen off the side of the bridge and hangs over the river. The rear of the cab has caught on the edge of the bridge, stuck against the cement. It’s the only reason we haven’t slid off and plummeted to the river below.

Abe groans again and starts to push himself up. He collapses with a gasp of pain, and it’s only then can I see a shiny knob of bone sticking out of his arm.

The truck rocks further. Up and down. Up and down.

“Abe,” I whisper. “You gotta stay still. Don’t move. Please. Just stay there.”

“Benji?” He stares at me with bleary eyes. “What… where? My arm hurts, boy.”

“I know,” I say, my voice cracking. “Just don’t move.”

CAL! THREAD! SEE MY FUCKING THREAD!

“Where are we? What happened?”

“Truck flipped,” I grind out. “I’m stuck.”

“Oh. God, it hurts. Let me help you—”

“No!” I shout as he sits up. There’s a groan of metal against stone and the truck moves a couple of inches, the back of the cab sliding along the pavement. “Stay there! Bridge! We’re on the bridge!”