The River at Night(15)

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Hours later I lay sleepless in the room full of women, some snoring softly, but many—like me—still in search of, if not a comfortable position, at least one where they could somehow fall asleep. Above me, Pia slept in her usual fashion: immediately and deeply. One long arm hung down just a foot from my face. Rachel and Sandra, to my left and to my right, both read by tiny book lights.

I stared up into the shadows remembering the only other time I’d gone camping.

I was twelve years old. My dad, determined to cure his phobic daughter and his mute, strange son with the wonders of nature, drove me and six-year-old Marcus to a lake in New Hampshire one summer weekend. My mother stayed home, no doubt in a paroxysm of joy to be free of us for three whole days.

After helping set up our saggy tent, I wandered down to the beach and waded into murky water up to my knees. Marcus bulleted past and threw himself in, doggie paddling in a circle around me before slipping under the surface like a seal. I felt his small hand grab my ankle. He burst up and out of the water smiling ear to ear.

“Swim with me,” he signed.

I scanned the dark water, small waves tipped golden by fading sunlight through gathering clouds. Behind us, Dad washed dinner dishes in the lake. “Tomorrow,” I said and signed. “I don’t feel like swimming right now.”

“Wini is a dummy,” Marcus signed, still grinning, before he splashed me hard and dove in again. Wrapped in a blanket at the end of the dock, I sat and watched him swim. Dad called to us about getting ready for bed, but I knew I could ignore his first attempts at gathering us, so I lingered. To the east, diagonal lines of rain connected cloud to water, pitting the surface.

Marcus floated around in a swampy section before he stood up in waist-deep water and began signing to me. I couldn’t see his hands very well, so I didn’t answer. Pouting, he smacked at the water, clapped his hands, and finally jammed his fists on his little hips.

“Come back here, Marcus, I can’t see what you’re saying.” The first drops of rain cooled my forehead, the backs of my hands. I got to my feet.

He doggie paddled closer to me, blinking as the rain came down harder, then stood up, shoulder deep.

“I saw frog,” he signed. He dropped his head back and opened his mouth to catch some raindrops, then repeated himself with exaggerated movements: “I SAW FROG.”

A smudge of darkness curled on his forehead, just above his right eye. I squinted through the pelting rain.

Dad called from the beach, “Get outta that water! Now!”

“Come on, Marcus. Don’t piss off Dad.” Neither of us wanted to deal with our father in a rage, and his tone of voice told me he was headed there fast.

Marcus swam closer and stood up. A few yards away now. The paisley shape on his forehead had swung a little to the left. As I watched, it curled up even farther, like the letter C.

He reached the dock, climbed the ladder. Stood shivering in the rain. The thing on his forehead multiplied at least a dozen more times across his body. Leeches, their heads buried in his tender boy flesh, hung from his forehead, chest, belly, the insides of his legs.

“Look at me,” I said and signed quickly. “Don’t look down.”

But he did. He gaped at the liver-colored thing writhing near his belly button. A high-pitched scream tore from his throat; tiny fists locked at his sides. I threw my blanket around him and wrapped his stiff body tight, scooped him up, and ran to the beach, where Dad sprinted toward us.

Dad’s eyes were wild. His white undershirt, stained pink with fish guts, was plastered to his muscular torso. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, I—”

“Give him to me!” He wrenched Marcus from me and set him down. The blanket fell to the sand. Dad looked to me and Marcus and back as if I had put the leeches there. “What the motherfucking hell . . .”

Marcus looked down at himself, then at me, and started flapping his hands like he wanted to fly away, all the time wailing at the top of his lungs. Dad lunged at him and carried him, running full tilt back to the campsite. I ran after them, stumbling in the soft, wet sand.

Dad dropped to his knees outside the tent and crawled in with Marcus, who was completely hysterical, slapping at his head and face. I tumbled in after them.

“Hold him down.” Dad scrambled in his knapsack. Hands trembling, he freed a Camel nonfilter from its pack and lit it. Marcus ran around and around the tent in his little madras bathing trunks, arms outstretched to either side, screaming.

I sprang at him, caught his legs, and pulled him into my lap, roping him in with my arms.

Dad held the lit cigarette against the biggest one; it hung down long, twisting and writhing, from Marcus’s chest. I could almost see his little heart hammering underneath his pale skin. The thing sizzled and thickened under the glowing cigarette, retreating into its meatiness, blackened, then dropped to the canvas floor.

We all watched it coil and loop, smoldering, as the rain pelted the tent until, with a steady hand, Dad lit the next cigarette.

Two hours later, the three of us pulled into a McDonald’s. Dad let us order anything we wanted, as much as we wanted. Marcus got two of everything: two cheeseburgers, two chocolate milk shakes, two orders of french fries. We sat in the red plastic booth mostly in silence, the rain slashing at the gray highway, Marcus cramming himself with food and signing “Good” and “More” every now and then.