This River Awakens

by Steven Erikson

  I shrugged and smiled. I realised he was having fun with me, but for some reason it didn’t anger me – usually, I hated it when adults did that – with their faked fascination and stupid questions just to show how nice they could be. They had always left me wondering what it was they wanted. This time, however, there was no rise of the usual suspicion in me, and I could feel my smile broadening. ‘Nah,’ I said, ‘they’re all too small.’

  Gribbs tilted his head back and roared with laughter, and birds leapt from the branches above us and fluttered away into the growing darkness. He laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘You got good eyes, son. Good eyes.’ Pausing, he cocked his head. ‘I got tea brewing in the house. Care to join me?’

  I hesitated, then shook my head. ‘I can’t. I got to get home.’

  Nodding, he patted my shoulder. ‘Nothing to be done for it, then. Well, a good night to you, son.’ He began walking away.

  I turned to watch him. Then a thought came to me. ‘How about some other time?’

  Stopping, he faced me again. ‘Some other time it is.’

  ‘My name’s Owen.’

  He nodded. ‘And mine’s Walter. Well, see you soon, then, eh?’

  ‘You bet,’ I replied, then turned about and resumed my hurried walk home.

  It was only as I came to the road beyond the Yacht Club’s grounds that I realised that, for a time there, I had forgotten about the horrors of this day, about the panic and the terror, the helplessness and the broken memories, and most of all, I had forgotten about the giant. And the world had seemed normal, unchanged; the night air fresh and cool, the stars appearing overhead, the sound of laughter and the touch of a warm hand.

  * * *

  ‘I was just about to go out and look for you,’ Father said from the top of the porch, still buttoning the front of his jacket.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, deciding that the time was right for telling the story I’d made up. ‘I ate at Roland’s.’

  ‘You should have phoned to let us know.’

  I ascended the steps, glanced up at him then down again. I nodded. ‘I would have, except … except I forgot our phone number.’

  Opening the door, he grunted. ‘You do that, too, eh?’

  I sighed in relief. ‘Yeah. We should write it down or something, huh?’

  Together, we entered the house and paused at the hallway to pull our shoes off. Mother appeared from the living room, her arms crossed and her face stern. I shrugged sheepishly. She turned her gaze to Father and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Ate at Roland’s,’ he said. ‘Forgot our phone number.’

  ‘It won’t happen again,’ I promised, walking over to the telephone and making a show of studying the number.

  ‘Tomorrow morning you do chores,’ Mother said.

  ‘But—’

  ‘And tonight – no TV. You go straight to your room and you stay there. Understand?’

  I glanced an appeal to Father, who shook his head. Debbie came out of the kitchen and grinned wickedly at me. Slumping my shoulders in dejection, I slowly went up the stairs. Despite the act, I knew I was getting off easily.

  I closed my room’s door behind me, crossed the cluttered floor and collapsed down on the bed. I stared at the model airplane dangling from the light fixture. If I stood on the bed, I reasoned, I could pluck it out of the sky. Like King Kong. Like a giant.

  Yes, there had been a brief time of normalcy since then, but what of the afternoon, the hours of which I even now had trouble recalling? What had I done? Where had I gone? And what of the lost conversation with that girl, Jennifer? What had I said to her, what had she said to me? The thought of those blank hours frightened me. What if they happened again?

  He appeared once again in my mind: the flesh so white, so shiny – like plastic. A giant plastic doll – but no, he’d been real. And faceless. There was fear in this recollection, but also, and in growing degrees, fascination. There he was, the giant. Murdered? Murdered. I pictured strong hands holding that faceless face down under the water, pushing it into the oily mud. Had he struggled? No, he’d known it was useless; he’d known he was helpless. Killed by a bigger giant, a stronger giant.

  And then he’d come down the river, leaving the city behind, to finally wash up against the beaver lodge, to finally be found. By us. By me, and Roland, and Lynk and Carl. We’d found him, and it was our secret.

  Tomorrow, we’d make our plans; tomorrow, we’d decide what to do. As my thoughts lingered on this my meeting with Gribbs came back to me. He hadn’t been what I’d imagined him to be; for some reason I had pictured him as some kind of ogre, with a wizened face and a greedy glint in his eyes; a creature who lived in shadows and plotted evil deeds inside his broken-down shack.

  The echo of his laugh returned to me. It had been so loud, so full; it had brought a flock of birds into the air above us – was that even possible? Maybe I had just imagined it. And yet, that laugh had seemed to come from the earth itself – a rumbling of continents. Or the laugh of a giant.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I

  Cars started rolling in at seven, and by nine the parking lot was full. The boat yard was crowded with people. Just like every spring, Walter Gribbs smiled to himself as he continued priming the track winch. There were children running everywhere, staining their hands and knees with thick grease the colour of gold; men walked around their boats and exchanged loud laughter.

  Women made the occasional foray into the yards, walking here and there in groups; but when the morning lengthened and the heat rose, they retreated into the clubhouse to be served cool drinks on the veranda.

  It’s a fact, Walter told himself: we’ve all got our rituals, and when enough people can agree on them you’ve got a society. Could be high, could be low – the rituals met the same needs, and they stayed in place for the same reasons.

  Things hadn’t changed much in his lifetime, he realised wryly. Got people running around nowadays making all these demands: the rituals gotta go, break down the system, buck the establishment; and they’re all acting like they were the first ones to have ever yelled about those things, like they were the first generation born with open eyes. Still, he couldn’t blame them. When those open eyes start getting wider, it’s just plain healthy to let off some steam.

  Just like I did back in the twenties, he mused, grinning to himself as he moved on to the next winch.

  ‘Hey, Walter! When do you figure?’

  He looked up to see Chester Dallow standing beside his boat. ‘’Bout an hour,’ he replied, wiping the sweat from his brow. He smiled. ‘In a hurry?’

  ‘Damn right I am,’ Chester growled. After a moment the yachtsman wandered off, leaving Walter to man the winch.

  Matched in mouth like bells, first the rattling of broken chains, now the hounds at my heels. He grunted angrily. There were times when his inner world became more bitter and sour than he’d care to admit. There were so many sunsets in his memories, so many long nights, the moments came when he forgot the sigh of cool wind on his brow, the birth of dawn and the cry of gulls – the moments of peace lost in the echoing clamour of war.

  Hell, he muttered to himself, it’s been a long life, and like day and night over the years the time balances out. Just step back, old man, and take a good look. Walter sighed. If only the good times left scars like the bad ones. Not just goblins hiding in the shadows in my skull, but angels bursting with light as well.

  He stood beside the winch, watching the men checking the rails for sufficient grease, the tarred blocks for balance, watching them run smooth-palmed hands over hulls, listening to them laugh and joke. And he waited for them to tell him the time had come; he waited for his arm to move of its own accord, an extension of the winch handle and the oil-smeared gears and wheels trapped in the darkness of the machine’s shell.

  I’ve been here before. Haven’t I? How many times reduced to this single reflex. So many years – a long life – and this is what’s expected of me. This, and nothing more.

&
nbsp; The hell with worrying about balances, Walter, can you pull the lever? Can you move that arm? Can you hear when we tell you it’s time? Sure, a lotta years on you, Walter, so long as you’ve learned how to pay attention. We haven’t got all day, have we, now?

  We haven’t got all day. We haven’t got all night. Christ, what have we got, then?

  ‘Hey, Walter! You sleeping at the wheel?’

  Blinking, he looked up, saw Bill Smith’s face grinning at him. ‘Best place t’sleep,’ he replied. ‘You all ready to move?’

  ‘Any time.’

  Walter looked down, watched his left arm move, heard the gears engage and the cables spring taut. There it is, he told himself. You’ve done it. Just unplug everything now – your epitaph’s written: Here lies Walter M. Gribbs, who lived his life to the words: Can You Pull That Lever? He could. He did. He never stopped.

  Slowly, the yacht on its blocks moved off one set of rails and on to another. Cables were redeployed; Walter manned another winch, and the boat crawled towards the water.

  II

  Walking down the aisle, Jennifer slowly met the eyes of every face turned to her. The bus pulled back on to the highway and began to growl its way through the gears. Jennifer took her time making her way to the back seat.

  It was Sunday, and she was dressed to kill. Dressed to kill – her favourite phrase. She felt the eyes of every man clinging to her flesh like greedy fingers, felt their caress as she passed each row of seats. Women were watching her as well, she knew, young and old, with hatred, envy and disgust. Jennifer smiled to herself, wishing that the aisle was a mile long.

  She didn’t care what the women thought when they looked at her; it was the men who mattered. Still inwardly smiling, she took her seat on the last bench of the bus, carefully crossed her legs. The men – young men, men with their wives, their daughters; men with sons who watched Daddy to learn the ways of the world – the men, with their razor-blade eyes slicing her tight t-shirt into strips, peeling away her miniskirt one-half to each side; the men, licking their lips – at her, Jennifer. Thirteen years old. Thirteen, the age of taunting.

  Full-grown men – they’d beg me, oh yes they would.

  I’d make them beg. Fucking right I would. Why not? One grovels and they all grovel – by the thousands. Follow the leader, men are like that. And their eyes are all the same, glued there to the nipples pushing against the t-shirt – looking into them you can’t tell the difference between one pair and the next. Robots. Robots looking around for a wall socket. Animals. Burrowing animals. Jennifer struggled against a burst of laughter, bit her lip until the wave of hysteria passed.

  She held her gaze straight ahead, straight up the aisle to the front window. She saw the bus driver’s face in the rear-view mirror, saw the man’s eyes flick to her. She smiled.

  Imagine all the male thoughts pouring out of all those heads in front of me. Personalised penises for sure, but there I am, in fifty different beds, in bathtubs, in shower stalls, in back seats, in the woods. I’m everywhere, ready, willing and able to fuck their brains out. And I’ll look into their eyes – personalised eyes, of course – so they’ll believe they’re the only ones.

  And all those women up there – all those wives and mothers – they know exactly what’s going on. The silence tells them everything. And they hurt deep inside – they want to be me, even though I disgust them. And they want to be me for one reason and one reason alone – they want to see their men grovel – they want to see every man grovel.

  The outer-lying houses of Riverview appeared through the front window; and people were getting ready to leave the bus. There were murmurs now, mindless questions bowing to the need to speak, to prove personal bonds, to hint at shared secrets. Jennifer felt like sneering, but decided it would be wasted on everyone, even the bus driver who kept looking at her in his mirror.

  The machine growled down through its gears; the bus slowed and turned on to another street and then rolled into the terminal’s parking lot. People rose to their feet, shuffled forward. Jennifer remained seated, watching them. Little lives and wasted motions. Lives empty but for daydreams and forbidden lust. After all, it’s Sunday.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  The bus driver stood on the first step, looking back at her.

  ‘Last stop,’ he explained.

  ‘Damn right it is,’ she replied, rising to her feet.

  * * *

  Riverview General Hospital was the largest building in the community, a bastion of civic pride half filled with a dying generation. Passing through the glass front doors, Jennifer sauntered up to the reception desk.

  ‘What room is Mrs Louper in?’ she asked.

  The nurse looked up from her phone conversation. ‘In a minute,’ she told Jennifer.

  She turned her back on the nurse and leaned against the counter. The place is full of old people. It smells of old people – even disinfectant can’t hide that smell. Like dusty flesh, closed-in spaces, overcrowded chambers. The reek of history nobody will let go of – the thought annoyed her. She wanted to yell at them: Forget it! Forget it all. Let it go!

  The past didn’t mean a fucking thing – everything important would happen in the next minute, the next hour, the next year.

  ‘Now, you had a question?’

  Slowly, Jennifer turned around. She smiled and said in a low voice, ‘What room is Mrs Louper in?’

  The nurse stared at her for a moment, then walked over to a clipboard hanging from a nail on the far wall. She lifted pages. ‘Are you her daughter?’ she asked, not turning around.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Your name?’

  ‘Jennifer. Why?’

  The nurse turned to face her, glanced over Jennifer’s shoulder. ‘Is your father with you?’

  They knew. Everyone knew. A cold deadness filled Jennifer’s stomach. ‘No,’ she whispered.

  The nurse’s eyes seemed to soften. ‘Room 216. Follow the yellow line from the elevator, or ask a nurse on the floor.’

  Jennifer nodded, turned and walked over to the elevator. She pressed the UP button. Everyone knew. The bastards. She felt the nurse’s eyes on her back, felt them like needles pinning a bug to cardboard. She wanted to whirl and scream: Stop staring at me! But the elevator doors opened. A doctor and an orderly walked out, and she walked in and pressed the button to the second floor. She faced a side wall until the doors shut.

  * * *

  The voice went on for ever, filling the house with a dull, toneless drone. In her room, Jennifer sat on her bed, not bothering to wipe the tears from her face. Her father spoke once or twice, breaking into the drone of Dr Roulston’s endless accusation, and his voice came through in a broken whine – she knew he was crying, too, and she hated him for it. The coward.

  The criminal, nailed to his crime, no sympathy for the bleeding, no mercy for his phoney martyrdom, and no, especially no, sanctity granted his secret. She pictured Roulston’s face. How dare he! But there was no point in thinking about that – Roulston was downstairs, pushing his way into their world like a white knight full of raging purity.

  And then the doctor’s voice was gone. The front door closed shut and she heard the footsteps of her father crossing the living room, entering the kitchen. Anger boiled up inside her. The bastard. He was at the fridge, he was getting out another beer. He’d seen the good doctor out and then he’d gone for another drink.

  Jennifer stood, reached for the doorknob with a shaking hand, walked out into the hallway and then down the stairs, through the shadows of the hallway, and into the kitchen. And there he was, sitting at the table, both hands encircling a bottle in front of him. Jennifer stopped at the kitchen’s threshold, staring at him. He wasn’t moving, he was just sitting there, his eyes fixed on the bottle.

  ‘You fucking bastard,’ she hissed.

  He didn’t look up. ‘Get out,’ he croaked.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘What’s he going to do?’r />
  Looking up at her face, her father grinned crazily. ‘Didn’t I tell you to get out?’

  I’m staring into the eyes of a madman, Jennifer told herself. He could kill me. Easily. Right now. She stepped back, shook her head once, then whirled and ran from the room.

  The next morning she’d found him passed out at the table, the bottle – two-thirds empty – standing beside his head. Outside the dogs barked and whined. They were starving, and though she spent a few minutes looking, she could find no food for them.

  Eventually, the unconscious man collapsed in his chair at the table drove Jennifer out of the house. She didn’t want to be there when he woke up. In her room, she selected her tightest white t-shirt and her favourite red miniskirt. Today, I’ll visit Mother.

  And as for the bastard – she hoped he was dead.

  * * *

  The elevator door opened, and she stepped into the hallway. On the floor were three painted lines: red, green and yellow. The yellow line went down the hallway to her right. She followed it, a strange numbness tingling in her hands.

  Room 210, 211, 212 … 216. The door was shut. Jennifer opened it and stepped inside. The window at the far end of the room was open, and a fresh breeze lifted the curtains. There were two beds, the nearer one unoccupied, its sheets and blanket neatly folded and stacked on its smooth, white surface. In the other bed lay a woman with her head turned away. A tube full of clear liquid ran into one of her arms.

  Am I in the wrong room? Jennifer wondered. But no, the woman’s hair was the right colour – an almost-black brown with streaks of grey in it – even though there didn’t seem to be enough of it. The head looked too small, with her hair flattened that way. Jennifer took a step forward. Yes, it was her mother – there were the bandages covering the lower half of her face, and also an odd-looking metal-and-plastic frame with straps that went around the head. Jennifer recalled Dr Roulston’s words: She has a broken jaw …