Michael Smith - Rivers

HIS RESTLESSNESS KEPT HER AWAKE and then her mind began to spin and she couldn’t sleep. She got out of bed and put on her jeans and sweatshirt and walked to the window. She was unsure of the time, though it was still the middle of the night. The rain fell hard and she saw only blurry images of bodies out under the awning. Some standing, some sprawled out, orange tips of cigarettes dots in the dark. She closed the curtain and walked quietly to the door, eased it open and slipped through, and went downstairs to the café.

The café was dark. Chairs were upturned on tables and the lights were off in the seating area, but the storage room light glowed through the square window of the swinging door. Along the counter, coffee mugs and hard plastic glasses were lined in rows and spatulas and tongs sat in a silver bowl on the grill top. Condensation fogged the windows and the café was thick with humidity.

Mariposa walked to a booth along the wall in the darkest corner, and she sat down facing the café windows.

She was unprepared for the uncertainty that came with this place. She had thought that tonight would be a night of heavy sleep, of rest for the body and rest for the mind. A night of satisfaction in survival. A night that would be a bridge into the land of new beginnings. But it was none of those things. It was a night of four walls and a bed and a warm meal eaten on a real plate with a real fork but it was not a night that signified the end of anything. It was not the night she had expected and she felt a tinge of defeat as she stared at the back of the empty booth on the other side of the table.

I have people somewhere . And she wondered now if she did. How far do we have to go before the world doesn’t look like this?

The rain and the rain and the rain. The awning leaked everywhere and those who stayed out in the night moved around like waterlogged, mindless drones. Why didn’t they go inside? Why didn’t they crawl under something? But she knew the answers to those questions and she knew what it felt like to have no one and nothing and she knew that there was a fine line between standing inside the café and standing outside the café and she thought of Cohen tossing and turning in the bed upstairs.

She thought of the day that she and Evan got into the Jeep and she thought of wrapping the cord around Cohen’s neck because she had to and trying to pull the air from him and she thought of Evan with the shotgun on Cohen as he struggled in the water and how she had urged Evan to shoot him. Shoot him now. She thought of Evan pulling the trigger once, and then twice, and how the shotgun didn’t fire and she wondered about the God who had decided that the last shell already would have been fired and wondered what her life would be like right this minute if that last shell would have remained. She wondered if it was the same God who decided everything else.

She got up and walked to the counter. At the end of the counter, next to the coffee mugs and plastic cups, lay the newspaper that Cohen had looked at earlier. The light from the storage room filtered down the counter and she picked up the newspaper and lay it out, back page facing her. She stared at the map and the different shades of the different parts of the country and she read the headings and she realized they were a long way from anywhere.

Outside a woman screamed above the pounding rain.

Mariposa folded the newspaper and put it back in place.

She crossed her arms on the counter and put her head down and thought of her father and his belief that he could defend his livelihood and his life against the violence of either man or nature and how foolish it seemed then and how foolish it seemed now. But there was no second-guessing because it had been impossible to make decisions then. Nothing seemed right. Nothing seemed logical. Nothing seemed safe. And nothing had changed. She thought of the stubbornness of her father and his dedication to protect and defend what belonged to him and then she thought again of Cohen in his house, on that land, with those memories and the box of keepsakes and the closets that still held her clothes and the baby’s room with the dusty stuffed animals.

She wondered if he would remember her part in separating him from those things he had tried so hard to protect. She wondered when he would leave her. She wondered where he would leave her.

There was another scream and this time it sounded like a man and Mariposa lifted her head. She looked toward the window but there was nothing clear, only vague rain-covered images. More screaming and yelling and now the images moved in a shuffle along the sidewalk, pushing and grabbing and going for one another. A loud crack cut through the storm and she thought she heard breaking glass but the voices gained strength and she couldn’t tell what was going on. Part of her wanted to go to the window and wipe it clean and take a closer look. Part of her didn’t.

Behind her, the door to the staircase opened and she turned and saw Cohen. There was another scream and Mariposa looked from him and back to the window. As she watched anxiously the scene on the street, Cohen came across the café to her. He touched her elbow and she looked at him. “Come on,” he whispered. “You don’t want to see what’s out there.”

A WEEK AGO THE DECISION would have been simple. Go get the jeep. Much like the decision had been made to go and get the shoe box of memories. Just go get it. There was no one else to think about, no one else to ask, nothing else that needed any consideration. What do you want to do and do it and that’s the end of it, like every other decision he had made in the last four years, including the one to bury Elisa under the tree in the back field and stay there with her. But that was a week ago and walking away and going back down there was not a simple decision now.

He wanted to tell Mariposa that he was leaving and give her enough money to eat for the next couple of days and go find a ride with somebody crazy enough to take him back down there. By now it had to be sixty-five, seventy miles to the Jeep on the north side of Gulfport. But he figured that he knew the way, and if he went alone he could make it down in three or so hours, make it back in less time when he was sure of the way, do the whole thing in a night. He wanted to extend his arm when she came near him. He wanted to tell her to be quiet when she started talking. He wanted to slide out of bed in the middle of the night and go and do what he needed to do.

Instead of making the move, he had spent the next two days and nights with her in the hotel room, the rain strong and the room warm. They had made love carefully, awkwardly, and sometimes clumsily, like two kids learning their way, unsure of their movements, their sounds, their reactions, this thing different in a real room with electric light and pillows and sheets than it was in an abandoned, candlelit farmhouse. They would fall asleep naked and he would wake with her talking and he would lie there, pretending to be sleeping, and listen to her, her voice low and patient like a mother speaking to an infant. I will listen to you when you want to talk about her. Or about anything. I will listen to you. If we go together we might be able to believe in each other and I will believe if you will believe. I don’t want to be left alone and I don’t think that you do and there is nothing that makes sense and I think that is okay. I don’t think we should try to make any sense. I will listen to you if you ever want to talk about her. And I will stay with you as long as you want me to.

He would wake in the middle of the night and she would be talking, her head against him and her black hair across him like some type of protection. He noticed her hands, her fingers long and beginning to get into him, to sink below his skin and through the blood and into the places that mattered. He smelled her and listened to her and sometimes he wanted to answer her and sometimes he wanted to stop her and sometimes he was disappointed when she had nothing else to say.