This River Awakens

by Steven Erikson

  After a few moments, Lynk turned away. He crouched down and scooped up a handful of mud. He rolled it into a ball.

  Roland and Carl were standing now, looking out over the river. On the far bank squatted a factory of some kind. Towering smokestacks bled greasy smoke that drifted down over the river.

  ‘What kind of place is that?’

  Lynk said, ‘Oil refinery.’

  The smoke I’d smelled earlier had come from there – the bus exhaust that for me was the city. Finding it out here was disappointing. The factory was an intruder, crouching there in its own foul breath.

  Carl had left his stick standing upright in the mud at the water’s edge. Its dull-grey shaft threw a worm-like shadow up the bank; already the current had wrapped swamp-grass around it. Slowly, the stick toppled.

  ‘What’re we waiting for?’ I asked, the words coming out harsh.

  The look I turned on Roland must have been a glare, but he only ran one of his thick hands through his straw-coloured hair. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  I nodded sharply, his answer striking me as profound.

  Lynk threw his mud ball into the river. ‘Wait till summer,’ he grinned. ‘I’ll bring my pellet rifle out here and we’ll shoot beavers. Hah! Fuckin’ drill them!’

  ‘Leave them alone,’ I said.

  His grin got wider.

  ‘We’ll shoot at the yachts,’ I continued, ‘unless you’re chicken shit, Lynk.’

  Another jump of Lynk’s shoulders was his only immediate reply.

  ‘We’d get in trouble,’ Roland said, frowning at me.

  ‘Hey,’ I laughed. ‘What’re they going to do, beach their yachts and chase us on foot? Forget it.’

  ‘Fuckin’ right I’ll shoot the pricks,’ Lynk said, clearing his throat and spitting.

  We swung away from the river and made our way inland once again. ‘Let’s head over to the school,’ Roland said. ‘You ain’t seen it yet close up, right, Owen?’

  Lynk laughed. ‘I know why you want to go there, Roland.’ He turned to me. ‘Jennifer and her friends usually hang out there, smoking cigarettes.’ He raised his hands as if cupping breasts. ‘Sandy’ll be there, right, Roland?’

  The farmboy just smiled and pushed ahead of us on the trail.

  ‘Who’s Sandy?’ I asked.

  Lynk nodded at Roland’s back. ‘He’s in love with her.’

  Roland drawled, ‘In the bag, Lynk.’

  ‘Hah!’

  ‘Up your ass.’

  Lynk and I shared a grin, even though inside I struggled against a surge of envy. For a brief moment I hated Roland. For his height, his looks. Then the feeling faded, leaving me with nothing but a fierce, desperate yearning.

  Carl walked behind us. He hadn’t said a word since we’d left the river. I ignored him, though the scene in the boat cycled through my mind, shifting from comical to macabre then back again as I replayed it in detail – the rage on Carl’s face, the spinning thread of spit, the large, thick yellow teeth bared by lips pulled back. It was as if Carl had cast off a mask, revealed his true self. A creature springing from its corner, lashing out with weakly thrown fists and blunt fangs.

  We came to the boat yards once again, passing between two hangars and then crossing the rail tracks. Grey smoke rose from Gribbs’s soot-stained aluminium chimney and the curtains had been pulled back. As we passed in front of the small house, I tried to look through the dusty, cracked glass. But all I saw was my own reflection: an intense face beneath tangled brown hair, eyes the colour of deep ice, an expression drawn and serious. It was a face I barely recognised, as if a sudden strangeness had come to it. I quickly looked away.

  In the air hung the smell of woodsmoke and burnt garbage. The afternoon sun was losing its heat, and the shadows seemed confused and uncertain, as if with the fleeing warmth all meaning, all sense of purpose, had fled as well.

  The small winding driveway took us away from the Yacht Club and brought us to the lower right-hand corner of the ‘U’ road. We walked up the narrow asphalt street, stepping around the puddled potholes. The road climbed the hill; from the summit we could see, and hear, the highway. Beyond it was the school.

  ‘Jennifer’s got big tits,’ Lynk said to me. ‘Maybe she’ll show them to us.’

  ‘You wish,’ I said.

  ‘How the fuck would you know, Owen?’ Lynk demanded. ‘You don’t know Jennifer. You don’t know anybody.’

  I thought of the face looking back at me in the window pane, and for some reason I thought of the animals sleeping inside their mound of sticks. ‘Soon,’ I said to Lynk.

  IV

  The cellar, long, dark and low, smelled of madness. Fisk hesitated at the top of the stairs, staring down at his own shadow running the length of the worn steps – it ended at the shoulders, the shadow of his head lost in the cellar’s own gloom.

  His hands twisted around the cattle prod’s shaft. He sucked a breath in between his teeth, then reached up and flicked on the light. Skittering sounds – claws and metal – came from below. A dance? A dance for me? ‘I’m coming, don’t be impatient now.’ His words felt thick in his mouth.

  He’d bought the cattle prod years ago, for no special reason. It was too messy for killing mink, and besides, its electrical charge burned the fur. Sometimes he carried it around like a baton. Sometimes he called it his own, special maypole.

  But now, with the selection of his four pets, the prod had found a new function, one more suited to its original purpose – excitement tightened his throat at the thought. He paused at the foot of the stairs and let his gaze travel down the cellar’s length. To the right ran a long workbench, cluttered with mason jars and rusting garden tools. Along the left wall, on a second workbench, waited four cages. He’d named his new friends: Moon, Rat, Gold and Bruise.

  ‘Hello, kids,’ Fisk said as he stepped forward. At his words the panicked skittering from the cages stopped. The only sound left was Fisk’s own raspy breath, which began to quicken. ‘Yeah, it’s me. Just me.’

  He walked up to the first cage, where Bruise crouched against the back wall. Fisk peered inside. ‘Well, you’ve stopped dancing. Shame. Your friends look up to you, you know.’ He ran one hand down the length of the cattle prod until he found the switch. ‘The least you can do is sing for me.’ He set the switch, pushed the prod through the wire, taking care not to touch it with the charged tip. ‘Here we go, Bruise.’ Fisk stabbed the prod into the mink, pinning it against the wall.

  The animal’s scream was shrill. In the dim light Fisk saw Bruise’s mouth stretch wide open. Then it leapt high, rebounding off the cage’s ceiling. It stilled, lying huddled along one wall – stilled, he saw, except for the twitching, the jumping limbs, the snapping jaws.

  The convulsions lasted for a few minutes, after which Bruise crawled away from the piss and shit it had spilled.

  Fisk let out a long breath. ‘Not dead. Good.’ He withdrew the cattle prod. ‘Now you know, don’t you, Bruise. No one mocks me. Tell that to your friends.’

  He climbed the steps; at the top he turned off the light and strode into the hallway. A dead garden, pressed between the leaves … He shut the door behind him.

  As the sounds of Fisk trailed away, the mink in the third cage scampered forward and resumed gnawing at the wires of the latch. Its mouth was bloody. More blood stained the wires. The animal worked frenetically, unceasingly.

  * * *

  The living room had gone grey. Fisk checked the lamps to make sure that no bulbs had blown. Frowning, he shook his head, walked over to the sofa and lay down.

  He felt hot and itchy. The beat of his heart was loud in his head. ‘Christ,’ he muttered. He had an erection. He’d felt its beginnings down in the cellar, though at first he couldn’t believe it was happening. After all, it’d been eleven years.

  But there it was, a pressure both familiar and alien. In his mind Fisk resurrected the image of Dorry’s face, decades stripped from it, eyes bright and young, soft lips slightly par
ted, her halo of blonde hair touched by the sun.

  The erection died. ‘Goddamn,’ Fisk moaned, rolling over on to his stomach. He stared down at the carpet: dingy green, worn down to the stiff weave in places. Slowly, almost lazily, his eyes travelled up the leg of the low, long table, and came to rest on the cattle prod.

  Replaying the events of the cellar in his mind, he felt once again the mounting pressure in his loins. With it came a savage excitement, fraught with perversion and sin, which only seemed to make it more pleasurable, more visceral.

  ‘Bloody goddamn,’ he whispered.

  V

  Jennifer lit a cigarette once her mother had cleared the dinner dishes from the table. She felt her father’s bleary eyes on her as she flicked ash into the ashtray. She took a deep drag, slowly exhaled, then swung a sweet smile on her father.

  Sten said nothing. His hands were wrapped tightly around a coffee cup; his blotchy face held an unreadable expression. She smelled the alcohol exuding from him, and wondered at the cold absence of feeling within her. Of course, he’d been drinking for years. Even disgust goes numb sooner or later. She remembered once, when she’d been seven, seeing her father come stumbling into the house, reeling against the wall before making his way into the kitchen. He re-emerged, holding a slice of white bread, then disappeared into the basement. It was her first memory of seeing him drunk.

  She never understood what had happened, what had caused it all. Questions like that weren’t asked. He’d been injured on the job, an industrial accident, they called it, so he didn’t have to work, ever again. But she didn’t know what was wrong with him. He didn’t limp, wasn’t blind, had both his hands. Injured, industrial accident. Who the fuck cares any more? He drank before the accident; he drank more after it, was probably drunk when it happened and that’s why it happened.

  There wasn’t any point thinking about it any more. Better if he’d died.

  She blew smoke rings across the table, watched them whirl up then dissipate.

  Her mother returned from the kitchen with the coffee pot. ‘More coffee, Sten?’ she asked quietly.

  He nodded without looking up, pushed his cup to the centre of the table.

  Elouise refilled it, then sat down. Sighing, she placed the pot down then rubbed her eyes. ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that, Jennifer,’ she said wearily.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Smoke.’

  ‘I do what I want,’ Jennifer snapped. ‘Nobody can stop me.’

  ‘I know,’ her mother replied.

  ‘Right. Daddy smokes, doesn’t he.’

  Sten looked up at the sarcastic Daddy, then shook his head. ‘Shouldn’t take after me,’ he said, his gaze falling to his hands and staying there.

  Jennifer laughed harshly. ‘You can count on that, Daddy.’ She stood, the movement abrupt enough to startle both her parents. ‘I’m going out tonight.’

  Her father said, ‘Don’t be too late.’

  ‘Sure thing. I wouldn’t want to miss the fights, would I?’ She took down her faded jean jacket from a peg beside the back door. ‘With a bag of goodies and a bottle of wine,’ she sang, then turned back to her parents. ‘Know what that song’s about?’

  Neither replied.

  With a smile and a wave Jennifer left the house. As she walked across the yard Sten’s dogs barked at her. She ignored them.

  Halfway up the block Jennifer met Sandy and Barb, who had been coming down to call on her. As always, it was important to meet them away from the house. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘You ready?’

  Barb grinned behind her hand.

  ‘Ready for what?’ Sandy asked.

  ‘Didn’t Barb tell you? We’re going into town.’

  Barb giggled and said, ‘Jenny knows some Grade Nine guys. We’re meeting them at the McDonald’s.’

  ‘Come on,’ Jennifer said, draping her arms around her friends and pulling them forward. ‘We’re going to hitch in.’

  ‘Hitch-hike?’ Sandy asked.

  ‘Yep.’

  Sandy pulled back.

  Jennifer reached out and took Sandy by an arm. ‘Don’t worry. If some perve tries anything I’ll rip his nuts off.’

  Barb screamed her laughter. Halfway back down the block, the shriek set off Sten’s dogs again.

  The three girls walked towards the highway.

  VI

  We arrived at the traffic lights. Across the highway stood the school. Along the playing field rose a high chain-link fence that stretched around to include the now empty parking lot.

  ‘We’re Patrols,’ Lynk said. ‘We get keys to work the lights, and we take all the little kids across. You got Patrols in your school?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You a Patrol?’

  I shook my head. ‘I take the bus home, right?’

  ‘But when you lived close,’ Lynk persisted.

  Again I shook my head.

  Lynk swaggered as he walked up to the highway’s gravel shoulder. The traffic lights blinked green for the cars, blinked red at us. Cars and trucks rolled past us at high speeds. We waited for a lull.

  Lynk said, ‘The Boorman kid got killed here last year. That’s why they put up the lights, and put us in charge. He was six. Had big ears and a runny nose.’

  Roland, hands in pockets, said, ‘He was the third kid killed around here in the last ten years.’

  ‘Happens all the time,’ Lynk said.

  ‘A girl in an apartment block we lived in fell from the third floor, right over the balcony rail on to the grass.’

  Lynk looked at me. ‘You lived in an apartment?’

  ‘For a little while,’ I said, turning to watch the traffic. ‘She broke both her legs.’

  Roland put a booted foot in a puddle and swirled it until the water turned grey. ‘That’s a long drop. Good thing she didn’t die.’

  I nodded. ‘We lived on the fifth floor. I went out on our balcony when I heard this screaming. The mother was on her balcony, screaming and screaming. Everybody came out to look, all of us leaning over the rails – the whole side of the apartment, twelve storeys, all these people leaning over and watching her scream. We couldn’t see the girl, but we watched her mother scream.’ I glanced to see that they were all watching me. ‘They took the mother away. The police did. There was talk that she pushed her daughter over.’

  Lynk’s eyes went wide. Roland scowled. Carl licked his lips.

  I shrugged and kicked at some gravel. ‘In the city you get accidents, sure,’ I said, scanning the blacktop. ‘But lots of times they aren’t accidents. They just look like accidents.’

  The lull came, not a long one, but long enough. My three friends ran hard across the highway; I followed at a slower, slightly daring pace. The last bit of my story, about the mother, had been a lie of sorts. That mother did live in the apartment, and had been taken away because she beat her kids, but it was a different mother from the one whose daughter fell from the balcony. And it had happened years earlier.

  I didn’t think there was anything wrong in putting two truths together to make a lie, especially since it was a good story. No, not just a good story. It had been ugly enough to take the swagger out of Lynk, to make Roland study me carefully, as if he saw something he hadn’t seen before. It had been enough to make all three of them run hard across the highway.

  We walked down the short driveway leading into the parking lot. My thoughts had moved on, flipping through scenes in my mind. The Boorman kid, his mother screaming and running up the highway to where he lay in the muddy ditch. The stopped cars, the flashing lights on the police cars and the ambulance’s wild wail. I ran it all through my mind, then checked myself for whatever feeling came from it.

  When the screaming goes away, that’s when it gets bad. That’s the way it seemed, anyhow. Because the quiet kind of sadness doesn’t go away – it stayed with every new scene I conjured up: the family at home, the little boy’s room, his empty bed.

  Next year I’ll become a Patrol.

  W
e approached the school’s glass front doors, the four of us looming large in the reflective, smoky panes.

  Lynk gave Roland a light push, then said to me with a grin, ‘The girls usually hang out back.’

  ‘What do they do?’ Even as I asked I remembered: They smoke cigarettes.

  But Lynk laughed. ‘What the fuck do you think, Owen? They sit in a circle and show off their tits.’

  With a smile, Roland said, ‘Problem is, only Jennifer’s got any.’

  ‘Only one in Grade Six,’ Lynk said, nodding.

  The area around the school was paved. Hopscotch lines stood out in bright yellow contrast on the dark asphalt. Back of the school the pavement gave way to gravel, where there were monkey-bars and concrete tubes big enough to walk through. Beyond them rose a wire fence, and beyond that ran railway tracks on a raised bank.

  We came to the school’s back wall – high, windowless and made of dark brown brick. Two recessed metal doors without handles marked the only variation down its length. Just past the new construction, the high wall ended abruptly at the juncture with the old school, with its own low span of pitted, crumbling limestone. The fence was closest here, only ten feet away as it followed a drainage ditch from the railway tracks back to the highway. On the other side of the ditch ran a narrow dirt road that turned before reaching the tracks and encircled a massive, blockish building made of Tyndal stone. It was at least four storeys tall and looked abandoned.

  Lynk looked around, then leaned his back against the old school’s wall. ‘No one’s here,’ he said.

  Carl bent and picked up a stone, which he threw over the fence.

  I pointed. ‘What’s that old building there?’

  ‘Candle factory,’ Roland answered. ‘All closed up now.’

  ‘Looks old.’

  Roland nodded and said, ‘My dad says it was built in 1900. There wasn’t even a school here back then, and the highway was just a gravel road.’

  Lynk joined Carl in throwing stones. He flung one hard at the building, but it fell short.

  Roland’s eyes remained on the factory. ‘Making candles used to be big business, I guess.’