Rivers: A Novel (36 page)

Twenty-four hours and then do what you gotta do.

A lamp on the bedside table provided low light in the room and the wind had picked up outside and drove the rain into the windows and walls of the buildings on the square. Evan heard the men talking outside the bedroom door but couldn’t make out anything they said. Only muffled words in a muffled night but he didn’t need the details to know what they were talking about. They were talking about the same thing that damn near every other human being he’d
ever known talked about—how much can I get and what’s the best way to get it.

He reached between the mattress and took out the pistol that Cohen had given him. He tucked it into the back of his pants and knew he needed to find the other one. He walked through the bathroom into the other bedroom and went to the dresser. The top drawer was the last place he had seen Cohen put it and he opened the drawer but it wasn’t there. He wondered if Cohen had somehow managed to have it with him but didn’t figure Charlie was the kind of man to make that sort of mistake. The room was a mess, with clothes on the floor and laid across chairs and the bed-sheets and blanket twisted and half hanging off the bed. Evan lifted sheets and picked up and tossed aside clothes, opened the nightstand drawer and the other dresser drawers, looked on the closet shelf and looked between the mattresses, but he couldn’t find it. He knelt and looked under the bed at the rifles and shotgun and thought it would take the men about fourteen seconds to find them, and then what would happen?

He went to the window and looked down. They were on the second floor and the awning was not ten feet below the window but Evan was almost certain it wouldn’t hold and if it splintered or collapsed then the fall could be much worse. He tried to open the window to get a better look but it was nailed shut. The window would have to be broken and with the sound of the storm it might be possible to get away with that. But then he would have to handle Brisco out of a jagged window onto a rickety awning in a driving storm. The entire scenario kept getting worse and worse.

He walked back into the room where Brisco slept and he looked at the small digital clock on the bedside table. An hour had passed and he didn’t believe it would be much longer before they came in. He walked gently over to the door and put his ear against it. They had stopped talking. Evan waited for them to start again.

Nothing. Only the beating of the rain and force of the wind.

He moved his ear from the door and looked down at the doorknob. Above the doorknob he noticed that the latch on the door was unlocked. He turned the lock and it clicked shut.

And then from the other side of the door, a voice said, “That ain’t gonna do you no good.”

Evan eased back from the door and over to the bed. He took out his pistol and then he sat on the bed, his back against the wooden headboard. Brisco turned in his sleep and grunted some but didn’t wake. Evan held the pistol in his lap and watched the door.

COHEN COULDN’T STAND BEING ALONE.
After burying himself, after becoming what he wanted to be—alone with his memories and ghosts of a life—after everything he had done to be alone and remain alone, he couldn’t stand being alone now as he drove the truck behind the U-Haul. For two hours they had been moving back toward the coast, the hurricane forceful and gathering strength and the endless black night and the pounding of the rain and the wind and the twisting and turning across the beaten land and all he could think about was how alone he felt and it hurt like a broken bone.

During this solitary time he thought of everything. His life with Elisa and the early days when they were new and how he would quit work early and pick her up and they would drive up and down the coast, drinking beer and talking about all the things they were going to do, and at twilight they would find a pier to sit on where they could eat and drink some more beer and then at dark, before taking her back home, find a quiet strip of beach and lay out towels and lie naked under the empty sky, and when it was all done, kiss good night, anxious for tomorrow and the chance to do it all again.

He thought of the positive pregnancy test he danced around the living room with, holding high like a trophy, and her laughing and saying I peed on that, I peed on that, but him only dancing and twisting and turning like a madman. He thought of the many times he should have cut loose and taken her and gotten out of there, sold the house, sold the land, started over somewhere else and if he would have done that, how
she would be alive now and he would be lying in bed with his daughter reading a bedtime story instead of caught in the middle of this impossible night in this impossible land.

He thought of the man he had left to bleed to death when the man was begging him to end his misery and he thought of slitting the stomach of the pregnant woman with the knife his grandfather had passed on to him and he thought of the two he had shot and killed back at the compound and he knew all those things made him something different now. He thought of Aggie and his twisted ideology and he thought of standing in the rain and trying to frame a child’s room and he thought of Habana and where she might be and he thought about the shoe box and how the things in it were probably scattered all across Gulfport. He thought of Mariposa and what must be going through her mind and how he hadn’t gotten to assure her of anything and did it matter anyway. Would any of it matter and would they even survive the night. He drove closely behind the U-Haul and being alone in the truck chewed at his heart and his mind and he seemed to relive his entire life in those hours and he wondered how in the hell the roads of his life could have led him to this moment. It seemed impossible.

Charlie was taking him places he had never been and if set free Cohen wondered if he could even find his way out of this hurricane. In almost every direction the ditches overflowed the road and the creeks ran the heights of bridges and there were great spaces of water everywhere but Charlie seemed to somehow find a way around. Cohen smoked without cease and the truck headlights and windshield wipers were ill-prepared for such intense combat. The winds rocked the back of the U-Haul and several times Charlie stopped and waited and then went on again but it never seemed to make sense to Cohen because there was only the fierce velocity of the wind and rain and never any ease.

He didn’t have a damn clue where they were. He wasn’t even certain whether they were driving north or south. Or east or west. In his angst he knocked his head against the steering wheel, against the door window. He pulled at his beard, at his hair. He squeezed at his chest
and he smoked and he smoked and he felt so alone. Once when Charlie momentarily stopped, Cohen let his head fall down on the steering wheel and he began to cry and he wished that he had lived a better life so that he could call out for the hand of providence to guide him and half expect a response. He had expected sometime in the night for the lull to come and ease their journey but there wasn’t going to be a lull. There was no such thing anymore.

Mariposa had told him that in her dreams he left and didn’t come back. He had scoffed at the notion in the dry room but now he felt the possibility of not being there. And he thought of Evan and Brisco and the predicament he had left them in and he wondered how soon it would be before the boys were doing things out of desperation or if they were already. He thought that he should have sent them off with the black Hummer and the women and the baby. But hell no, he couldn’t have thought of that then.

He wanted to know anything. What time it was. Where they were. How much strength was left in the storm. Would the Jeep still be there or had someone found it and for some reason found the latches underneath the backseat and opened them and lifted the seat and hit jackpot. Would the night ever end. Would they be blown away. Would they drown. Would they be shot. All he had were questions.

He smoked his last cigarette. The night raged on. They continued like patient water beasts migrating toward their violent ocean home. Another hour of Charlie making turn after turn. Another hour of going nowhere. All around was black and floating countryside and they were on a road that was not much wider than the U-Haul. The brake lights of the U-Haul shined and it came to a stop and Cohen knew it was another dead end. The hazard lights began to blink and this was the sign for Cohen to come get in the U-Haul so they could figure out what to do next.

Cohen fought his way to the U-Haul cab, fought the door open, and Mariposa grabbed and pulled him in and he fell across her lap. He sat up and she slid into the middle of the bench seat between the men.

“Told you we’d make it,” Charlie said.

“You okay?” Mariposa asked and she held on to his arm.

“There’s no way in hell to do this, Charlie,” Cohen said, catching his breath and sitting up straight. “You can’t hardly stand out there.”

“It’ll be all right,” Charlie said. He held the pistol in one hand and the flask with the other.

“Shit. You been drinking all this time?”

“All this time,” Mariposa said.

“This is all so damn insane.”

“Not yet it ain’t,” Charlie said. “We got a little ways to go.”

There was a gust and the U-Haul swayed and Mariposa squeezed Cohen’s arm with both hands.

“We’re gonna have to wait on this wind,” Cohen said.

The rain pelted the windshield and the headlights gave little notice and something big smacked against the side of the U-Haul and they all jumped.

“All we gotta do is get right over there and it’s home free,” Charlie said. “About a mile up is one left turn and then another two or three miles to 49.” He pointed out in front with the flask. At the end of the headlight beams there was a bridge that was being washed over by an overflowing creek. The water rushed across the bridge and tree limbs and mounds of leaves and chunks of earth moved along with the strong current. The bridge rails were low and they leaned and wobbled with the flow, beaten nearly to death.

“No way,” Cohen said. “That thing’s about to go. You can’t even see it.”

“You can’t see it but it’s there. I been over this one before.”

“Then why’d it take so long to get to it?”

“ ’Cause it ain’t my first choice.”

“We can’t go over that,” Mariposa said.

“Can and are.”

Cohen put his hand on hers. Squeezed a little. “You just remember, Charlie, if we get washed away, you don’t get the money.”

Charlie drank from the flask. Thought about it.

The U-Haul rocked constantly in the wind. The creek seemed to
rise even farther as they watched and no one could see the bridge or the other side of it.

“We got to wait,” Cohen said. “It’s a goddamn river.”

“Please,” Mariposa said.

“Just hold on,” Charlie answered.

“Hold on, hell,” Cohen said. “Back the hell up and let’s either sit or go another way.”

“It’s fine.”

“Goddamn it ain’t fine,” Cohen yelled and reached across Mariposa and shoved the old man. Charlie dropped the flask and shoved back and they began to wrestle with Mariposa in the middle and she yelled at them to stop and she yelled at the fierce night. They grabbed and pulled at one another and then Charlie stuck the pistol against Cohen’s ear.

“Don’t do it again, Cohen. I swear to God,” Charlie said.

Cohen didn’t move. Mariposa went quiet.

“Now settle down. Everything’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” Mariposa said.

“Shut the hell up.”

She wrapped her arms and rocked back and forth and watched the water run across the bridge and the road.

“Put it down,” Cohen said, the tip of the pistol touching his earlobe.

“I’m gonna put it down,” Charlie said. “And no more shit. You got it? We’re gonna sit. Watch. And then we’re going across that bridge.”

He removed the pistol from Cohen’s ear and Cohen sat back. Mariposa leaned over on Cohen and dropped her head in his chest. She began to talk, “God get us out God get us out God get us out.”

“Don’t do it,” Cohen said with a tight jaw and Charlie ignored him.

Cohen lowered his head and leaned on her. His forehead resting on the back of hers. His teeth clenched in frustration. Another swoon and the U-Haul seemed to want to give way and Cohen realized he had done it again. He was going to lose another one in a place where she shouldn’t be.

One side of the bridge railing bent way back, then broke free and disappeared into the current. Charlie turned to him and in the dim
glow of the dash light his drunk, crooked grin seemed like something out of the underworld. He raised his pistol to remind Cohen that he hadn’t put it down.

Cohen shook his head slowly.

Charlie said, “Hang on.” He shifted the U-Haul into drive and stomped on the gas.

The truck plunged into the current and they felt the surge immediately. “Goddamn,” Charlie said, surprised by its strength and he dropped the flask and gripped the steering wheel tightly and the truck pushed to the left and toward the missing rail. Charlie stayed on the gas and the engine made a gurgling noise and then the bridge buckled underneath them and the back of the U-Haul dropped and the three passengers were suddenly reclined and looking up, as if someone had pulled a chair out from under them. Mariposa screamed and Charlie kept turning the steering wheel as if that somehow mattered. The back end swung around but the front end was caught on something and kept the truck from taking off downstream. Water poured into the floorboard and the headlights looked up into the vicious sky and Cohen shoved Mariposa back and leaned across and shattered Charlie’s nose with his right fist. Charlie roared like a wounded bear and he dropped the pistol onto the floorboard. Cohen went for it but then the U-Haul bed broke loose from the cab and flipped on its side and was gone with the current.

The cab fell to the driver’s side and Mariposa and Cohen were on top of Charlie, their bodies frantic and tangled and fighting at one another and Charlie’s nose bleeding freely. The pistol was there somewhere but Cohen went for Charlie instead and in the frantic mass he got his hands around the old man’s throat and he squeezed and Charlie’s arms were pinned by Mariposa’s body on top of him and Cohen’s body on top of hers. Cohen squeezed and tried to hold on as the cab dislodged and floated downstream and then it crashed into something and they all banged against the windshield and dashboard. Cohen’s hands came off Charlie’s neck but Charlie was hurt and spitting and coughing. The rushing water rocked the U-Haul and Mariposa and Cohen fought to
get their bodies turned and their heads up and Charlie stayed pinned against the door. Mariposa got her feet on Charlie and stood on him and was down and grabbing at him again when the pistol fired. Cohen reared and expected to feel a burn somewhere but he didn’t and then he grabbed at Mariposa and expected her to tumble but she didn’t. Cohen got on his knees and he reached for Charlie but Charlie’s body had gone limp and he wasn’t fighting anymore. Cohen grabbed Charlie’s wrist and found the pistol in his hand and a bleeding hole underneath his chin. He took the pistol from Charlie’s dead hand and the water rushed into the cab and by the time he and Mariposa pulled themselves together and realized what was going on, the cab was half filled with water.