by Jeff Zentner
This is all I ever need. Nothing more.
But in this reverie, there’s space for the Unwanted Conversation to slip in. I fill the silence with a diversion, taking a page from Papaw’s book. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Lemme think,” Delaney says. A few beats pass. “Oh, got a good one.”
“Shoot.”
“There’s a theory that humans descended from aquatic apes. Like dolphins but apes.”
“For real?”
“This lady named Elaine Morgan is big on the theory. I watched her TED talk. She points out all these adaptations humans have that aquatic animals have.”
“Like?”
“We’re hairless, like whales and hippos. Every naturally hairless land mammal except for the Somalian mole rat has an aquatic ancestor. We have a layer of fat under our skin like aquatic animals. We can speak because we can control our breath. The only creatures with the conscious breath control needed for speech are diving animals.”
“Dang.”
“The scientific community thinks it’s horseshit.”
“Why?”
“Because they’d rather believe we descended from hunter-gatherer primates. The aquatic ape theory is too gentle. Not manly enough for science.”
“I think it sounds good. You and I like being around the water.” The only time I ever see Delaney seem completely at peace is when we’re on the river together.
“But it’s probably horseshit.”
“You like the theory?”
“Yeah, but not because I think it’s probably true.”
“Then why?”
“Because it’s heretical. That’s how science advances and takes humanity with it. People have to be brave enough to look stupid in a field where looking stupid is the worst thing you can do.” She pauses for a second. “Speaking of being afraid of looking stupid.”
“What?”
“Been five days.”
“Since what?”
“You know. Middleford needs an answer.”
“How soon?”
“Like yesterday. They’re holding spots.”
I release my breath in a pained rush. “I talked it over with Papaw and Mamaw.”
“And?”
“They think I should.”
“So?”
“So I’m not sure,” I say.
“You want to stay.”
“Not even a matter of want.”
“Then what?”
“My papaw is the only dad I’ve ever had, and he’s in rough shape, so.”
Her voice is taut. “I can’t stay here anymore, Cash. My mama’s using again. Guaran-damn-tee.”
“How do you know?”
“Found a prescription pad in the lining of her purse. She’s gone all the time and weird about where she’s been. This new sketchy dude named Bo has been hanging around. She’s been wearing long-sleeve shirts in ninety-degree weather. I can’t anymore.” She leaves a weighted pause. “Plus, there’s Cloud.”
I coil like a spring. “He up in your business?”
“Came to my work the other day, looking for me. They wouldn’t tell him when I was on next.” Then she adds, “Don’t do anything stupid. He’s dangerous.”
I’ve come to expect a certain lack of permanence in all things. But I feel a sickly torquing inside my lower abdomen at the sudden realization that I’m losing Delaney. Pretty much my only friend. “Does your mama have to sign off or whatever for you to go?”
Delaney sits up. “Told her I’d been studying the law and if she didn’t sign off, I’d go file emancipation papers, which would automatically trigger a Child Protective Services investigation.”
“That true?”
She snorts. “Hell if I know. She bought it.” Delaney bends down, picks up a smooth stone, and tries to skip it. It enters the water with a single plip.
I crouch, grab a stone, and wing it at the river. It skips four times.
Delaney picks up another rock.
“Watch me,” I say. I make exaggerated motions, showing her how much lower you need to throw from. Papaw taught me. He’s a master of stone skipping.
She tries again. It doesn’t skip. “I want you to come, Cash.”
I avoid her eyes and scan the ground for more smooth, flat stones. “I want to.” This is more lie than truth.
“Then do it.”
“I don’t know.” I get a nice angle and skip a stone seven times. “You see that?”
“I’m scared. Being so far from here. Being at a new school.” She hurls a stone into the water. No attempt to skip it. “Being far from you,” she murmurs.
“Tonight, listen to how Papaw sounds when he breathes.”
“And yet he thinks you should go.” Delaney hovers her hand just above her thigh, then strikes with a loud smack, obliterating a mosquito in a crimson smear. “Since when does Pep say shit he doesn’t mean?”
“This might be different.”
Delaney steps back to the log and sits. “So that’s a no, sounds like.” Her voice teeters, like it’s walking a tightrope over tears. “Guess I should tell the school thanks but no thanks.”
I sit down beside her and put my arm around her freckled and bony shoulders. She smells like river and dust, clean sweat and the ersatz coconut of Dollar General sunscreen on sun-touched skin. “Hey.”
She won’t meet my gaze.
“Hey,” I repeat, shaking her shoulder gently.
She looks at me, hurt in her eyes. “We made this discovery together. We’re a team.”
I look away.
“Who knows what we could do if we stay a team?” She quickly studies her gnawed-on thumb and starts to raise it to her mouth. It looks worse than normal. She’s been troubled.
I intercept her hand. “You’ll catch some river bug and get the scoots.”
She shakes free from my grasp and grabs her ponytail, rubbing the ball of her chewed-up thumb on the tufted end.
“Red.”
Her eyes brim with beseeching. “You’re my best friend,” she murmurs, her voice trailing off. “When I go, my mama will probably die. Without me there with the Narcan next time she OD’s? I don’t want to be alone when that happens.”
I almost say, Maybe you shouldn’t go either, but I think better of it. It’s one thing for me to forgo such an opportunity. It’s another thing to be what prevents her from going. I sense she almost hopes I’ll ask her to stay so she has an excuse not to go. I won’t give it to her.
We’re silent for a long time before she says, “Please don’t say no yet.”
“Okay.”
“Even if the answer is no. Even if you know it in your heart already. Just let me have a couple more days to envision us there together.”
“All right.”
Her face goes distant and dreamy. “I’ve imagined us hanging out at school, wearing goofy-ass private-school uniforms. We have this group of friends who don’t know anything about our lives before. They understand us like no one here does. We visit New York City together some weekend and go to museums.”
“That sounds great,” I say, and I’m not lying.
“What are you gonna do with your life?”
“I don’t know.”
“You even thought about it?”
I fidget uncomfortably. I haven’t, much. That’s what happens when your life is constantly shifting beneath your feet. You never have a firm enough footing to gaze into the distance. “I don’t know. Work hard. Meet someone. Have a family. Start my own landscaping business.”
“Sounds normal,” Delaney says.
“Yeah.”
“You’re not normal. You’re not ordinary.”
“Well, thanks, but I’ve had an unordinary life and I’d have given anything for an o
rdinary life.”
“Shitty life and ordinary life aren’t the only two choices.”
I slap a mosquito on my forearm. “Going to some rich-kid-ass school up north or having an ordinary life aren’t the only two choices.”
“Didn’t say they were.”
“Then why are you on my case?” I walk to the river to wash the blood off my arm.
“On your case?” Delaney’s face wrinkles in disgust. “Don’t be stupid.” We both know she’s smarter than me, so she saves this one for when she either doesn’t care that it will sting or wants it to.
“I try not to be.”
“All I’ve ever thought is that this could be the sort of opportunity that neither of us has had many of.”
“Fine.” I splash water on my arm and scrub off the blood and mosquito guts.
“Ain’t saying you won’t have a good life if you don’t come. I’m saying you won’t have the same life if you don’t.”
“Fine. Let’s change the subject.” I walk back to Delaney.
Her face is defiant. “What do I tell the school?” She starts to put her thumb to her mouth.
I catch her hand. “I’m serious about you getting diarrhea from the river water. Don’t. And tell them I’m still thinking.”
“Okay.”
There’s another long silence.
“Promise me you won’t replace me with a new best friend,” I say.
“Only if I meet someone better at mowing lawns.”
“It’ll never happen.”
“Some of those kids will’ve trained at the most elite lawn-mowing academies. They’ve come up working on their daddies’ golf courses.”
I snort. “They got servants and shit.”
Delaney gives me an impish grin. “Gonna write you a letter. Dear Cash. I regret to inform you that I have filled the position of best friend with Mr.—What’s a good rich kid name?”
“Um…Remington.”
“Like the shotgun?”
“Okay…Chauncey?”
“I have filled the position of best friend with Mr. Chauncey T. Ikea.”
“Ikea! Like the store?”
“Yes. With Mr. Chauncey T. Ikea, scion to the Ikea fortune—”
“Have you ever even been to an Ikea?”
“Stop interrupting with your irrelevant questions. With Mr. Chauncey T. Ikea, scion to the Ikea fortune and graduate of the Wellington Academy of the Lawn-Mowing Arts and Sciences.”
“Dear Delaney. I regret to inform you that I am the lawn-mowing king and that I am forced to throw you in the Pigeon River.” I roar and dart toward her, arms outstretched, like I’m chasing a little kid.
She shrieks, giggles, and bounds backward a couple steps. “I just got dry, you piece of shit!” She raises her tiny fists like a boxer and bounces on the balls of her feet. “I’ll whup your ass.”
I pretend to spit on my palms and raise my fists, like an old-timey prizefighter, moving them in circles, bobbing and weaving. “All right. Come on. Let’s go. Come on.”
She feints and breaks for the water, reaching down, grabbing some in both hands, and throwing it at me, cackling. She reaches down again and splashes me.
I duck and move toward the river myself, hurling water at her. She kicks water at me. We go on until we’re both as soaked as if we’d thrown each other in the river, laughing until we’re breathless and hiccuping.
“Okay, truce,” I say, extending my hand.
“Truce.” She takes my hand.
“Let’s show you how to skip a rock properly. You suck. Seems like you would have figured out all the angles and trajectories and shit.”
“Because studying rock skipping is the thing that most intrigues me.”
We’re quiet for a few minutes while Delaney works on her technique. Then she says, “I wanna go to the zoo this summer.”
“You’ve never even been to the Knoxville zoo?”
“Nope. I want to see meerkats. And a sloth.”
“We’ll go.”
A few more minutes of skipping rocks (or at least attempting to).
“You ever imagined going somewhere where we don’t live in the shadows of our mamas’ sickness?” Delaney asks quietly.
The question hits me like a stepped-on rake. “I mean. It’d be nice.” I nod for a few seconds as the idea gains traction inside me. “Yeah,” I murmur.
We skip rocks for a while longer, talking about nothing in particular, until it’s time to leave. Delaney takes her position in the front of the canoe and I wade into the cool of the river to launch it.
For a heartbeat or two, I only stare at Delaney’s hunched back as she gazes off into the distance, lost but to herself and whatever great question gnaws at the hems of her thoughts. She rests her elbows on her knees, her chin in one hand, playing with the end of her ponytail with the other hand. She already looks like a memory in the gilded, hazy summer light.
As if she can feel my gaze weighing heavy on her, she glances over her shoulder. “We going or not?”
It takes me a second to realize she’s talking about leaving right then, and not about the school. “We are.”
The river twines insistently around my calves, gently tugging me, as though into an embrace. I look down at the swirling eddies of my river and then back at her.
I don’t know how to say goodbye to either of you. I recite it in my mind like a prayer to any God who ever cared enough to listen to me—a petition not for something I want, but to know what I want.
“You ever think about what the murder rate in Longmire’s county must be like, relative to the population?” Delaney asks, as the end credits roll. She sits cross-legged on the couch between Papaw and me.
Papaw chuckles and wheezes.
Delaney continues. “A tiny rural county in Wyoming, and yet every episode has at least one murder. Walt Longmire’s actually maybe the worst law enforcement officer in the world.”
Papaw coughs with laughter. He points at me. “This here’s what I mean by her insights.”
“She’s ruining the show,” I say incredulously.
“She ain’t either.”
“You cried when the horse died at the end of the episode,” Delaney says. She loves to tease him. He adores her teasing.
“And what’s it to you, Tess?” Papaw clears his throat and coughs. “That horse gave a fine performance. He ought to win a horse Oscar.”
“I think it’s sweet,” Delaney says.
“Listen, now, before you leave for your babysitting, I been meaning to tell you how proud I am of you, getting into that school.”
“Aw, Pep.” Delaney lays her head on his shoulder and hugs him sideways.
“You go off to that fancy school, see if you can’t come up with something to beat this tickle in my throat I got, okay?” Papaw says it like a joke, but a stripe of seriousness runs through it.
“I will. I promise,” she says quietly, no jest in her voice whatsoever—only the unshakable resolve of someone sworn to ride out and meet Death in battle.
There’s no one I’d trust more to fight him.
* * *
We go out on the porch and sit for a while, chatting aimlessly. Blushing, Delaney asks to use our shower before she goes. Her hot water heater is broken and she’s afraid to shower at her half brothers’ house. She doesn’t feel safe around their dad or his friends.
She rejoins us, her russet hair damp on her shoulders like autumn leaves stuck to a window after rain, smelling like fake Granny Smith apples and Ivory soap. She tells Papaw about gympie gympie. He’s duly horrified and she’s unduly delighted. Her ride arrives and she leaves to babysit.
It begins sprinkling, the muted notes sounding like someone trying to slowly and secretly open a plastic bag in a room full of sleeping people. The air grows dense with t
he shimmering perfume of rain, dewy honeysuckle, and mown grass.
Papaw coughs, wheezes, spits off the porch. There’s a faint peal of thunder, a bright flicker of lightning, and the rain thickens.
Mamaw drives up, her headlights illuminating the falling drops. I sense something wrong the moment she exits the car. Maybe people emit a distress chemical, like cut grass does.
I run to her. I’m useless against the falling rain, but at least I’m another set of hands if she needs them.
“I’ve got everything,” she murmurs, almost inaudibly. She’s empty-handed but for her purse—no usual pizza box.
I stay by her elbow until we clomp to the porch and out of the rain.
“You’re early,” Papaw says. “Come set with us.”
Mamaw sighs and looks away. “I might could use a moment or two alone, collect myself.” Her voice is faint and fragile.
Papaw looks alarmed. He pulls himself to his feet and takes a couple of steps in our direction.
“Set, Pep. I’ll be fine.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“Bad night’s all. Full moon maybe.” Her voice has a slight hitch. She won’t look at either of us.
“Donna Bird?” Papaw says.
I study her face. I notice a bright-pink blotch just to the side of her left eye. She has a couple of drops of what looks like dried tomato sauce on the same side of her glasses. I reach out to touch, and she gently catches my hand and lowers it.
“I’m sorry I forgot the pizza,” she mumbles, and starts again for the door. “I’ll make some dinner.”
“Mamaw, will you please tell us what happened so we don’t worry?”
“We ain’t trying to pry,” Papaw says, “but…”
She draws a long, stuttering breath. “Neither of y’all can do anything foolish.”
My heart whirs. Papaw moves slowly back to his rocker and sinks into it. He coughs and wheezes. Stress makes his breathing worse. Mamaw sits in the rocker beside him, but I stay standing.
