Before We Were Yours(111)

Truth is, instead of fixing everything, the Arcadia made everything real. Camellia’s gone. Lark and Gabion are far away. Queenie’s buried in a pauper’s grave, and Briny’s heart went there with her. He’s lost his mind to whiskey, and he doesn’t want to come back.

Not even for me. Not even for Fern. We’re not enough.

Fern crawls into my lap, and I hold tight to her. We wait out the evening listening for signs of Briny, but nobody comes. He’s probably gone into town to hustle pool halls until he can get some more to drink.

Finally, I tuck Fern into her bunk and slip into mine and lay there trying to find sleep. There’s not even a book to keep me company. Everything that can buy whiskey has already been traded off.

Rain starts before I fall asleep, but there’s still no sign of Briny.

I find him in my dream. We’re whole, and everything’s the way it should be. Briny plays his harmonica as we picnic in the sand along the shore. We pick daisies and taste honeysuckle. Gabion and Lark chase after little frogs until they’ve caught a whole jarful.

“Ain’t your mama pretty as a queen?” Briny asks. “And what’s that make you? Why, Princess Rill of Kingdom Arcadia, of course.”

When I wake up, I hear Briny outside, but there’s no music. He’s hollering into the deepening storm. Sweat sticks the bedsheet to my skin, so I have to peel it off as I sit up. My mouth is pasty and dry, and my eyes don’t want to clear. The air around is black as pitch. Rain rattles the roof. The woodstove has been filled and the damper must’ve been turned wide open, because it’s crackling and whistling and the room is boiling hot.

Outside the shanty, Briny cusses a blue streak. A lantern flashes by the window. I swing my feet around to get up, but the boat sways crazy wild, knocking me back onto the ticking. The Arcadia bobs side to side.

Fern rolls clean over the rail on her bunk and tumbles onto the floor in a heap.

All of a sudden, I know…we’re not tied up onshore anymore. We’re on the water.

Silas and Zede came and cut us loose after Briny got back. That’s the first thing I think. He’s out there hollering because he’s mad they did it.

But just as quick, I’m sure they wouldn’t set us adrift at night. It’s too dangerous, with the logs and sandbars and the wakes from the big boats and barges. Silas and Zede know that.

Briny does too, but he’s half out of his mind out there. He’s not trying to get us to shore. He’s daring the river to take us. “C’mon, you blaggard!” he hollers, like Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick. “Try ’n’ win! Take me! C’mon!”

Thunder booms. Lightning crackles. Briny cusses at the river. He laughs.

The lantern disappears from the window, then bobs up the side ladder as Briny climbs onto the roof.

I stumble across the room to check on Fern and put her back in her bunk. “You stay there. Stay until I tell you different.”

She grabs my nightgown, croaks out, “Noooo.” Since we’ve been back on the Arcadia, she’s been scared to death at night.

“It’ll be all right. I think the lines came loose, that’s all. Briny’s probably trying to get us back ashore.”

I hurry on, leaving her there in the bed. The Arcadia wobbles as I stagger across the floor, and a tug blows its horn, and I hear the creaks and pings of barge hulls, and I know that bigger wakes are coming. I reach out for the door and grab on just in time. The Arcadia rises up a wake, then tips hard coming down. Wood slides through my fingernails, driving splinters underneath. I fall forward, land on the porch in the cold. The boat nods the other direction, spinning sideways to the current.

No, no! Please no!

The Arcadia rights herself like she’s heard me. She rides the next swell clean and slick.

“You think you can take me? You think you can take me?” Briny yells from up top. A bottle shatters, and glass tumbles down from the porch roof, glistening in the night rain and the tug’s searchlight. It seems to fall slow. Then it plinks into the black water.

“Briny, we’ve gotta get her ashore!” I yell. “Briny, we gotta tie up!”

But the tug’s horn and the storm whip my voice from my mouth.

A man someplace yells curses and warnings. An emergency whistle sounds. The Arcadia rises up a huge wake, balances like a dancer on tiptoes.

She lists as she falls. Cold water rushes over the porch.

We spin sideways to the river.

The tug’s light sweeps and catches us.

A piece of drift aims itself for our bow—a giant strainer tree with all the roots and dirt still attached. I see it just before the light moves on. I scramble for the boathook to push it away, but the pole isn’t where it should be. There’s nothing I can do but hug the porch post and yell to Fern to hang on and watch the tree hit, its roots spreading around the Arcadia like fingers, catching my ankle, turning, and pulling hard.

Inside the cabin, Fern screams my name.

“Hold on! Hold on tight!” I yell. The tree pulls and rips, twirling the Arcadia like a spinning top, whirling her around, then breaking free and leaving us listing in the current. The wakes come over us hard, rushing through the shanty.

My feet slide out from under me.

The Arcadia moans. Nails bust loose. Timbers splinter.

The hull hits something hard, the porch post jerks out of my hands, and next thing I know, I’m flying through the rain. Breath kicks out of my chest. Everything goes black.