The River at Night(69)

The field crested once more at a cluster of shimmering yellow trees. Long slender branches hung mournfully down.

“Look,” Pia whispered. “We’re at the Willows.” Soundlessly, she began to cry.

I looked up. Blue sky, windswept. Bruised-looking clouds scuttled across the horizon in full retreat, their shadows racing across the field. We wandered among several dozen willows that grew in stands of five or six, as if they favored small groups, the long tresses of those near the bank cascading into the river. Rainwater soaked us as we stepped through golden curtains. It felt as if the trees were there to comfort us; it was like a place seen in dreams, lit by otherworldly light.

Thunder rumbled around us. We squinted up into sunlight, wondering. Another round; this time the earth shuddered beneath our feet.

Beyond the grove of willows, a sparkling gray ribbon spanned the river at what looked like its widest section before disappearing into an expanse of green.

“Wini!” Pia shouted from a few yards ahead of me on the bank. “It’s a road!”

A truck laden with logs barreled over the bridge with the booming roar we’d thought was thunder moments ago.

Rachel took a few tentative steps forward. She lunged at Pia’s belt, hooking herself on with both hands. “Pia, what are we waiting for, come on!”

I stood next to Dean, watching him. He’d stopped short and squatted in the tall grass, one fist jammed into his open hand.

Pia turned back to me, patience gone. “Let’s go!”

“Come on, Dean,” I whispered. “Get up.” His forehead creased with worry. I could feel the fear pulsing off him as he stared glassy-eyed at the road.

“Go ahead,” I called out to Pia and Rachel. “I’ll catch up with you.”

Another truck, equally burdened with its unthinkable tonnage of logs, burst into view and rumbled across the bridge. This time I caught a whiff of exhaust, delectable as perfume.

Pia’s face pinched with stress and fatigue. “Jesus, Win, what are you doing?”

Dean sat motionless, eyes locked on the road.

“Leave him!”

With some kind of curse I didn’t catch, Rachel and Pia took off straight for the bridge at full trot. Dean squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, and we both watched the women make their way through the field toward the road. Every cell in my body screamed, Run, but something chained me to that spot. To leave him at that moment would have compounded an age-old grief in a way I simply could not bear.

As I crouched down next to him, some part of me noticed I barely minded his smell anymore; that or I was beginning to smell just as bad. “Dean. Look at me.”

He didn’t.

“What’s the matter?” I glanced back anxiously at the field we’d just crossed, at the cows watching us with dull-eyed stares.

“I am afraid. Weak,” he signed in small, tight gestures.

“I can understand that. It’s all so different for you,” I said, my eye on Pia and Rachel as they closed in on the road. I thought, What am I doing here with this feral boy when my friends—the ones left still alive—are running toward salvation and freedom? Have I lost my fucking mind? I forced myself to focus on him, think how in hell I could get him to move. “Have you seen trucks before?”

“I don’t know,” he signed. “Too big. Too loud.”

“They’re big, and they seem scary, but the drivers are nice. These people will help us, okay? But we have to go. . . .” I was desperate to not care about him but sat there frozen. Exhaustion and despair rolled over me. I couldn’t leave him. I had to leave him.

“What is in the world?” he signed, finally meeting my eye with great interest.

I racked my brains. My God, what a question. Cable TV? Mortgages? Parties? Meaningless jobs? Bad marriages? Fifty thousand unanswered emails? Wine?

“People who will love you and take care of you, Dean. Beautiful things. Things that are hard to imagine right now, for me to explain. But good things, like delicious food, and books you can learn to read, and—”

He rocked back and forth on his heels. I felt like a zookeeper coaxing some beautiful wild thing into a cage. “I don’t believe you,” he signed with an air of embarrassment.

I scanned the field for Pia and Rachel. Limping, clinging to each other, they climbed up an embankment to the road. Another behemoth truck burst forth from the willows, not slowing for a second as it charged over the bridge. Dean rocked harder, faster, uttering odd, guttural sounds I’d never heard from him before.

I knelt in front of him and took his hands in mine, held them fast. He watched my white fingers holding his dark, gnarled ones, too shocked to move, I think. He became still and silent. I tried to imagine what Sandra would do, here, now, my calm and patient friend, the one who had understood better than any of the rest of us that friendship is more than the funny and the flash; it’s also for bearing witness, for life’s requisite doggedness, for never giving up on each other.

“Look, Dean, I can’t say everything is perfect out there, okay? I’m not going to lie to you. But there’s really great stuff waiting for you that I don’t even know how to describe—music, movies, friends, school—you’re going to love it all so much. And you have those pictures, and they don’t lie, right? Those are real people, you know it in your heart. We’ll try to find them. People like me and Sandra are out there, lots of them, people who can sign with you, much better than I can, okay?”