Michael Smith - Rivers

Cohen sat on an upright cinder block with his shot leg extended. Twice Mariposa had come over and sat down beside him and twice Aggie had told her to get up and go help the others.

Twilight arrived and the rain was steady and all was gray. They moved around in big coats, hoods over heads, shoulders slumped from the hours, days, weeks spent out in the rain.

Aggie called on Cohen to help him hook up a trailer to the back of a truck. Cohen got up and hobbled out into the field where the trucks and trailers sat.

It was a ten-foot-long flat trailer that wasn’t the work of two men and Cohen basically stood there while Aggie dropped the trailer onto the hitch. When he was done, he raised up and wiped the rain from his face and said, “Just so you know, there may be an example set here before this day is done. Don’t like the looks of it all. The birth caused a tremor. A tremor when there should be rejoicing.”

“Somebody died,” Cohen said. “Maybe that’s what’s wrong.”

“Life was given for life and there should be no crying over that. There should be no crying over the beginning. And I see desperation. And desperate people need a message. They need reminding. And if one of them so much as flinches I’m gonna goddamn remind them in a way they won’t forget.”

Cohen didn’t answer. He pulled a broken cigarette and lighter from his shirt pocket.

“Don’t you get no bright ideas either or you’ll be laying with the dog,” Aggie said. He took a step closer to Cohen. “You might start thinking about your place here. About what has been set at your feet. You look around a little more closely and you might see something different from what you think you see.”

Cohen snapped off the broken piece of the cigarette, bent over to hide it from the weather, and lit the stump. He looked away from Aggie, and he noticed two shovels in the bed of the truck. “What’s all this for?” he asked.

“We going digging. Me and you and that boy. But we gonna wait till it gets dark.”

Cohen sucked on the cigarette, then said, “I got some news before we go, you should know.”

“Yeah. What?”

“If you think I’m going off to dig my own grave, you might as well go ahead and shoot me dead in this spot.”

Aggie shook his head. Laughed. “Jesus, boy. We ain’t digging no graves. We going to dig up that money.”

Cohen shook his head. “Not you, too.”

“Trunkfuls. Ain’t no telling how much it is.”

Cohen was quickly done with the short cigarette and he tossed it. He’d seen and heard enough about the hunt for the money. The groups of men he’d seen working around the same spot. The shots that had been fired that had caused some of them to drop and the others to scatter.

Aggie stepped back from Cohen. He bent down and yanked on the trailer hitch to make sure it was secure and then he raised up and said, “So see, you put everything together and you might end up a man with all he needs.”

“You and everybody else who thinks there’s money buried somewhere along the beach are out of your goddamn minds.”

“That right there is what the man who won’t find it will say.”

“Won’t nobody find it. ’Cause it ain’t there. It’s crazy to even be trying.”

“Crazy, huh?”

“Yeah. Crazy. Just like the rest of this shit,” Cohen said and he turned and waved his arm around the place.

Aggie propped his hands on his hips. Bent his dark eyebrows. “Crazy?” he asked again.

Cohen nodded. “Batshit.”

Aggie nodded a little. He took a few steps away from Cohen, turned and took a few steps back to him. “Crazier than living down here in a house with dead people?” he asked in a low, deliberate voice.

Cohen’s certainty disappeared. He stared back at the man but didn’t know what to say.

“I know you,” Aggie continued, speaking slowly. “I know you. I seen everything. Read everything in that envelope. I saw where you were. What you were doing. I put her rings on my pinky finger. Sniffed them little love notes in that sweet little box you kept shoved up under the bed. Saw them baby clothes and them dresses still hanging in the closet. Don’t tell me nothing about crazy. You ain’t no different from nobody else down here, including me. Crazy comes in lots of different ways. And you got as much in you as anybody else.”

He stopped. Waited for Cohen to answer. When he didn’t, Aggie walked past him and across the field toward the trailers. Cohen heard him call to the women and he followed, wanting to see what Aggie had to say.

When Aggie was in the middle of the circle, he waved them into their line. Cohen stood back from them, leaning against a trailer.

Aggie told them to close their eyes and then he prayed in his gravelly voice, thanking God that there was a place for them to live and love and breathe and hide themselves from the thunder. Thank you God that we are on the higher ground and that there is food for our bellies and fire to warm our hands and safety in the night from the wolves who patrol these lands for the taste of helpless flesh. Thank you God that this beautiful child has come to us and our family has multiplied and in this child we can see today and tomorrow and forever and this sunshine is your answer to us that you love us and approve of what has come. And this place is our home and your winds are your might and do not let me hesitate to strike down those that rise against you and me. And I will not hesitate to strike.

It was almost dark, an ominous deep gray surrounding them. The rain fell straight and Aggie pushed the hood back from his head and welcomed it on his face and head. As he prayed, he stroked the butt of the revolver that stuck out of his pants. As he prayed, his brow grew tense and he held a fist toward the dripping sky and he reared back his head and closed his eyes and then he was taken away. The hand came off the revolver and then both hands were stretched out before him and in his mind he was back there before them, the pulsing of the chanting and the organ music as he moved his arms around in dancelike motions, the imaginary snake in his hands, its sleek, poisonous body intertwined with his own and the heat of the hot, strip-mall church and the energy of those out in front of him, praising and chanting and speaking in no discernible language, and he moved the imaginary snake from arm to arm, moved it around the back of his neck and down his chest and then back into his hands and the entire time he prayed out to God, You are the power and the glory and this land belongs to You and bring them on, bring them on and deliver us and wash away that which is unclean and may my own strength be like Your strength and we will inhabit this land and keep it pure and we will multiply and be with the beasts and create for You the sons of thunder.

He went on and on, his words filled with conviction and his neck muscles taut and he began to twist his hands and arms, wringing the snake like a wet towel, the feeling that he needed something to kill rising up through him and as he prayed for strength and prayed for vengeance against those who would question the way, my way and Your way, dear God, he became so lost in his own power and might that he never saw the women rush on him and before he could rid himself of the fury of his prayer, he was on his back with his arms pinned and his legs pinned and his own revolver pressed against his lips like the biting kiss of a fierce lover and the snake had crawled away.

NONE OF THEM WAS SURE what to do with him. They hadn’t thought that far ahead. Several wanted to kill him with his own gun. Several others wanted to lock him up and let him starve. Still another wanted to cut off his manhood and throw it out in the field for the buzzards and as soon as he bled to death, do the same with the rest of him.