Michael Smith - Rivers

Kris shook her head. “Not so much.”

“Me neither,” Mariposa added.

Cohen flicked away the cigarette. Random raindrops tapped in the red mud.

“It ain’t never gonna end,” Kris said. She held her hand out toward Mariposa, who took it and pulled her up from the chair. A little more rain came on as Mariposa helped her to her trailer and inside.

COHEN DRANK ONE MORE AND then he took one of the pistols out of his pocket and stood. A little drunk. He limped away from the fire and out into the dark where Aggie was tied to the trailer.

“You want to live or die?” Cohen asked him, but he couldn’t see his eyes and didn’t know if he was asleep or awake. So he asked again but this time he pointed the pistol at him.

Aggie didn’t answer. Didn’t move. The wind had picked up and lightning cracked to the south. Aggie’s body hung limply against the trailer, lifeless and broken. His head forward and heavy. If cut free, it seemed as if he would flop to the earth and never rise again.

Cohen lowered the pistol. Watched for a moment. Then as he turned to walk away, Aggie raised his head and said in a low voice, “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

Cohen stopped and looked back at him.

In the dark, Aggie spoke. “Probably ten, fifteen years ago, we was going real strong one night. Summer night. Hot as hell and then some.” His voice was low but strong, like a quiet engine. “I had this rattlesnake burning me up, biggest damn one I think I ever had. Sliding all over me. Organ playing loud and people hollering and jumping and Amen this and God Almighty that and then from the back this man got up. Him and his boy. I hadn’t even noticed them there. They got up and come right between the chairs, right up front. Man was carrying the boy. Maybe eight, nine years old. Didn’t say a word, neither one. Just stood right in front of me until I noticed and quit, and then the organ quit and all the hollering and dancing quit and everybody just stood there, waiting on them to say something. And then when he finally said something, you know what he said, don’t you?”

Cohen said, “Yeah. I know.”

“Yeah. I knew. We all knew what was coming. He said fix my boy. Lay your hands on his legs. They ain’t never worked right. Doctor says ain’t never gonna, but lay your hands on him and let the good Lord fix him. Let the good Lord make him right. Lay your hands on him.”

Aggie paused. Coughed some. Cohen waited.

“It got so quiet. I swear I heard sweat hitting the floor. I’d done a lot of shit. A lot. But I’ll be goddamned I wasn’t claiming to be no healer. Never did mess with it. Didn’t want to. And here he was in front of all my people asking me to lay my hands on that boy. Let the power of God come through me and rise him up, fix his legs.”

He stopped. His head dropped.

“So?” Cohen said.

Aggie raised his head. “So I set that rattlesnake in its box. I told the organ to play soft. I told everybody to raise their hands to the ceiling and pray for this boy and then I took off my shirt and wiped my face and acted like I was gathering up the Holy Ghost from some deep, dark well and I held that boy’s legs and prayed like some lunatic until I didn’t have no more gas. And then I let go. Looked at his daddy and looked at the boy and I turned around and ran out the back. Ran out and kept on running till I was at least a couple of miles gone and then I wandered in some shithole bar and drank Jack Daniel’s until they laid me out back with the garbage.”

When he was done, Aggie let out a heavy sigh. Cohen looked around in the dark. Moved the pistol back and forth in his hands. The wind was against his face and pushed his hair back and the rain washed over his cheeks and eyes.

“I couldn’t do nothing. No way around it. No trick. A dead end any way you went,” Aggie said. He sighed again, then his voice became sharper. “Like you. Any way you go, dead end. You just think you got plans but you don’t got any idea what you’re doing. What you think is gonna happen to you? To them? What you think is gonna happen? I know what you’re walking around with. Got the rooms boarded up like you can lock the ghosts away but they only seep under the doors. Seep between the cracks in the walls and live right there with you. I saw your place. Saw what you tried boarding up. What you think is gonna happen when you get to the Line?”

He paused, laughed a little. His voice became confident, mocking. The wind whipped around them and Aggie bound to the flatbed seemed to gather himself with the growing storm and rise up. “That is if you get there. If. You see what we got going here and all you see is the locks on the doors. That’s all you see and all they see. What you and them don’t see is you’re alive out here and you’re alive ’cause I let you be. You’re alive and you eat and sleep and you got protection and I give all that. Every one of them I give all that and I could give it to you too but you’d rather see the locks on the doors and decide that something here is wrong but there ain’t nothing here wrong. Every one of them was either alone or damn near alone without no food. No safe place. Every one of them would be dead or worse if I hadn’t brought them here and given them everything. All you see is the locks on the doors but you and them are gonna find out what’s out there and don’t none of you want to find out. I can swear to that. And here you got me crucified. The one who gave and the one who knows how to live out here and the one who created the family that not a goddamn one of them had or ever will have. So you crucify me except you ain’t even got the empathy to pierce me so that I can bleed to death. Instead you’ll leave me to starve or be devoured by God knows what and all I ever did for every one of them was give, and they’ll know it this time tomorrow.

“When it’s dark and there’s nowhere safe to lay their heads and they’ll look at you like you got some answers but you ain’t got no goddamn answers. You don’t even know how to answer yourself when you ask yourself questions. If you did you wouldn’t be living like you were living. You ain’t got no answers for yourself or for them and this time tomorrow when it’s dark and cold each of you will want for me and want for this place. You’ll want to gather and pray and eat but you won’t be able to. You’d rather reign in hell than serve in heaven and you’d rather crucify than love. There’s no answers between you. None. Tomorrow you and them will set out for the end of your lives and I’ll be here. The one who gave and would keep on giving if you’d let me. But you don’t want to let me. You and them are going to walk through the valley but you’ll have no shepherd. You’ll have no answers. And you’ll kill the babies. And you’ll die. You ain’t no healer, no more than I am, but I can give more than you. So I guess if I ask whether you want to live or die, you already answered when you tied me up.”

When he was done, he turned his head away from Cohen and fell silent. As if he had been turned off. Cohen stood still and waited. Didn’t know why but he waited to see if the older man had anything else to say. And when Aggie didn’t speak again, Cohen walked back and sat down. The peaceful night had become something different.

Through the rain and wind, Aggie called out to him. “Maybe you wanna die. Then you’ll get to love your ghosts again.”

A half-empty beer sat near Cohen’s foot and he picked it up and took it all in one swig, got up, and walked over to the trailer that held the guns. Leaned against the wall was the rifle with the infrared scope, the one Aggie had used to shoot him. He picked it up, found the shells and loaded it, and then he walked out of the trailer and away from the compound. He walked until he was only a silhouette.