Winter Loon(56)

“Let go of me!” The knife had fallen out of the sheath and was there on the floor. I grabbed it like I would use it to defend myself against attack, pointing it underhand to take quick, short jabs.

In the full-length mirror, I saw Kathryn cowered against her headboard, covering her bare breasts with her elbow. “I thought you’d want this. I thought you wanted me.” Her hand flew to her mouth when she saw the knife. “Go!” she screamed. “Get out!”

In the reflection, I saw myself as she saw me, my people at their worst—a predator, a loser. A fatal mistake.

I dropped the knife, backed out of the room, hands up, all apology. I practically fell down the carpeted stairs, Kathryn’s cries following me like a banshee. I took a bottle of good scotch from the open liquor cabinet, grabbed my shoes, and stumbled out the back door in my stocking feet. Headlights from the banker’s car, green as money, blinded me. I shielded my eyes with the arm holding the bottle. The mother jumped out of the car first, her shellacked hair glowing white in the dark night.

“Oh my Lord!” Her hand went to her throat. I spun around to her side, figuring it was safer to run past her than risk a body check by Burt Rook. He was out next, palm slapping the roof of his car, demanding I return to the scene of the crime his shouting voice seemed certain I had committed.



WHEN I WAS SURE HE wasn’t following me, I stopped to get my shoes on. Clutching the scotch bottle by the neck, I walked past the Main Street Market and the little house behind it where Lester lived. The house was dark. Lester’s car wasn’t there. I drank my way through town, turned left onto Jolene’s street. Mona’s station wagon and the Bronco were parked by the garage. Lester’s Impala was parked on the side street under a light, waxed and shiny like it was somehow better than every other car, like the light of God was shining down on it, protecting it, keeping it safe. I hated that car and I hated its owner. “Fuck you,” I whispered, and leaned against it, purposefully rubbing the rivets on my back pockets against the paint. I took another drink, skimmed my belt for the missing knife, the pilled suede of the empty sheath coarse against my palm. I could see it like I’d been there when it happened. How he’d swooped in the second I left town. I imagined him maneuvering Jolene into the back seat of the Impala, or lying with her on the bed under the window. It was like a bloodletting—it felt good to think the worst, to wallow in the pain instead of always, always holding it away from me. It was Lester’s throat I should slit. I imagined doing it, sneaking up on him, grabbing his long hair in my right hand. He’d beg me to stop, and grab at my hand that yanked his hair, not realizing the other one held a knife. Then, I’d speak his name so he’d know it was me and in one backhanded motion slice through his neck from ear to ear. His tendons unlashed in my hand. There’d be a gush of blood and I would smear it like war paint on my cheeks.

In my murderous thoughts, I was covered in the blood of my enemy. I could feel it trickling down my face, taste the mineral salt on my lips as I slowly scraped them clean with my teeth. I let my head drop on the hood of the Impala. Even victory felt like defeat. I kicked the fender of Lester’s car, then kicked it again. I expected the porch light to come on, for Lester to come flying out to finish me off. Part of me welcomed it. Then I remembered. He always left the keys in the ignition.

I took another drink, threw the bottle on the passenger seat. I revved the engine enough that every house around would hear, boxing gloves on a speed bag, then laid a patch of tire on the asphalt as I tore off. My body prickled like I had been put to sleep and was waking. If I was going to fuck it up, I was going to fuck it up good.

The Impala’s gas pedal was touchy and the gear shift tight. I was loose with whiskey and hopped it several times, gearing up and down. I swerved my way out of town like a tornado. I clipped a mailbox that flew over the car and into the road in my rearview. Who cares? I thought. No one, that’s who, my thoughts answered.

I hadn’t planned to go to the river but found myself there anyway. I killed the engine in the middle of the road on that bridge Jolene and I had jumped from months before. I closed my eyes, willed it to be summer again, wished that the billows of white in the headlights were fluff from a cottonwood tree instead of a snow flurry. I rolled down the window. Skunk and bark clung to the night air along with that smell of snow about to fall. I pressed my knuckles into my eyes until I thought I might crush them. I left the door open and leaned out over the guardrail. The river wound off into the distance, a gray-blue ribbon behind the night’s dark dress. Dangling myself over the edge, I watched the water flow from behind me, to beneath me, and finally away from me. And I thought of Jolene and this river that belonged to her and me. I remember thinking, If I could go back to that one moment when I kissed her. If I could go back to that spot or to the minutes before when we were under the green water together with the silver specks of mica and fish scales floating around us, catching in our hair, and sticking to our wet bodies.

And I saw myself then on the riverbank far below, holding Jolene’s face in my hands as if she was something new and precious brought to life. And her brown body was pressed into mine and she touched my hair and my cheek and it was all gone. I leaned over the rail, trying to see them, as if I could lure them out again from under the bridge or wherever it was they were hiding. I put one foot on the rail and then another. Little waves rippled over rocks, their fingers and hands beckoning me. But even that I couldn’t do.