Michael Smith - Rivers

NEARLY DAWN BUT NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE to tell beneath the cover of thick clouds. The women had gone back into the trailer, where Lorna could lie back and spread her legs. The labor had lasted through the night and nobody knew if it was time to push or not but she was going to anyway. Aggie had let out two other women to help and the four of them were inside the trailer, Lorna’s grunting and sometimes screaming and the voices of encouragement blending with the beat of the storm. Cohen was inside an empty trailer, only a bare twin mattress on the floor and a rack of empty shelves against one wall, and he slept on his back with his mouth wide open and his hands at his sides as if posing for the portrait of a dead man.

The other women who had seen what was going on were beating on their doors, calling to be let out so they could help, but Aggie ignored them until they stopped. He braved the storm, leaning against the trailer, holding on to one of the ropes, soaking wet, listening to Lorna, and he wanted it to be a boy. He was going to need boys to make this what he wanted it to be.

Cohen jerked up from his sleep as if a grenade had exploded in his dreams, wide-eyed and with quick breaths he looked around frantically. The bullet hole in his leg stung and he grabbed at it and tried to remember where he was and what was going on. He looked around at the empty room, the cabinets and mini-kitchen ripped out, leaving scarred walls, and it smelled like old sweat. He got to his feet and out of the window, through the storm, he saw the man with the revolver leaning against the trailer, and then he saw other faces in the windows of the other trailers and he was reminded that this wasn’t a bad dream but the real thing. He licked at his dry lips and rubbed at his throat. The ring of whiskey in his head. He lay back down and calmed himself, recalling what had happened and where he was so he could figure out how to get out of it.

Then the pregnant woman screamed. A twisted, howling scream that split through the storm.

He limped to the door. He unbuttoned his coat and lifted his shirts and he opened the sheath. He took out the bowie knife and he turned it back and forth in his hands, trading it from palm to palm. It was cold and he squeezed it and he felt strong and then the woman screamed again. Cohen slid the knife back in the sheath and put his shirts over it and buttoned his coat. He hobbled out and over to Aggie just as Ava opened the door and yelled out, “Something ain’t right.” She stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips and the look of the confused. Aggie stepped up to her. Inside, Lorna screamed again. And again and again. They all just looked at one another.

“Something ain’t right,” Ava said again. “I can see it but it ain’t moving. And I ain’t sure it’s the right way or not.”

“You gonna have to cut her, then,” Aggie said.

“You cut her. I don’t wanna cut her.”

“You gonna have to.”

“Or you are.”

“She’s gonna die if you don’t,” Aggie said with no notion if this was true or not but from the sound of Lorna, it sounded right.

“She might die either way,” Ava said. “If I cut her, how am I supposed to fix it up? There ain’t nothing in the bag showing me how to do that.” She no longer wore the army coat and her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows and there was blood on her hands.

“You gonna have to get that baby,” Aggie said. “He’s the start.”

“I know what he is. Or she is. Or whatever it is,” Ava said. “I been here long as you. Remember?”

“The start of what?” Cohen asked but they ignored him or didn’t hear him.

Lorna screamed out again. And then she stopped. They waited for her to start back but a quiet minute passed and Ava hurried back inside.

Aggie stepped back out and stood on the doorstep. The rain beat on the men and they hunched over and peered at each other from under their hoods.

“Got coffee over there in that one,” Aggie said and nodded toward another trailer but Cohen didn’t answer. He badly wanted some water but he didn’t want to get in the habit of asking this man for anything and before he could decide what to do the screaming started again and this time it didn’t stop. The screaming and the women calling out to her above her screams, above the storm, begging her to hold on, yelling directions to one another, chaotic directions that went around in circles and didn’t help or mean anything but only added to the hysteria of the moment. Cohen closed his eyes. Clenched his jaw. Wished to God he were somewhere else.

Aggie stood without expression.

Cohen opened his eyes and yelled to him, “You proud of this?”

Aggie yelled back, “I probably should have gone ahead and killed you last night. Or right now.”

Cohen wasn’t sure he’d made it out against the noise of the women, so he asked the man to say it again.

“You heard me,” Aggie said.

“No, I didn’t,” Cohen said defiantly. “Say it again.”

“I said I’m going to save you. You were sent here and you know it. Like the rest of us.”

“Nobody was sent here.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand enough of what I see.”

“That’s what you see now.”

“It won’t be no later.”

Aggie nodded. He grinned at Cohen from under his hood with the eyes of a man who had been set free. The eyes of a man who understood the power of conviction when there was no one around to judge.

The screaming then became something more than painful. It became torturous. Grotesque. Cohen watched Aggie and he didn’t know what he was dealing with here in this place, with this man. Didn’t know exactly who Aggie was or what he had done or what he was capable of but he knew it was some bad shit. Women behind locked doors and one man with the keys. The Holy Bible stuck in his back pocket. Wearing the coat he’d taken off a dead man. The power to send out others to ambush and steal. The drop-dead glare of the unrepentant.

The woman’s scream was shrill and pleading and there appeared to be no mercy in this land. Cohen stood still, listening to her, watching the man with his brow unchanged while the screaming of the woman splintered the storm around them and he thought of Elisa and what it would have been like with her belly round and the name chosen and the room built and painted yellow or pink or blue. He thought of the tiny nameless thing that died with her and he thought of the small thing fighting for its life inside that trailer where the women stood helplessly around the mother as if they had been ushered back to a time when there was no other choice than to wring your hands and pray. There were the screams and the pleas but there were no answers and the sun was creeping on the edge of the horizon and somewhere people were sleeping in warm beds and somewhere it was going to be a beautiful day.

It was then that Cohen lifted his coat and shirts and he unsnapped the sheath and took out the knife. He held it in his right hand and waved it like a badge. Aggie’s eyes widened and he stepped back but Cohen wasn’t going for him. He was going for the trailer where the screaming came from and when he got there, he opened up the door and he walked right in and he saw the blood and he saw the anguish and Ava, kneeling between the woman’s legs, turned and looked at him and he pushed her out of the way.

ON THE MORNING OF THE fourth day in venice, they awoke to a faint sunshine. Elisa rolled over onto Cohen, kissed him, and said I’m going for a run.

Cohen reached for her as she tried to get up from the bed but she playfully pushed him away and stood at the window.

“I can’t believe you brought your running shoes,” he said. “Me and you need to discuss what the word ‘vacation’ means.”