The River at Night(56)

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Pia bent over and grabbed her under the shoulders. “Come on, Rachel, get up.” Like a rag doll, Rachel let herself be lifted to a slouchy standing position.

Dean signed to me with quick hands. “Bullets from other side river, but she comes. Little time we have, only. We leave now.”

Pia watched Dean sign. “I don’t know what he said, and I don’t care. He needs to go.”

“Yes,” Rachel said, coming to life. She took a few steps toward Dean and stopped, marionette-like. “He needs to go back to his mother. This is fucking crazy. She’s going to kill us all.”

“No,” he signed. “We take raft and go. Everybody.”

I translated, adding, “We should do it now, because she’s crossing the river.”

“How does he know that?” Rachel sputtered. I have to think it was easier not making eye contact with him—her glasses gone—when she added, “Look, Dean, this is over. You need to go back. Stop her. Kill her.”

He glared at her.

“If you care about us at all, you can’t stay with us. Do you understand?”

Dean shook his head, rooted around in his pouch, and pulled out the plastic packet of photos.

Rachel swatted them out of his hands. He dove down, frantically gathered them, jumped to his feet. Seething, he seized her by the shoulders and rammed her up against a tree, her helmet cracking against the bark. Her round blue eyes focused on his, inches away.

“Whoa, Dean, calm down,” I said.

They stared venom into each other. Nobody moved. A full minute passed. “Take your hands off me,” Rachel said evenly.

He glanced over at me, a question. I shook my head. Still he held her there.

“I can’t fucking believe you did that, Rachel,” Pia hissed. She took a few cautious steps toward them. “Come on, Dean, you don’t want to do this, really you don’t.”

“Maybe say you’re sorry, Rachel,” I said. “Maybe mean it this time.”

“I’m not—”

“Say it.”

“Sorry about the photos.”

Dean shook Rachel by the shoulders, teeth-rattlingly hard, then shoved her away from the tree.

She fell off her feet, nearly losing her balance, but ended up stumbling off a few steps down toward the river. In a vain attempt to regain her pride she squared her shoulders and recalibrated her cockeyed helmet.

“Look, I don’t care about your goddamned family or whoever they are. This is my family, my friends here. The only family I have left, and we are down one. We are not going anywhere with you, so you may as well leave, got it? Go back. Your mother is your family, your home.”

I gazed at the pile of stones that covered Sandra, picturing not just her serene, lovely face, but her body, which had beaten back cancer, which had borne two remarkable children, one who’d arrived as easily as breathing, the other a torture to bring into the world but who became her biggest joy on earth: her boy, Ethan. All that fighting only to die in this useless, meaningless way; even the scars on her body—marks of grace—to disappear forever.

“No,” Dean signed, his face hard and unreadable. “We go to town. All of you. Safe. Come.”

I didn’t translate.

“Win, you have to tell him,” Pia said. “He’ll listen to you.”

“Dean.” I held him with my voice and my gaze, while I was seeing Marcus the day I had to tell him I was going to abandon him to the home, and in his eyes I saw how unimaginable this was for him, how I may as well have been pushing him over a cliff. “You have to go back. I’ll come for you, after we get some people to help. Do you understand?”

He shook his head; his stringy hair flew around his shoulders. He signed, “No,” over and over, but after some time he slumped and signed, “She kill me too.”

“No, she won’t,” I said. “You are her son. She won’t hurt you.” But I had no idea what this woods creature would do to her son. Look at what she had already done to him.

“You my family,” he signed, tearful. “Sandra, family.”

I felt myself crying again and said, “Okay. We are your family.”

“Happy,” he signed, though his eyes stayed sad, and I could see that in his mind he was already racing through the forest.

“But, Dean, go. Now, all right?”

I watched his face working, hatching a plan. “Wait for me by the raft here,” he signed. “Wait overnight. I make you all safe. Wait sunrise.”

Pia and Rachel stood talking in low voices, glancing back at us every now and then.

“Make promise?” he signed.

“Okay. Promise. We wait here till first light. If you’re not here, we go, do you understand? We take the raft and go.”

He nodded, turned, and vanished into the forest.





39


I ran down to the bank, barefoot. Pia and Rachel, ropes slung over their shoulders, were already hauling the raft back down toward the muddy bank. The river ran silvery green where it wasn’t darkened by evening shadows. I stood watching them, hands in rock-hard fists at my sides.

“What are you doing?”

They ignored me. As if I were already dead, a ghost. I closed my eyes and tried to conjure Sandra, but I couldn’t even feel her spirit anymore. Was she already gone from this earth? I watched Pia and Rachel as they positioned the raft at an opening in a tangle of brush near the bank, chatting together easily as they had since they were children. I had never felt so alone.