Michael Smith - Rivers

COHEN’S MIND BEGAN TO BETRAY him as he walked on. The hunger and the fever and the exhaustion. Things that weren’t there dashing in and out of ditches and out from behind trees and calling to him with hollow, singsong voices. He shook continuously now. Stopped every hundred yards and knelt or sat down. Water standing everywhere. He sometimes held the trunk of a tree to keep himself upright. He moved along with pain in his shoulder and down his back but he kept on, fighting off the tricks in his mind, trying to keep toward the church, trying to ignore the rain, thinking about the food and water he would find when he got there. He called out as he walked on, Please God be there. Please God be there. There was no knowing if the church was standing but he believed it would be. He didn’t have another choice.

The dog started out with him but would get ahead and turn back and look at Cohen, impatient with the lack of pace. Now and again the dog would wander off, out into a pasture or off into a stretch of woods, and then come back and walk with him again. He found freshly flooded roads and bridges that caused him to detour several times, but he kept going in the right direction and could feel the church road getting closer. He fought on, burning and chilled but encouraged by the familiar landscape. Not fifty yards away from the gravel road that would take him to the church, he sat down in the middle of the road. Then he lay down in the middle of the road. He draped his wet arm across his wet head and closed his eyes and there was only the constant drumming of the rain but as he lay there it seemed quiet to him. The quiet of the forgotten.

And then he heard it coming.

He sat up. Listened. Wasn’t sure if he was imagining it.

But the sound remained. Coming from the other direction. Getting a little bit louder. He looked down the road and there was a curve and coming from the direction of the curve was the sound of a vehicle that he knew. A deep, chugging sound that rose with the push of the gas pedal and fell with the ride of the clutch.

He got up and slid off the road and splashed into the ditch, his head just high enough so that he could see it coming from around the curve. He waited, anxious, like some hungry animal. And then there it was.

“Please God, be real,” he whispered.

And it was real. The Jeep was coming in his direction and he could see that there was only the driver.

Then it slowed. And then it stopped.

The driver stood in his seat and looked around. It wasn’t the boy and it wasn’t the girl. Cohen wanted him to come on his way but didn’t know what he could do if he did. He looked around for a stick or a big rock or anything but there was nothing except wet, limp grass and weeds. He thought to simply get up and flag the man down. Try to get the Jeep back the way it was taken from him. But he wasn’t strong enough to fight. Wasn’t strong enough for anything. So he lay there and watched.

The Jeep came on forward a little, and then it turned down the church road.

Cohen hurried out of the ditch and onto the road and he was running. The frail, broken run of a sick and hungry man and he kept it up until he reached the church road and he saw the tracks in the mud. He bent over with his elbows on his knees. Gasping for breath and his head light.

He stayed bent over until he caught his breath and then he began again, the sound of the engine fading away.

HE WAS GOING TO SHAKE this free and then that would be that. The Note that was driving him crazy. The note that had stirred the past with the images of the burgundy dress of his mother and the backwoods church. It would all be gone after this. For reasons that he didn’t understand, he was drawn back to this road. Back to this place. Back to years long before the barrage and the lawlessness.

He drove and thought about Aggie. How he first saw him standing outside of the liquor store, drinking out of a pint of whiskey and smoking a cigarette. Wearing a heavy jacket with his hood pulled over his head but his eyes sharp even from a distance. Joe had walked past him, exchanged a glare. It seemed like that was all anyone did at that time, glare at each other, the coast quickly becoming the land of desertion, a smattering of liquor stores and strip clubs turned whorehouses and the random gas station all that remained with lights on and doors open. The Line only a few months from being official. The coast rats sleeping in what was left of abandoned houses and businesses. Nobody trusting anybody. Destruction all around.

Joe had gone inside and gotten his own bottle and when he came back out Aggie was still there. Watching him. Joe walked toward his truck with his eyes on the man with the hood.

Aggie tossed his cigarette and said, “You got a hitch on that thing?”

Joe said, “What’d you say?”

“A hitch. You got a hitch on your truck there?”

“Yeah, I got a hitch. So what?”

Aggie drank from his bottle and took a few steps toward Joe. “You wanna make some money?”

Joe laughed. “You ain’t got no damn money.”

“I got it if you want to make it,” Aggie said. He pushed his hood back from his head, reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out a folded stack of bills.

“I ain’t queer,” Joe said.

“Me neither. Damn.”

“Then what you want?”

“I need a truck with a hitch. I got some things I gotta get towed.”

“To where?”

“Not far. I got two trucks already but the hitch is busted on both.”

“If you got two trucks, why you standing here without one?”

“Walking don’t kill people.”

“It might down here.”

“My trucks are where I need them to be. You wanna see, take the money. You wanna help, take the money. If you don’t, don’t take it.”

Joe thought about it. He needed the money. Everybody needed the money. “How much?”

Aggie held the folded bills out to him. “All of it.”

“Shit,” Joe said, shaking his head. “You must think I’m damn crazy.”

Aggie had kept moving toward him, was close now, could reach out and touch him if he wanted. “I don’t think you’re crazy. I need something. You probably need something, just like everybody else down here. Or why else would you still be here?” Aggie held out the money again. “Take it,” he said. “Take it and let’s ride and talk a little while. We got drinks. I got a pack of smokes. You smoke?”

“Yeah, I smoke,” Joe said and he reached his hand out for the money. He then took a long, cautious look at the man. “Open up that coat.”

Aggie opened his coat and he had a pistol tucked in his pants. “I know you got one, too,” he said. “So we can call it even.”

“You’re gonna have to let me hold it while we ride.”

“No, I ain’t. You got every nickel I have in your hand right there. You won’t hold my gun. I won’t be dead and broke.”

Joe thought about it. The man seemed to stare straight through him and there was something about him that told Joe his side would be a good one to be on in a place like this.

So he had told Aggie to get on in. That was three years ago.

It had been easy to go along with Aggie. He was a man who spoke with conviction, with a straight-ahead honesty. A man who had a plan and a way of making Joe feel like there were only benefits. At times he had felt like Aggie was a brother and at other times he had felt like Aggie might cut his throat before daylight. And Aggie had a way of talking to people, a way of getting them to believe. He had heard the way Aggie spoke to the stragglers, to the people they had found at the rope’s end. Come on, we’ll get you something to eat, he’d say with the compassion of a grandfather. We got a warm, safe place to sleep. People down here gotta help each other, he’d say. Like the Father takes care of the birds of the sky, He takes care of us. And I’m helping Him. Come on and let’s get something to eat and then you can decide what you wanna do. We can even drive you up if you want, he’d tell them. And they would climb in the back of the truck, maybe because they trusted him, maybe because they had no other choice, but they climbed in. And they were grateful for something to eat and for the dry place to sleep and they thought they had come upon a savior. Joe believed Aggie when he said this was for their own good. They would die without this place. And you know that the men are a danger and if you don’t want to walk them out in the woods, then I will do that. I will do what we need to be done and you stand up straight. This is yours as much as mine. This is your land. It is ours.