Michael Smith - Rivers

Joe had watched. He had learned. Had participated. And he had finally walked a man out into the woods and returned him to the earth and everything else seemed easier after that. But last night was on him. Or maybe it was the culmination of many nights like that one and their growing consistency. The wind never seemed to cease. The rain never seemed to stop. It was bad and getting worse and sitting in the trailer in the dark with his knees tucked under him while the storm pushed and pulled was a too common event. He had to get drunk to get through the nights and then getting drunk spun him around inside and it was a vicious loop. And now he had this note and he had these memories of his mother and this church and what this world looked like before and he felt a pressure welling up inside.

He drove slowly as he moved along the muddy gravel road, the Jeep sliding some and him uncertain if this were the right place. It was difficult to remember anywhere in this land the way it had been because of the way it was now. It was so much worse and there appeared to be no end in sight. The tree line tight against the road seemed familiar, but there were gaps in it that hadn’t been before. Houses that might have reminded him were no longer there. It was only his hunch that led him to where he thought the small church would be.

A careful mile or two and he saw it. Sitting up ahead, to the right, back off the road. He drove on up and stopped and looked. He could see the men standing outside in the Sunday sunshine, in their short-sleeved shirts and ties, smoking their cigarettes with their calloused hands. The kids running between the cars playing chase, their shrieks and laughter breaking into the peaceful Sunday morning. The women and their clean dresses with their Bibles tucked under their arms and their faces a soft pink.

The thought occurred to him that all he had to do was to get in the Jeep and keep going. Maybe his time with Aggie had run its course. Maybe he didn’t want to be responsible for all those women and what was to come. Maybe he had found that note for a reason, to shake him loose, to set him free. Maybe it wasn’t going to be as simple as coming to this place and clearing his head and going back to the circle of trailers and the faces that occupied them.

The shotgun and the shells sat in the passenger seat and he picked up the shotgun but then set it back down. He got out and pushed the hood from his head. He looked at the place. The beige brick stained and molded. The front doors gone. He walked up closer and saw the wet black ashes from a fire on the concrete porch. He poked at them with his foot and then he walked over and stood in the doorway. The fallen tree splitting the roof of the sanctuary and its moss hanging down across the pews. The stained glass in shards below the windows. He looked for the pew where they had sat. Listened for his mother telling him to sit still. Wondered what she would say if she knew what he had become a part of. He stood in the doorway and smoked. Thought of what he’d say in his own defense.

It’s a different world, he thought. And he could think of no more explanation.

He walked back outside and around the side of the church. Thought he’d take a look in the back. See if there was anything worth having. At one of the windows he knelt down and picked through the broken stained glass that sat at the bottom of a puddle. He fished the pieces out. The purples and blues and reds. He held several together in his palm and admired the purity of color. Imagined the sunlight against them. The illusion of something brighter and better.

And this would be the last memory that he would have as he lay dying. The memory of kneeling there, in this place where he had been a boy with a mother, with the pieces of the holy glass in his hands. Not the realizations of what he had done, the flesh and blood that he had claimed along with Aggie, the women he had corralled and made his own, their bodies and their minds and maybe even their hearts and souls, unlocking the doors when he wanted and feeding them when he wanted and doing what he wanted when he felt the urge. For what other reason was there to keep them? He didn’t think of them or the men he had separated them from. The blood on his hands and the filth on his fingertips. He didn’t think of the man that he was and the power he had grasped and he didn’t sing for forgiveness or call out for redemption. In the next hour, as he lay dying, he thought only of that moment of serenity, kneeling next to the church where he had been a boy before he had grown into a man and realized the clarity of strength, his knees damp in the wet ground and in his palm the blue and red and purple glass. As he lay dying, his flesh ripped like fabric, his blood flowing freely like the rain that came so often, he thought only of those beautiful shards of glass and the weight that they carried, and he found it difficult to comprehend that while he held those small holy things, how something so big and so powerful and so violent could have been so silent as it crept up behind him.

COHEN DIDN’T WAIT FOR THE dog to reappear and he went as quickly as he could along the gravel road because he thought the sound of the Jeep had quit. Not disappeared far down the road and out of distance but quit as if whoever was driving it had stopped and the only place close by to stop was the church. He hurried on, pulling at his pants pockets as if to drag himself. When the church was in sight he saw the Jeep parked in front of it and he stopped running and he moved over to the edge of the road, closer to the tree line, to keep out of sight.

He didn’t see the man who had been driving and it occurred to him to make a run for it. The rain would muffle his steps and the keys would be in the ignition and just go, take off, don’t slow down. Go as hard as you can.

But then his thoughts were interrupted by the high-pitched howls and screams of he didn’t know what. Something awful and horrific and acute slicing through the hazy morning. He kept on, walking faster now, breaking into a light run and then he was at the church and next to the Jeep and then he saw that the terrible sound, the howling and screaming, was coming from a tangle of man and panther at the side of the church and the panther was winning.

Cohen looked over into the Jeep and saw his sawed-off shotgun and some shells on the passenger seat. He took it out and loaded it and put some shells in his pocket, keeping one eye on the panther and the man. He tugged at the backseat as if to lift it but it didn’t move. The man shrieked as the panther had him pinned and was tearing at him with its mouth and claws. Cohen walked over very carefully, staying behind them so that the panther wouldn’t perhaps turn and rush him, and ten feet away he aimed the shotgun and fired and the panther jumped and twisted and cried out. Cohen fired again and the panther jumped again but there was no more crying and it fell dead next to the ripped, screaming man.

Cohen moved closer and looked down. Half the man’s face was red and torn and there were gashes across his throat and on his head and down his chest and arms. A bad tear in his rib cage. He was breathing in a terrified, irregular rhythm and his eyes were wide and sharp against the red surrounding them. He held his arm up to Cohen and tried to say something but only a shaky grunt came out. Cohen didn’t reach for him but he knelt a few feet away. The rain washed the blood as quickly as it came out of him.

The man’s grunting kept on and Cohen watched him for a minute and then he held the shotgun out toward him. “Where’d you get this?” he asked. Then he turned and pointed at the Jeep and asked the same thing. “All of it’s mine. Mine. Where’s them two that jumped me out there on the road?”

The man turned on his side and coughed out blood and he acted as if he were trying to get up. Cohen moved back. The man seemed to be trying to say something but Cohen didn’t know what, so he asked again. “Where are they? If you want anything else from me, you better speak up.”