Where the River Ends (11 page)

12

JUNE 2, MORNING

W
e passed the night on the beach beneath a crape myrtle.

Abbie laid her head on my lap and slept in fits while I listened, thought back through the last four years and grew angrier. Watching three idiots rifle through our life was, in football terms, piling on. I was downright pissed. She mumbled, talked in garbled sentences and her arms and legs twitched in short violent strokes. Given the pain, she’d not known deep sleep in months. Maybe a year. She floated in and out of consciousness—resting just beneath the surface. It was like watching someone who slept with one eye open.

I ran my fingers down her temple, ear, neck and along her shoulder. The shadows around her eyes were dark and sockets sunk deep. Her fingers trembled. I cupped them inside mine and tucked them beneath her chin.

She’d hoped for so much, so many times and for so long but each scan, each new devastating report had chipped away at her. Doctors told me that the restlessness was a function of the illness—the deterioration of her central nervous system, the medicines that poisoned her. I think there was more to it. Deep down, Abbie knew that if she let her guard down she’d never wake up.

I’m a sucker for the Rocky movies. I’ve watched each some twenty times. I can’t explain that other than there’s just something about a man who refuses to go down. Who stands toe to toe, time and time again and says,
I am.
Don’t take that the wrong way. I’m no Rock. Hardly. But my Abbie is. Look at her. Here lies the most beautiful, most precious, most magnificent woman on the planet who, despite the baggy skin and that little voice sitting on her shoulder telling her she’s not even a shadow of her former self, is still swinging. Still throwing blows. Still reaching deep.

In the weeks and months to come, people will look at what I’ve done and ask me why. Why’d I do it? I’m not sure I can put that into words. If they have to ask, then they really won’t understand the answer. At least, an answer they can accept or will understand.

Nobody fights forever, so I prepared myself for two battles. The first was fighting alongside her. We’ve done that. As well as two can. But as the years have ticked by, I’ve seen a second front coming—and it’s the tougher of the two. Abbie might still be swinging but she was beat. To be honest, I think she was still in the ring fighting, simply for me. Lately, the thing that had been keeping me up nights was wondering what would happen if I told her that she could let her guard down—that she could stop fighting. What if she was just waiting on me?

W
HEN SUNRISE FINALLY BROKE
through the treetops, I was ready to shoot somebody. She woke, lifted her head off my lap, rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and said, “How you doing?” I turned downriver, thumbed away the tears, my right index finger tapping the trigger guard of the shotgun. She raised an eyebrow. “That well, huh?”

She sat up. “Don’t let them rob us of this. Got it?” See what I mean?

“Wait here while I go see what’s left.” I slipped down into the river and headed back to the campsite.

My reconnaissance didn’t take long. They’d thrown everything into the fire. The fire must have been hot because only ashes littered the riverbank. The second canoe was empty but it would float. In short, we had no food, no shelter, and no GPS. Abbie had her sleeping bag and the T-shirt she was wearing but nothing else. I had the long-sleeved shirt I was wearing, the shorts I had on, a pair of Tevas, a shotgun, a revolver and the Pelican case. None of which we could eat or drink.

We had to get going.

I pulled the mango-colored canoe back down to Abbie, laid her in the middle and said, “In a few miles, we’ll start coming upon some cabins and that…resort. Maybe we can find a few things there.”

She smirked. “Resort, huh? I should fit right in.”

The Bare Bottom Resort was a nudist colony populated by all manner of society—from the older and more comfortable to the younger and more experimental. They usually stayed back from the river and didn’t draw attention, but if you didn’t know what to expect, you might find yourself surprised.

She tapped me in the chest pocket and raised her eyebrows. “What’re we checking off today?”

“Honey, we’re going to try and find some water and, if we’re lucky, some clothes for you.”

She slipped her leg outside the zipper of her sleeping bag. Several small bruises polka-dotted her thigh. “Cheer up…It’s not every day you get to paddle your favorite river with a naked woman.”

“Good point.”

I reached behind my seat for the map case, but it, too, was gone. I patted my chest hoping to hear the rustle of the plastic bag. No rustle.

She read it on my face. “That too, huh?” I nodded. The sides of her lips turned up. “I think I can remember.”

It was a familiar place. I scratched my head. When everything is gone, what remains?

I hadn’t been paddling twenty minutes when I pushed the bow of the canoe through some overhanging limbs and pulled through into a deep pool on the other side. The bank rose twenty feet on either side, nearly straight up. Downed trees formed a spaghetti junction so I stepped out, threw my arms through the straps and leaned into their weight. It was like walking on a beaver dam for a hundred yards. With every step, I’d break through one layer of twigs and sticks, only to be temporarily stopped by another layer submerged between the surface. I pulled on the limbs, ducked below others and stepped over still others. The problem was not me but the canoe—and not breaking every one of Abbie’s ribs. I was pulling the canoe over a log, sweat pouring off my face, my hands cut and bleeding, and Abbie’s hand came up over the edge. She was starting to laugh. “Honey?”

I set my feet and pulled. Then set them again and pulled harder. Finally, the canoe slid over the log and glided across the water about four feet until it hit another log. Standing hurt. “Yes?”

“When we get home, let’s get this thing serviced. I think the shocks on this baby are shot.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

“Good.” She lay back down. “Wake me when we get out of this mess.”

I walked around to the bow, grabbed the ropes again and stared at the river in front of us. There were another fifty such trees—horizontal hurdles—just within eyesight. When Abbie had said all the way from Moniac, this is what she meant. The impossible part where there is no rhythm other than some offbeat thing that only the river hears. Here, the river owns you. It breaks you down, holds you at its mercy and you don’t stand a chance. It is here that she stops you. Makes you look around. Forces you to measure…and be measured.

Forearm-thick muscadine vines, starting on opposite banks, had climbed up the live oak trunks and then crossed over the river using the limbs as a trellis. Having met in the middle, they interlocked, wove together and created a patchwork through which little sunlight passed but, come September, would hang thick with grapes. Currently, they were thick with leaves and little green flowers and crawling with lizards.

The vines often exceed a hundred feet in length and flourish in warm and humid conditions where the soil is sandy. Hence, the river. The tough-skinned, five-seeded grapes grow to two inches in diameter and range in color from greenish bronze to bronze, to pinkish red, purple and almost black.

When they ripen, folks will lay a tarp across the ground and shake the vine. Sugar content of the grapes can reach twenty-five percent, so they’ll make good jellies and jams, but down here the preferred use is wine.

I slid over a log, heaved on the canoe and it slid over and down, resting in the water. I was spent. I leaned on the bow, gorging on air. Somewhere behind me, I heard a hammer cock. A broken, raspy voice—thick with mucous—broke the stillness. “You ain’t got a lick o’sense.”

I turned and stood nose to barrel with the business end of an old rusty shotgun that looked about five feet long. Behind it stood the most hideous woman I’d ever laid eyes on. Toothless gums, mouth half full of snuff, the brim of her hat was pushed up flat over her forehead where it touched the crown, and her hands were gnarled and her fingers crooked in all the wrong places. She wasn’t white or black but some faded shade between. Her face was covered in freckles and the top half of her right ear was missing. She wore denim overalls, a tattered denim shirt and knee-high rubber boots. She slid the barrel off center and sized me up. Now if she pulled the trigger, she’d just blow off the right side of my head rather than the whole thing. Her left eye was clouded over and a large cataract had dimmed her pupil. She closed her mouth, pushed all the spit to one side, then pursed her lips and shot it in a practiced stream out the side of her mouth. Over to the right, some fifteen feet away, a scratchy noise caught her attention. With swiftness, she swung, aimed and pressed the trigger. Four feet of flame rose out of the barrel and somewhere across the river, a rodent with a long tail caught the entire load and was launched airborne in a hundred disconnected pieces. She ejected the shell, slid another in and slammed the receiver shut. Eyes narrowed, she studied me and the canoe. The blast had brought Abbie upright and bright-eyed. The woman pointed the barrel down and raised one eyebrow. She shook her head. “Rats! They gnawin’ at my vines. I don’t like that.”

Abbie nodded. “I see that.”

The woman waved the barrel at me. “You with him?”

Abbie pointed at me. “He promised me an Alaskan cruise, you know one of those whale-watching deals, and…this is what I get.”

The woman broke the receiver open, hung the shotgun across her arm like a boomerang and laughed. She spat a dark stream out into the river. “I like you.”

Abbie shrugged. “Gee, that is sure better than the alternative.”

The woman laughed again. The mucous hung on her vocal chords and made me gag just listening to it. “What you doing with him?”

“He’s my husband.”

She waved the bent barrel toward me. “He’s an idiot.”

“You know, my dad has been telling me that for fourteen years.”

The woman laughed a hyena-howl that rose up through the trees. The force of the laugh dislodged the tickler in her throat. She cornered it with her tongue, cocked her cheeks and rocketed the oyster-sized loogie out over the river. “I like you.”

Abbie followed the arc of the spittle. “I’m glad we’ve established that.” When the spit landed, the fish nibbled at it, popping the water with suction.

The woman walked down into the water and waded up next to the canoe. She stood waist-deep, eye to eye with Abbie. Swaying to one side, she said, “You sick?”

Abbie nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Well…” Abbie looked at me and shrugged. Then she did the knock-on-wood thing on her head. “I’ve got this thing in my head that’s growing. Seems to have a mind of its own.”

The woman tongued an enormous wad of snuff from one cheek to another. “What’s gonna happen?”

“Well, according to the doctors, it’s kind of like having a miniature bomb in my head.”

“When’s it gonna go off?”

“That’s the question.”

The woman pulled on Abbie’s arm, edging her closer to Abbie’s head. She studied her face and neck. “Don’t see nothing.”

“Me either, but take my word for it.” Abbie smoothed the scarf. “There’s something in here.”

“Well, what happens when it blows up?”

Abbie smiled. “That’s sort of a good news–bad news sort of thing. The good news is that it won’t hurt anymore.”

The woman rested the shotgun on her right shoulder. “And the bad news?”

Abbie pointed at me. “He gets to marry one of my rich friends.”

The woman slammed the shotgun closed and waved it at me, nodding. “It’s always about the money, ain’t it? Son of a—”

Abbie put her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “It’s okay. Really.”

Evidently, she heard another rustle on the far beach because she swung one hundred and eighty degrees and spewed another four feet of flame out the barrel. This one didn’t so much go airborne as it just disintegrated, leaving a red stain on the beach. The woman nodded and spat. She broke the receiver, ejecting the shell, and thumbed in a third round, hanging the gun back across her right arm. She sniffed the air then turned back to Abbie. “You need help with him?”