This River Awakens

  My laugh sounded harsh. ‘What? The body? Who the fuck cares? Roland’s dead, and Lynk and Jennifer—’ I stopped.

  ‘He lied,’ Carl said.

  ‘No he didn’t.’ I turned away. ‘I saw it in her face.’

  He came up beside me. ‘It’s all, uh, all about the body, Owen.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Everything. Don’t you see?’

  I grunted. ‘No.’

  ‘For Lynk it is.’

  I continued walking, not wanting him beside me, wanting to be alone.

  But Carl wouldn’t leave, and he wouldn’t shut up. ‘He’s been weird, nuts. Ever since we found it. He was always an asshole, but not like this—’

  ‘That’s because of me,’ I said. ‘I was the only one who didn’t kiss his ass. Me and Roland. He could push you around all he wanted to. He still can, and you just take it. What’s your problem, anyway?’

  He shrugged, looking down at the ground, his hands in the pockets of those ugly navy blue corduroy pants.

  We came opposite the overgrown lot. There was a new FOR SALE sign on it, and a placard reading SOLD had been pasted across it. There’ll be a house there. Soon. It’s all disappearing. Lynk won.

  ‘Lynk,’ Carl said, ‘he’s the same as Rhide. And Thompson, and all the others. You were different. So was Roland. But you’re not the same any more. All you care about is Jennifer, and not being noticed in school. Remember Pussy Galore? When you said that, Rhide looked completely fucked. Do you remember?’

  ‘Stop talking about me. You don’t know shit about me.’

  He fell silent.

  I wanted him to leave. ‘I’m not going,’ I said.

  ‘Yes you are. But you don’t want me to come.’

  ‘Fine. So get lost.’

  ‘No. I was there, too. It’s not just yours.’

  ‘All you did was bawl your eyes out. Me and Roland, we looked.’

  ‘It’s mine, too. It’s more mine than—’ He shut up, looking away.

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s mine, too.’

  ‘I’m not going there!’

  He said nothing, but there was a stubborn set to his mouth.

  Why’d you let him do it, Jennifer? You hated him. Why did you do that to me?

  We came to the bend in the road. To our left was the track leading into the Yacht Club. To the right, thirty paces along the bottom road, was my driveway. I stopped, glaring at Carl. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, but I could see he was about to cry.

  ‘You have to,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ I demanded, exasperated and confused. The possibility had long since occurred to me. The lodge had grown. Maybe the body didn’t have to have moved to disappear.

  I didn’t want to go. It didn’t make any difference. Roland was dead. Jennifer had betrayed me and we were over with. Everything had fallen apart. ‘Why the fuck do I have to?’

  ‘Because of Lynk, that’s why. We got to show him – and everyone else.’

  I stared at him. All the Carls of this world, in every class. Roland asked me to protect him. I didn’t want to. I still don’t. There were too many Carls. Way too many. They live, they grow up, they disappear, not even shadows in people’s memories. Just … gone. Like the body. Like how Lynk wanted it.

  I’m a Carl. I was. I might be again. Rhide wants me like that. She wants a world full of Carls – lost, silent, needing to be cared for, spoken for, explained away and described and defined until no one asks anything, no one does anything. No one counts. Like the body, faceless, unknown, no longer the beast, the giant living inside me – inside all of us. Gone, vanished, forgotten.

  I thought I understood something then. About Carl, about all of us, but about him the most. The man who’d drowned – no one came looking for him. No one cared. He was a nothing, in life and in death. He was the boy standing in front of me.

  ‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘Not about you.’

  He seemed to collapse inside.

  ‘For Roland,’ I said, watching the hope creep back into his eyes as I continued, ‘and because of Lynk – and everyone else – what you said about them. Come on, then.’

  We went in silence, cutting across the Yacht Club grounds, heading into the snow-patched wood lining the river. I tried to think of Carl as only a witness, of no more value to me than that. I wasn’t responsible for him. I didn’t want a pet.

  We arrived. The pile of chewed sticks and saplings and mud was still encrusted with ice. The lodge looked huge, and of course the body was nowhere in sight – as gone as it had been the last time we’d come here. Vanished. I stared down at the mound, a helpless feeling sweeping over me. ‘We could dig, I guess.’

  Carl shook his head. ‘No. He’s under, on this side.’ He pointed. ‘Right there.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I came back. I kept coming back. All summer. I saw him when he was just bones, and the beavers started building over him. He’s there, right there.’

  I went closer and crouched down. There was a runway of slick mud, leading from this side of the lodge down to the water. Webbed tracks marked its grey-brown surface. I got down on my hands and knees and looked into the narrow tunnel leading inside. ‘Shit,’ I said. It was dark in there, and would be a tight squeeze.

  Despite what Carl had said, I still didn’t think I’d find anything. He kept coming back. Alone. Christ, he was right. It belongs more to him than to us. But I guess that’s how it should be.

  I lay down on my stomach, trying to pierce the tunnel’s gloom. Would I meet a beaver in there? What would it do? Attack, if I cornered it.

  Carl seemed to read my mind. ‘They have an escape route,’ he said. ‘Other side.’

  Even so, I was scared. I hesitated a moment longer. Having a witness is a pain in the ass. Then I wormed my way into the tunnel.

  The clay was cold, soft and slightly yielding under my hands. I could smell a musty presence – wet fur? – and the air was surprisingly chilly. I wished for some matches, a lighter, a flashlight. I couldn’t see a thing after a few feet, the tunnel narrowing, branches closing in on all sides. I felt a moment of panic but pushed it down. My feet were still clear, still visible to Carl. I had to keep going.

  Something moved in the darkness ahead. I stared, made out two eyes level with mine. They moved away. A muskrat, or a baby beaver.

  Faint splashes sounded outside. I heard Carl swear, then felt his hand on my ankle.

  ‘They’re gone!’ he said. ‘Into the river!’

  I resumed crawling, snaking forward. When I’d gone twice my length, I saw, a few feet ahead, a widening of the tunnel. Faint light seeped down – my eyes had adjusted, and I found I could make out vague shapes. I twisted my head, looking around. But nothing – no bones anywhere. No proof.

  Carl spoke again, his voice muffled and sounding far away. ‘In the clay,’ he said. ‘Check under you.’

  I couldn’t push myself up – there were branches jabbing down into my back – so I moved forward, towards the cave-like space ahead. The smell was very strong now, acrid and almost overwhelming. I clambered into the cave and slowly worked my way around. Under me. In the clay. Fuck, I’ve crawled right over him. I ran my fingertips back along the tunnel. All smooth, except for the tracks. My fingers probed further. They found something long and straight. I clawed at it, and wood splintered under my nails. This is useless.

  Then my fingers brushed over a slight ridge, a ripple that felt harder than the surrounding clay. I followed it and found that it described a rough circle. There was another one right beside it, and an indentation in between and slightly below. I’d found the face.

  I dug into the clay, scratching around the bone, working all sides, climbing closer in order to dig deeper. The clay was hard-packed, solid and ice-cold. My fingers went numb, but still I clawed.

  ‘Owen?’

  ‘I have it!’ I shouted, wincing as my voice came back at me from all sides. I reached a lev
el of entwined sticks, most of them breaking when I twisted them. I realised I could’ve used one of the sticks all around me to dig and swore at my own stupidity. With one of the ones I’d broken off, I resumed digging.

  The face, the skull, the upper teeth, but no lower jaw. Near by I found a long bone which had lain flat in the tunnel, and was worn smooth by the passage of oiled, furred bodies. I dug it free. I kept looking, but found nothing else. It was time to go.

  I had to push the skull in front of me as I snaked along. Ahead there was light, and the sight of Carl’s muddy sneakers.

  The day’s light and warm air felt wonderful. I clambered clear, the skull tucked in one arm, the long bone in my other hand, drawing in deep breaths of fresh, clean air. I sat down on a log, wiping the clay from my face.

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘You got to promise something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We say we found just these bones, from the very beginning. And in the brush, not here. That’s all we say.’ I turned the skull in my hands. There were fillings in all the back teeth that were still in place. The skull was filled with hard-packed clay.

  ‘Okay,’ Carl said, sitting down beside me.

  ‘I don’t want them tearing up the beaver lodge,’ I explained.

  He nodded.

  ‘Fuck,’ I sighed, looking out over the river. The ice had broken, piled up, and was jammed in place. Nothing moved, no sign of the water rolling past underneath.

  ‘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 sa
t 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.