New World Monkeys (38 page)

He unbolts the cellar door.

And then they are running, the grain slicing, a razor’s nicking efficiency to all skin left visible, the underside of a chin, scored palms, inside each elbow. Sometimes he leads, sometimes they are side by side cutting a wide, ungroomed path through the crop.

They run across the fold of terrain, but no frontier awaits them. They are recusant, Duncan and Lily. Last thing he saw as they darted into the field was a rash of men boiling out of the house and into the backyard. Something followed. Something came after them through the field but now he doesn’t dare look behind them—their trail of damage is easy enough to follow, the heads of barley lopped down, trammeled—but he keeps Lily’s hand in his and does not look back.

What Duncan knows is that the land will provide. He tells himself, even the Cu Chi tunnels led somewhere. Into the steep embankment of the Saigon, where a comrade could be quietly washed to safety. And they’re not the first to come this way. Hadn’t Tinker set the course when she fled with her boy? The earth seems to remember the routing and helps to guide. They feel it tilting away from their feet; the running becomes easier, the sloping land giving momentum to their limbs.

Behind them, everything they’ve ever known. Ahead of them the grain breaks like a sudden relief and the threshing sound of their feet falls away and they cross into the flat slap of stubble before the river. They are cut and sore and there is the loss of Tinker’s bones but behind them are fire and men.

He can hear Lily’s breath, its stuttering delivery, and he goes ahead of her, tearing apart the curtain of saplings on the embankment. Tonight the river laps high, the rock table sucking up water as if quenching itself on the brackish offering. Duncan is mindful of illusion—the dark, humping hills of Ulster Landing appear to be within swimmable proximity and not the entire mile across he knows them to be. He steps on the shins of runtish trees, snapping down a path for Lily.

The sway of the current is impossible to measure in darkness. He loses the sling and enters the river, wading through the cattails and sleeping marsh wrens. The high level could mean an incoming tide and upstream flow. To the north, he knows, is Tivoli Bays, marshlands stocked with red-tailed hawks and kingfishers. The kayak routes he never got around to. Pastoral when observed from a fiberglass shell, gliding through the reeds in daylight. As the water sucks around his legs, he knows the river is conscious of him, his entrance. Is waiting to see what desperate plan he may have to swim across. Duncan steps up on a submerged rock ledge, then turns back for his wife.

Lily on the bank, sloughing off her shoes, toeing through the poke-weed and sumac. Looking for a place to start.

“Hurry, Lily.” Duncan holds out his good hand to her. He sees her face quiver, but she comes to him, making a careful entry into the river that runs both ways. Her legs scissor through water until she reaches him and takes his arm.

“Here I am,” she says. And there she is.

They stand to the waist in the unknown current and, in a language without words, make the decision. They agree to the one thing that is everything. Nothing else will exist after this—the house and the car and the bones—all of it gone. After tonight they will only have each other. The thought is enormous. But the warm grip of river and the smell of oily dirt calm him. Lily’s hand in his, it calms him too.

The voices that rise up over the field are vaporous and distant at first, but swell as they drift down over the embankment toward them. Without speaking, they lower their bodies into the river, push off from the rocky shoals. Their quiet submersion wakes a community of waterfowl, sending it alight. Duncan and Lily paddle a clumsy ten feet from the shore, her left hand tucked under his injured arm so that they appear to move out of the reeds and into the moonlight with the pulsing locomotion of one swimming animal.

The fetch is unclear but he understands their best chance is to keep hold of one another. To stay close to the bank and go with the direction of the current, give up all thoughts of destination, of swimming with purpose. Hasn’t enough time been wasted with the awkward motion of kick and stroke? The knowledge grows wide, breaks across his chest; in engineering this escape they’ve agreed to be carried together. As they skim out past the overhang of branches the sky is revealed, thickly seeded with stars. He signals to Lily to follow his example, to roll onto her back, as if enjoying a night dip. She flips over gently, buoys up against his left side the way he once taught her to and places her fingers in his grip.

It’s possible that they’ll be swept up to the mouth of the Sawkill Creek, arriving together on those estuarine banks. Or ferried downstream
to the piers of the Kingston-Rhinebeck Bridge. Or beyond. All the downhill miles still to Manhattan, to the pulsing Atlantic, to the edge of the continental shelf and the vast Hudson Canyon.

But all of this comes later, he thinks. Right now they’ll do well not to worry themselves with direction. Tonight their only concern is to stay afloat together, with hands joined and bones connected. Let the nautical miles bear them out. Let the river decide.

T
his book came to be with the help of several gifted people and many safe harbors: My agent, Jamie Brenner, at Artists & Artisans for her sharp pencil and unflagging enthusiasm. My editor, Sarah Knight, at Shaye Areheart Books for her perfect pitch and craftsmanship. The long hours and tireless reads by the talented Annabel Lyon. An excellent suggestion by Tony Swofford which helped sway the course of this story. The space and confidence given to me by the MFA program at the University of British Columbia, and there, in particular, Andreas Schroeder. The Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, both of which helped this book to flourish. And most of all, my family. Your enthusiasm and embrace is with me always.

N
ancy Mauro lives in New York City. She has worked as a creative director and copywriter in both Canada and the United States and is a recent fellow and graduate of the prestigious MFA program at the University of British Columbia. Nancy’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in several literary magazines, newspapers, and anthologies, and her work has been recognized by the Canada Council for the Arts. She is at work on her second novel.