American River Review 2019 - Flipbook - Page 47
slice the oars through the black water that will soon be
my home.
I watch as they gingerly stand, bracing each of their
legs on either side of my floating coffin. They balance
and lift. Josh winces and I know the high school football
injury to his left collarbone is flaring.
“Ok, on three. You got it?”
Josh nods.
“One - two - three, ” Bruce grunts. Bruce’s muscular
upper body makes him top heavy and he holds on to my
shoulders a moment too long. He falls in with me and
together we cause a thunderous splash that echoes in the
night.
I watch Bruce flail like a trapped animal until I can
no longer make out the tread on the bottom of his work
boots. The water cradles me womblike, caresses me
slowly as I sink to the silt floor. What does Bruce mean,
I would have killed Josh? Who is he kidding? Didn’t he
notice the purple bruise that covered half my face last
October? Didn’t he question why I wore long-sleeved
shirts in August? Did he think I magically stopped being
pregnant?
I lived a life making sure Josh’s dinner was on the
table precisely between 5:15 and 5:25 every night. I
showered when he told me to, woke up when he needed
me to. I stopped calling friends, stopped even entertaining
the thought of contacting my parents, pushed my sister
away, left my phone in plain sight because that is what
he wanted, that is what he demanded. Me? Hurt Josh? I
was too busy making sure I didn’t make eye contact with
a grocery clerk or laugh at a waiter’s joke. I accounted
for every hour when drilled, every phone call placed or
received. Once I spent two months in a cast because I
smirked when he said the next-door neighbor’s fence was
bob-wired.
Josh will get away with this. It’s been two years since
I’ve spoken to my parents and eight months since I last
saw my sister, Beth. Both final conversations ended with
me telling them to go to Hell while Josh stood smiling in
the shadows with rescuing promises. I’m to blame really.
I sat, side by side with him, and snorted my way through
five years and became rather sloppy at keeping it all a
secret. My sister told my parents that I had a problem.
They came forward, as parents do, initially offering
money then consistently offering rehab and when I
finally managed to asphyxiate their efforts, when I finally
managed to erase their vision of the little girl I once
was and replace it with the stringy-haired addict I had
become, they changed the lock on their front door for the
last time. It wasn’t until later did Josh confess to me that
he’d stolen money from both my parents and my sister
but by then I was all in. I tell myself had I known what
Josh had done, I wouldn’t have slapped my mother when
she threatened to call the police, would have known better
than to tell Josh where she kept the good silver, wouldn’t
have walked away and left my parents with the painful
defeat, the unforgiving guilt, that will be their bedfellow
for the rest of their lives.
And not Melissa? The apple-faced, barely eighteen
Pollyanna that volunteers at the animal shelter? The
church going virgin whose eyes shine with such naïveté
that anyone who looks at her hears children belly-giggle
in a Norman Rockwell painting?
The girl I used to be?
I hope she can find all the comfort she needs staring
into a shelter dog’s eyes because that will be all she has
left soon. She will have to learn fast to disguise what
she loves with invisible armor even when he lies next to
her on a lazy Sunday morning telling her how beautiful
she is, coaxing her to share her dreams, and more
dangerously, her fears, cocooning her in a blanket of trust
that he will strip from her later leaving her exposed pink
vulnerability to quickly age into layers of twisted scar
tissue.
The cuffs of my jeans collect dirt from the shore as I
watch the boys load and secure the boat into the bed of
the pickup. Bruce grabs two brooms and two flashlights
from the extended cab and tosses them along the water’s
edge with a rehearsed accuracy and then slides behind the
wheel as the truck engine growls. Josh removes his shoes
and stuffs his socks inside while Bruce pulls the truck
out of sight. Methodically, Josh ties the two sets of laces
together and throws them around his neck, each muddy
boot now dangling against his chest. Bruce returns with
his boots fashioned similarly.
“C’mon boy, start sweepin’. I don’t plan on being here
when the sun comes up,” Bruce says.
Both men begin a steady back and forth movement
with the brooms, brushing hard to clear the muddy
tire tracks and more softly as the dirt turns to dust,
continually scanning the ground with their flashlights as
they back their way into the bush toward their vehicles.
I take a perverted delight in the pain I feel as blackberry
thorns pierce the bottom of Josh’s tender feet.
I settle in the bed of the pickup, feel the boat rock
against me with every turn and pock mark in the road.
Bruce lights a cigarette, takes a long pull and I stare at
him, his eyes framed in the rear-view mirror as smoke
fills the air between us. We enter Highway One following
Josh and head, I realize, toward Moss Landing. The
AG farms narrow Giberson Road but we continue on for
about a two-mile stretch. Josh’s taillights bloody the dark
night and Bruce cuts the engine.
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