This River Awakens (55 page)

‘I think I know who he was,’ Carl said.

‘What?’

‘A guy fell off a trestle bridge, in the city. Last spring. I read it. I checked the newspapers – we got a stack of them in the basement. I don’t think they ever found the body.’

‘We did,’ I said slowly.

‘Yeah. Maybe.’

‘Now what?’

Carl grinned, showing his yellow, coated teeth. ‘Show’n’tell?’

*   *   *

I wrapped the skull and the long bone inside my jean jacket. We didn’t say anything all the way back to school. I thought about Roland, about when I’d last seen him.
He’ll never change. Not from that time. Not for me, not for anyone.
I remembered him, solid, quiet, his slow, even voice. Like a piece of the earth. He’d seen his own face on the body. But he’d been wrong. I remembered Roland’s face exactly. I knew I would always remember it.

We could now put names on things, we’d come to that time. All the faces. Fisk’s – a wintry mask of hate for four boys. Walter Gribbs – old and frightened and full of stories, stories that went with him when he died. He’d always have them, there, in every wrinkled line.

I was waiting for Lynk’s face, for what I’d see when everything collapsed, fell away. I thought of Carl, walking beside me. He seemed unchanged, in some ways more solid than Roland, but I still shied from thinking about him too hard, too deeply. I wanted to believe there was a difference between us.

We arrived at the doors. Carl looked at me. I shrugged. He reached up and pulled one of them open. I saw myself in the dark glass, smeared with grey, drying mud, my jacket wrapped around something and pressed like a soccer ball against my stomach. And my own face. ‘Christ,’ I said, then stepped past the image, stepped inside, with Carl on my heels.

The hallway, with its rows of boot and coat racks, was otherwise empty. The heaters were on, blasting out hot, stale air. Carl moved ahead to the inner doors leading into the open-room. He looked back at me, an eager light in his eyes. ‘Come on,’ he said.

‘You think this is going to be easy?’ I asked him. My heart was pounding.

He shook his head. ‘But you don’t want Thompson showing up, do you?’

He was right. We heard a car’s tyres outside and I turned.

‘That’s Lyle’s,’ Carl said.

‘All right, all right. Let’s get going.’

Carl opened the door. I marched in. No one really noticed us until we approached Rhide’s class. She was perched on her stool and had everyone sitting on the carpet again. I saw Jennifer, red-eyed and looking dishevelled and with bandages on her neck, in her usual place at the back, Barb sitting close beside her. Lynk was sitting cross-legged almost at Rhide’s feet, his head tilted up, watching her every move.

In the class beyond them was Principal Thompson. He was walking between the desks, while the kids sat writing on sheets of foolscap.

Rhide saw us first. Her eyes widened in alarm. Carl moved ahead of me and sat down behind Gary, who swung around to scowl at him. Gary looked up and met my eyes, then turned back to face Rhide.

I stopped beside Carl. ‘Go ahead,’ I told him. ‘Pull his gotch right up over his fucking head.’

I don’t think Rhide heard precisely what I said, because her surprised expression didn’t change.

‘Owen,’ Jennifer said.

I looked over at her, still cradling my prize. I knew my eyes were cold and distant. I didn’t want them that way, but I couldn’t help it. I went to the front of the class.

‘What is it, Owen?’ Rhide asked, rising from the stool.

‘Show and tell,’ I said. ‘Carl’s idea.’

Lynk crabbed backwards as I approached, pushing against other kids, who parted for him uneasily.

Principal Thompson had finally noticed. He was on his way over, so I knew I had little time. I faced the class. ‘Me and Roland and Carl,’ I said. ‘And Lynk. We found this last year—’

‘He’s lying!’ Lynk shouted. ‘Send him to the office. He’s lying!’

I unwrapped the skull and set it down, on Rhide’s stool. ‘Carl maybe found out who he was. A guy from the city. Fell off a bridge and they never found the body. We did. It came down with the thaw last year. This is what’s left.’ I studied Jennifer’s face. ‘It was our secret. But Roland wanted to tell. He didn’t want it to be a secret any more. And Lynk says it never existed. He’s wrong. It’s a man who drowned. And we found him. Me, Roland, Carl and Lynk.’

I turned to Rhide. ‘I’m going. I’ll be back tomorrow, but I’m going now.’

Principal Thompson was staring at the skull. ‘I think you’d better stay,’ he said. ‘The police will have questions.’

‘Carl can answer them,’ I said. ‘I’m going.’

Jennifer got to her feet. ‘Owen, please…’

I shrugged, retrieving my jean jacket. No one stopped me as I made my way out. Jennifer caught up at the doors. We went out into the hall, to find Mr Lyle standing there.

‘Jennifer?’ he asked.

‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Roland and Owen were best friends. He wants to go home.’

‘All right, but—’

‘I’ll take him. All right?’

He hesitated, then nodded.

I turned to Jennifer, knowing how cold my eyes were, knowing, but unable to change them. ‘I don’t want you,’ I said. ‘I don’t want anybody.’

I saw a change come over her face, I saw the colour leaving it like someone had pulled a plug under her heart. She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it again.

Lyle cleared his throat, laid a hand on Jennifer’s shoulder. ‘Come on,’ he said quietly.

I pushed the doors aside and stepped out into the warm spring air.

V

The attic room still held winter’s chill. My hands shook as I lit the candles on the desk and reached for my book. I tried to bury myself in the words I read, tried to sink down, away, out of sight, leaving not a ripple. But it was no good – the voice in my head wouldn’t be silenced, no matter how much I hated it now, no matter how much I wanted to run from myself.

He was dead. He’d seemed as strong, as solid, as the earth itself.

The shaking spread up from my hands. I bent over in the chair, lowering myself down on to my thighs, my hands tucked under my chin. The trembling got worse, my teeth clacking, as I stared at the woodchip-snagged lumps of cotton on the floorboards under the desk.

I thought about the stranger, the one who’d once used this secret room, the one who’d sat here at this desk absorbing words and words and words, swelling, bloating and still devouring pieces of the world, until its face had become every face, and no face. The stranger, who was no more in anyone’s mind but mine. And the stranger’s secret, this room and all its books, nothing but food for the rats.

I’d tried so hard. Dragging the giant to the history in this room. Dragging this history to the giant on his bed of sticks. I’d thought it important, as if in remaking the world I’d find in my hands a gift. Of understanding, of feeling, of something other than this shivering solitude.

The skull had felt heavy in my hands, but that was only because of the river clay inside it. It hadn’t seemed especially big. Just a man’s skull, after all, and here, in this room, just a stranger’s leavings – not enough clues to shape a history, to reshape a world. So much more was needed, and I didn’t feel up to the task.

It’s the histories that just vanish.
Like that old woman’s in Constantinople. Like Walter’s, and Old Man Fisk’s. It’s the histories that stop almost before they’ve begun. Like Roland’s, and the Boorman kid who’d died on the highway. They all sank away without a sound, reduced to a handful of words in some story.

I sat in the gloom of this secret room, like they now sat in my head. Each alone, as I was alone, each nothing more than a few rat-chewed pages in some tattered forgotten place where all the memories gathered dust. And I could do nothing for them. There wasn’t enough left of me.

The phone was echoing through the floor. My lie of feeling sick was about to be revealed. There’d be footsteps on the stairs, a knock on my room’s door. I didn’t want the questions that would come, the soft looks of sympathy, the comfort of arms around me, the confusion in my mother’s eyes –
something about a skull?

I guess I wanted too much. All along. I wanted a normal life, a house and a yard, the same friends for more than just a single year at a time. I wanted a place where I belonged, a history that didn’t always break. I wanted to stop being ashamed of a father who – no matter what he tried – couldn’t earn enough money to keep his family in one place, and a mother who’d tried so hard making friends, only to leave them yet again, and again, until she’d stopped trying. I guess I just wanted to be sure – of something, anything. That’s all. Just to be sure, just to feel that it was okay, just once, just one thing, one small thing.

Oh, Roland.

VI

It was the morning of the funeral. I woke to the sound of metal hammering, crashing, clanging on metal. One of the twins let out a wail from the front steps which quickly fell silent. Outside, the hammering continued, frenzied, wild.

I leapt out of bed and raced downstairs. I came to the porch, where Mother stood, smoking a cigarette, the twins flanking her. Their backs were to me. I stepped around them, to see my father with a two-handed wrench, in his t-shirt and jeans, wearing slippers. My father, almost unrecognisable as he swung the wrench at the machine, smashing pieces from it, huge dents in the cowling – which had mostly come away, revealing the insides.

Ignoring us, ignoring everything else, he swung the wrench into the machine, over and over again.

‘Owen,’ Mother said calmly. ‘Take the twins inside.’

I saw the shock on their faces, the wonder and fear in their eyes. Heart thundering, I grabbed them by their shoulders, swung them around and propelled them through the doorway. I then turned back, to watch. A sickening memory washed over me.
The toaster.

‘Mom?’

She sighed, not looking down at me, eyes on her husband, on my father. ‘It’s been coming. For some time. Not the best of days today, Owen.’

‘I know,’ I said.

‘Not enough. There’s other news.’

‘Oh.’

His hands were bright red, his hair hung in uncombed strands. He was impossibly thin and long-limbed, grunting and gasping as he destroyed his machine.

When he finally fell to his knees, the wrench clunking on the driveway, she took a step forward. But he shook his head and she stopped, her shoulders falling slightly. He looked up at me, his eyes red. ‘I’m sorry, son.’

I shook my head.

‘No, Owen. I’m sorry. It’s the day for your … for you, I mean.’

Mother said, ‘He means—’

‘I know,’ I said.
Today’s for Roland. I know.

‘I’ll get ready,’ he said, climbing to his feet.

‘Let’s go inside,’ Mother said, resting a hand on my shoulder. ‘We’ll talk.’

‘Okay.’

*   *   *

The cemetery was old, a burial place for farmers. Trees boxed it in except for the gravel track that came down from the crossroads. Four section fields met here, all of them fallow, messy with yellow stubble and crusted slabs of ice. The fields reached out in every direction to distant trees, a raised rail track, farmhouses, barns and combines.

Crows crowded the leafless branches on all sides, all silent in the chill morning air. There was no wind and the grey sky seemed remote overhead. The air smelled of decaying leaves, a bitter taste of mud on the tongue.

The new gravestone with Roland’s name on it was at the end of the family’s row – another Fraser sunk into this earth. I stood, flanked by my parents, close enough to read the names and dates on the other stones. An older brother, an older sister, a baby girl. All the names, all the dates within the past ten years, left me confused, a little frightened. So many children had died.

The parson spoke on. I’d stopped listening to his words. God had no place here. The parson was just a stand-in, and it seemed as if the soft earth devoured his voice and everything attached to it. God wouldn’t step into this scene for fear of sinking, leaving not a trace. God – if he existed at all – lived in a desert thousands of miles from here.

I looked around, at the barren trees, at the huddled black smears that were the silent crows. I looked over at the gravel track, and at all the cars and pick-ups lining the shoulders of the crossroads, their flanks splashed in mud. There was a graininess to every image my eyes found, as if I were looking out on the world through a thin layer of sand. It hurt to blink, it hurt as I jerked my head from one thing to the next.

The sky was like porcelain, and I had a sudden sense that everything was about to break overhead.

The people – all looking weighed down and tired – were huddled around the fresh mound. I looked down at the mud of the grave itself, the reddish clay that told me the river had once reached this far. I looked at the wreaths, then over at the black hearse, and finally at the man in black with the black-bound book in his white hands. I imagined he was holding a crow, wings spread out, reading nothing but unable to stop talking anyway, unable to let silence take over. The red wilted flower of his mouth moved to shape words. The sounds meant nothing to me, less than the whimpering of a lost dog.

There were so many familiar faces in the crowd, so many complete strangers. None looked very human. Teachers, kids from school, other farmers, lots of old people. And Roland’s family – just the one boy left now, little Arnie, who looked so old he might have been a dwarf, with hands too big, a slowness to his gestures – moving the hair from his eyes, shifting weight from one leg to the other.
He’s old enough. He’s stood here before.

Roland’s father was squinting straight ahead, as if studying something beyond the line of trees, something on the western horizon, where bruised clouds squatted heavily against the flat line of the earth. Roland’s mother – who had given Roland her hands and her solidness and her strength – stood straight-backed beside her tall, thin husband, one hand on Arnie’s shoulder, her eyes holding on the parson with so much unblinking concentration I thought the droning man might burst into flame.