John Hart - Down River

“Not anymore,” I said, but Jamie ignored me. “I’m going to walk down to the river, then I’ll be out of here. Tell Dad that I’m sorry I missed him.”

“Say hello to Grace,” he said.

“She’s down there?”

“Every day. Same time.”

I’d thought a lot about Grace, but was less sure of how to approach her than anyone else. She was two years old when she came to live with Dolf, still a child when I’d left, too young for any kind of explanation. For thirteen years I’d been a large part of her world, and leaving her alone is what felt most like a betrayal. All of my letters had come back unopened. Eventually, I’d stopped sending them.

“How is she?” I asked, trying not to show how much the answer mattered.

Jamie shook his head. “She’s a wild Indian, no mistake, but she always has been. She’s not going to college, looks like. She’s working odd jobs, hanging around the farm, living off the fat of the land.”

“Is she happy?”

“She should be. She’s the hottest thing in three counties.”

“Is that right?” I asked.

“Hell, I’d fuck her.” He winked at me, not seeing how close he was to a beating. I told myself that he meant nothing by it. He was just being a smart-ass. He’d forgotten how much I loved Grace. How protective of her I’d always been.

He wasn’t trying to start something.

“Good to see you, Jamie.” I dropped a hand on the hard lump of his shoulder. “I’ve missed you.”

He folded his massive frame into the pickup truck. “Tomorrow night,” he said, and jolted off toward the fields. From the porch I saw his arm appear as he draped it through the window. Then he tossed a wave, and I knew that he was watching me in the rearview mirror. I stepped onto the lawn and watched until he was gone. Then I turned down the hill.

Grace and I had been close. Maybe it was that day on the riverbank, when I’d held her, wailing, as my father hammered Dolf into the dirt for letting her wander off. Or the long walk back to the house, as my words finally calmed her. Maybe it was the smile she’d given me, or the desperate grip around my neck when I’d tried to put her down. Whatever the case, we’d bonded; and I’d watched with pride as she took the farm by storm. It was as if that plunge in the river had marked her, for she was fearless. She could swim the river by age five, ride bareback by seven. At ten, she could handle my father’s horse, a big, nasty brute that scared everyone but the old man. I taught her how to shoot and how to fish. She’d ride the tractor with me, beg to drive one of the farm trucks, then squeal with laughter when I let her. She was wild by nature, and often returned from school with blood on her cheek and tales of some boy who’d made her angry.

In many ways, I’d missed her the most.

I followed the narrow trail to the river and heard the music long before I got there. She was listening to Elvis Costello.

The dock was thirty feet long, a finger bone stroking the river in the middle of its slow bend to the south. She was at the end of it, a lean brown figure in the smallest white bikini I’d ever seen. She sat on the side of the dock, holding, with her foot, the edge of a dark blue canoe and speaking to the woman who sat in it. I stopped under a tree, hesitant about intruding.

The woman had white hair, a heart-shaped face, and lean arms. She looked very tan in a shirt the color of daffodils. I watched as she patted Grace’s hand and said something I could not hear. Then she gave a small wave and Grace pushed with her foot, skimming the canoe out into the river. The woman dipped a paddle and held the bow upstream. She said last words to the younger woman, then looked up and saw me. She stopped paddling and the current bore her down. She stared hard, then nodded once, and it was like I’d seen a ghost.

She drove the canoe upstream, and Grace lay down on the hard, white wood. The moment held such brightness, and I watched the woman until the curve in the river stole her away. Then I walked onto the dock, my feet loud on the wood. She did not move when she spoke.

“Go away, Jamie. I will not swim with you. I will not date you. I will not sleep with you under any circumstances. If you want to stare at me, go back to your telescope on the third floor.”

“It’s not Jamie,” I said.

She rolled onto her side, slid tinted glasses down her nose, and showed me her eyes. They were blue and sharp.

“Hello, Grace.”

She declined to smile, and lifted the glasses to hide her eyes. She rolled onto her stomach, reached for the radio, and turned it down. Her chin settled on the back of her folded hands, and she looked out over the water.

“Am I supposed to jump up and throw my arms around you?” she asked.

“No one else has.”

“I won’t feel sorry for you.”

“You never answered my letters.”

“To hell with your letters, Adam. You were all I had and you left. That’s where the story ends.”

“I’m sorry, Grace. If it means anything, leaving you alone broke my heart.”

“Go away, Adam.”

“I’m here now.”

Her voice spiked. “Who else cared about me? Not your stepmother. Not Miriam and not Jamie. Not until I had tits. Just a couple of busy old men that knew nothing about raising young girls. The whole world was messed up after you left, and you left me alone to deal with it. All of it. A world of shit. Keep your letters.”

Her words were killing me. “I was tried for murder. My own father kicked me out. I couldn’t stay here.”

“Whatever.”

“Grace-”

“Put some lotion on my back, Adam.”

“I don’t-”

“Just do it.”

I knelt on the wood beside her. The lotion was hot out of the bottle, cooked in the sun and smelling of bananas. Grace was beneath me, a stretch of hard, brown body that I could not relate to. I hesitated, and she reached behind herself and untied the top of her bikini. The straps fell away and for an instant, before she lay back down, one of her breasts hung in my vision. Then she was flat on the wood, and I knelt unmoving, completely undone. It was her manner, the sudden woman of her, and the certain knowledge that the Grace I’d known was lost forever.

“Don’t take all day,” she said.

I put the lotion on her back but did a bad job of it. I couldn’t look at the soft curves of her, the long legs slightly parted. So I looked over the river as well, and if we saw the same thing we could not have known. There were no words for that moment.

I’d barely finished when she said, “I’m going for a swim.” She retied her top and stood, the smooth plane of her stomach inches from my face. “Don’t go away,” she said, then turned and split the water in one fluid motion. I stood and watched the sun flash off of her arms as she stroked hard against the current. She went out fifty feet, then turned, and swam back. She cut through the river like she belonged in it, and I thought of the day she’d first went in, how the water had opened up and taken her down.

The river ran off of her as she climbed up the ladder. The weight of water pulled her hair back, and for a moment I saw something fierce in her naked features. But then the glasses went back on, and I stood mutely as she lay back down and let the sun begin to bake her dry.

“Should I even ask how long you plan to stay?” she said.

I sat next to her. “As long as it takes. A couple of days.”

“Do you have any plans?”

“One or two things,” I said. “Seeing friends. Seeing family.”

She laughed an unforgiving laugh. “Don’t count on a whole lot of this. I have a life, you know. Things I won’t drop just because you decide to show up unannounced.” Then, without skipping a beat, she asked me, “Do you smoke?” She reached into the pile of clothes next to her-cutoffs, red T-shirt, flip-flops-and came out with a small plastic bag. She pulled out a joint and a lighter.