Where the Line Bleeds

Jesmyn Ward

A Bolden Book

For Joshua Adam Dedeaux,
who leads while I follow.

And Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife, because she was barren: and the
Lord was entreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived. And the children
struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And
she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said unto her... two manner of
people shall be separated from thy bowels.... "

- Genesis 25

"Why Jesus equipped with angels and devils equipped with Pac?
For God so loved the world that he blessed the thug with rock.
Won't stop until they feel me.
Protect me devil, I think the Lord is trying to kill me. "

- Pastor Troy, "Vice Versa"

HE RIVER WAS YOUNG AND SMALL. AT ITS START IT SEEPED FROM THE
red clay earth in the piney woods of southern Mississippi, and then
wound its way, brown and slow, over a bed of tiny gray and ochre
pebbles through the pines, shallow as a hand, deep as three men standing, to
the sandy, green lowlands of the gulf of Mexico. It slithered along, wide and
narrow, crossed by small wood and concrete bridges, lined by thin slivers of
white beach, in and out of the trees, before it divided itself into the bayou
and emptied itself into the bay. Near the river's end, at one such bridge, two
teenage boys, twins, stood at the apex. Legs over the side, they gripped the
warm, sweaty steel at their backs. Underneath them, the water of the Wolf
River lay dark and deep, feathered by the current. They were preparing
to jump.

The sun had only risen a few hours ago, but it was hot even for late
May. Christophe, thinner of the two, let his arms loosen and leaned out,
testing the height. His muscles showed ropy and long over his shoulders
and down his back. Christophe wondered how cold the water would be.
Joshua, taller, and softer on account of the thin layer of fat across his
stomach and chest and bigger in the arms, rested his rear lightly on the
steel of the railing, shying from its heat. Christophe looked at his brother,
and thought the air around him seemed to waver. Joshua kicked, spewing
sand and gravel from the edge. He laughed. Christophe felt his hands slip
and grabbed at the rail. He looked over at his brother and smiled, the side
of his mouth curving into a fishhook. Christophe knew he was sweating more than normal in the heat, and it was making his hands slippery. He
and his twin were still drunk from the night before. They were graduating
from high school in three hours.

"What the hell y'all doing?"

Dunny, their cousin, stood below them on the sand at the edge of
the water with a beer in his hand. He'd parked the car and walked to the
bank while they'd taken off their shirts and shoes. His T-shirt hung long
and loose on him except where it pulled tight over his beer belly, and his
jean shorts sagged low. This was one of the tallest bridges on the coast.
When they were younger, all the kids from Bois Sauvage would ride their
bikes there and spend all day in a circuit: plummeting from the bridge,
swimming to the shore, and then running on their toes over the scalding
concrete to fall to the water again. Now, the twins were almost too old to
jump. Christophe thought he and Joshua had jumped once the previous
summer, but he was not sure. While Dunny had egged Christophe on
when he thought of the bridge at 4 a.m. after he and Joshua finished off
a case, Dunny had refused to jump. He was twenty-five, he had said, and
while the twins could still balance on the iron railing like squirrels on a
power line, he couldn't.

"Y'all niggas gonna jump or what?" Dunny asked.

Christophe squinted at Joshua, at the face that was his own, but not,
full lips, a jutting round nose, and skin the color of the shallows of the
water below that named them twins. If he leaned in closer, he could see
that which was different: freckles over Joshua's cheeks and ears where
Christophe's skin was clear, Joshua's eyes that turned hazel when the sun
hit them while Christophe's eyes remained so dark brown they looked
black, and Joshua's hair that was so fine at the neck, it was hard to braid.
Christophe moved closer to his brother, and when his arm slid along the
length of Joshua's forearm, for a second it was as if Christophe had touched
himself, crossed his own forearms, toucher and touched. Christophe was
ready to leap. His stomach roiled with a combination of beer and anxiety,
but he'd wait. Christophe knew Joshua. Christophe knew that while he
liked to do things quickly, Joshua was slower about some things. His
brother was looking across the water, eyeing the river winding away into
the distance, the houses like small toys along the shoreline that were half
hidden by the oak, pine, and underbrush rustling at the water's edge.

"That one up there on the right-that white one. Looks like the one
Ma-mee used to work at, huh?"

What Christophe could see of the house through the trees was large
and white and glazed with windows. He nodded, feeling his balance.

"Yeah," Christophe said.

"I always wanted to have a house like that one day. Big like
that. Nice."

Christophe loved to look at those houses, but hated it, too. They
made him feel poor. They made him think of Ma-mee, his grandmother,
back when she was healthy and could still see, scrubbing the dirt out of
white people's floors for forty years. He knew she was waiting for them
now at the house, regardless of her blindness and her diabetes, with their
gowns laid out on the sofa, pressed. He swallowed, tasting warm beer.
Those stupid houses were ruining the jump.

"Well, the house going to rot into the ground before we can buy
it, Jay." Christophe laughed and spit a white glob out over the river. It
arced and fell quickly. "Can we jump so we can graduate and make some
money?"

Sweat stung Christophe's eyes. Joshua was staring at the water,
blinking hard. Christophe saw Joshua swallow; his brother was nervous
about the drop. His own throat was clenching with the idea of the fall.
It was so early in the summer that Christophe knew the water would be
cold.

"Come on then, Chris."

Joshua grabbed Christophe by the arm and pulled. He threw his
other arm into the air, and leaned out into space. Christophe let go and
leaped into Joshua, hugging him around his chest, and felt him burning
and sweaty in his arms, squirming like a caught fish. They seemed to hang
in the air for a moment, held in place by the heavy, humid blue sky, the
surrounding green, the brown water below. In the distance, a car sounded
as it approached on the road. Christophe heard Joshua exhale deeply, and
he clenched his fingers around Joshua's arms. Then the moment passed,
and they began to fall. They dropped and hit the water and an eruption of
tepid water burned up their noses. Their mouths opening by instinct; the
water was silty on their tongues and tasted like unsweetened tea. In the middle of the surging murky river, both brothers felt for the bottom with
their feet even as they let go of each other and struggled to swim upward.
They surfaced. The day exploded in color and light and sound around
them. They blew snot and water out their nostrils; Christophe tossed his
head and grinned while Joshua screwed a pinky finger into one ear.