The River at Night(66)

His arm trembled at the bow; the arrow shook in its notch.

She moved closer to him; one more step and she could have reached out and touched the bow. “We have all God’s creation to ourselves. We have paradise, and you want to throw that away? Have you lost your mind?”

The forest hushed in anticipation of blood.

“Come on now, Dean,” Simone said, a catch in her voice. “Where is the boy I knew? Where is my beloved son? Put the bow down. Do as I say.”

I didn’t see his hands move. Only saw the big black bird—a cormorant—as it thumped onto the rocks next to Simone, an arrow piercing it through, oily blue-black wings splayed as if it were still trying to fly, long neck twisted backward. We stared as if we’d never seen a bird before. Dean nocked another arrow into his bow and aimed it at the center of his mother’s broad chest.

“So, this is it,” Simone said, her voice softer, chastened. “I understand. You’ve made up your mind to leave me.” She tossed up her arms and shrugged her shoulders, a parody of defeat. “Fine. There’s nothing else to talk about. You’re free to go. God knows, you’ve always been free.” She gestured a beefy hand at him. “Look at you. You’re a grown man. I’ve never put you in chains, have I? I’ve never locked you up.”

As she spoke Dean lowered his weapon bit by bit; tension draining from his shoulders and arms that held the arrow straight in its notch and the bow forward in perfect readiness.

He blinked.

She dropped her head like a bull and charged him, ramming her bulk into his midsection, felling him onto the rocks closest to the surging river. He disappeared under her mess of rotten clothes and hair. With a wild cry, Rachel leapt on her back. Simone flung her away as if she were nothing, but she jumped right back on as if possessed.

The three bodies rolled and churned a foot from the water’s edge. The river roared all around us, orchestral, magnificent. I breathed in its white energy as I snatched up the biggest rock I could lift with one hand, picturing myself smashing Simone’s skull through her ski hat and viperous hair, but nothing stayed still long enough for me to take good aim—would I kill Rachel instead? Or Dean? Gasping, crying, I raised the rock.

Pia, drenched, almost inhuman looking, burst out of the water near the bank, sprinted past me and threw herself on the mass of writhing bodies. She locked her arms around Simone—who lost precious seconds in her surprise—and grappled her away from Rachel, who still clung to her. Dean found his chance and rolled away, instantly on his feet. Pia spun Simone facedown in the dirt, smacking her head down into it as Dean seized her wrists and lashed them together. Rachel rolled away, moaning, “Pia, Pia, you’re alive.”

With some roughness Dean spun Simone onto her back. She snarled, kicking and jerking. We all stood back and out of range.

She wriggled herself to a seated position, hat half-cocked on her head, hair more chaotic than ever. “Fuck you all. It doesn’t matter,” she hissed. “Do you really think you’re going to find your way out of here? You’re all going to die, one way or the other.”





46


A fine, steady rain patted at the leaves on the trees, on our bodies as we worked in determined silence; it flattened Simone’s mane until it hung down in long strings nearly grazing the ground where she sat. Using every bit of Dean’s sinewy rope, we lashed her to a tree facing the river. Every so often she’d burst forth with a vicious rant, then go quiet and sullen, a dull seething. Dean ignored her, his eyes glazed as he cinched her wrists tighter together.

With a nod, Pia motioned for us to step a few yards away, toward the river, and we obliged, gathering in a huddle. Bruised, barefoot, she breathed hard, ribs showing with every exhale. Her shoulder wound had reopened and bled profusely; her eyes flashed with something new and terrible. “I’m going to kill her,” she said.

Rachel grabbed her by her elbows and shook her, gazing up at her. “Pia, you have to calm your shit down.”

“She’s got the gun.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“We looked everywhere,” I said. “It’s gone.” I thought of the hunter back at the store; that rapturous flush from his recent kill. Pia looked like that now. Bloodthirsty. Crazy.

“She must have hidden it or something. Fucking bitch. We have to find it.”

“When could she have done that?” Rachel said, her face inches from Pia’s. “She hasn’t been out of our sight.”

Pia wrenched herself from Rachel’s grasp. “We could drown her. Or I could strangle her. It will be on me, okay? On me,” she whispered hotly. “Or I could bash her fucking brains in.” She paced in a tight circle, unable to contain herself.

“So then you’re a murderer,” Rachel said.

“Fuck yeah. But we’re fucking alive.”

I began to taste it. What it would be like to obliterate Simone. Rage came alive in my hands and sent them quaking; my scratched and bloody fingers shuddered by my sides. I saw Sandra in her grave of river stones, so terribly still, so terribly cold.

Rachel read my face. “Wini, seriously? Dean would slaughter us.”

“Win? Are you with me?” Pia said.

I thought of my hands around that mottled, filthy neck as I watched the light dim from her deranged face, how it would feel to choke the life out of her. How it wouldn’t bring Sandra back. Pia’s eyes bored into mine. I could smell her: the salt and copper of her blood, her sweat, the taste of the river fresh on her.