Into This River I Drown

by TJ Klune

  “Dad!” I shout through the rain.

  The engine floods and cuts out. The truck shifts within the current and scrapes against rock. The sound causes my jaw to clench, my ears to ring. I stumble when my foot becomes stuck, splashing my face down into the water, the cold a numbing thing, immediately forcing its way down my throat. I scrabble into the riverbed with my left hand, but it too becomes entrenched in mud. I gag and start to choke. I force my eyes open, blinking away the sting, but I can’t see, the water is moving too swiftly. The more I fight, the more tired I get. Lights begin to flash behind my eyes as the water enters my lungs.

  My right hand floats up near my face. The feather is still there, clutched tightly. The silky blue flutters slowly. It brushes my face. Oh, please, I think. I’m drowning. Oh, please. Help me.

  A big hand clamps down on my shoulder, the grip tight and biting, and all I can see is blue and all I think is blue and all I can hear is blue. My head breaches the surface, water spraying in all directions. I vomit a thick stream of river and begin to gasp for air. I open my eyes and the sky around me is filled with feathers, all dark, all blue, all raining down from the sky.

  The hand slips from my shoulder and wraps around my chest, pulling me back until I’m pressed against something large and warm. I look down at the arm around me, thick and strong, a fine layer of auburn hair running up to the back of the gigantic hand. I’m lifted up with this one arm, pulled up the body behind me, through a shower of blue feathers that continues to fall. I struggle, but the strength around me is too great, and I catch a last glimpse of the truck upside down in the river before my vision is blocked by a moving wall of dark blue from either side of me that carries a rustling that sounds like wind over bones. I’m wrapped into this cocoon and I breathe it in. Earth, I think.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” a voice says in my ear, the arm around me clenching tighter. “This is not a place for you. You are not ready to cross. You will drown. I cannot allow that to happen.” As he speaks, his lips scrape against my neck and I shiver, droplets of water falling from my hair.

  “But—”

  The two sides of the cocoon flash open in front of me, and even as I recognize them for what they are, there is a bright flash of blue and I am flung upward, toward the gray clouds above me, the sky bending inward, to a point, as if being pulled from the other side. I fly up through this apex and feel a flash of extreme vertigo as my world flips upside down and I fall from the ceiling of Little House and land in my bed with a crash, the frame groaning beneath me.

  I sit up, gasping, my eyes flashing open, kicking the covers away from me, pushing up against the backboard.

  A dream. It was just a dream.

  My skin is slick with sweat, not wet with river water.

  My legs are not covered in mud.

  I did not almost drown.

  I did not just witness my father’s accident as if it just happened.

  I was not pulled from the water and wrapped in a cocoon.

  But even though I know this, know all of this, even though I am a rational person living in the real world where nothing extraordinary ever happens, even with all of this, I am at a loss to explain what is in my right hand.

  A large feather, of the deepest blue.

  Not a cocoon.

  No.

  Wings.

  the man who fell from the sky

  “Are you coming down with something?” my mother asks me the next morning

  in the kitchen of Big House as she puts a cup of coffee in front of me. “You look really pale.” The Trio stop their chatter and lean in closer to me, trying to determine themselves if I am sick.

  “Oh,” Mary says, glancing at her twin. “You do look ill.”

  “Ill,” Nina parrots with a giggle. “So deathly ill. Sickly.”

  “He just needs to take a day off,” Christie decides. “How many days have you worked in a row now?”

  “Not that many,” I grumble. “I’m not sick. I just didn’t sleep well last night.” And apparently I was saved by a bird-man that I took a feather from and it became real. So… that’s a thing too.

  “Thirty-two,” my mother says as she rifles through the desk calendar. “You’ve worked thirty-two straight days. No wonder you’re getting sick.”

  “I’m not sick!”

  “You need to take a break,” Christie says.

  “Take a break and get laid,” Mary says as she sips her coffee.

  “Totally get laid,” Nina agrees.

  “Do we know any homosexuals? To help him out?” Christie asks her sisters, much to my horror.

  “Like, on TV? Or in real life?” Mary asks.

  “Real life,” Christie says. “I think we should attempt to start local before trying to go after celebrities. Maybe by the time he’s ready, Tom Cruise will have come out.”

  “He’s too old,” Mary says with a frown. “Benji needs someone younger. And far more hip.”

  “I don’t know any gays,” Nina says sadly. “I must not be very hip.”

  “You are very hip,” Christie reassures her. “And you do too know some gays! You know Benji here. He’s obviously a gay. And what about that lovely he-she that used to do your nails back in Seafare? What was his-her name?”

  “It depended on what day it was,” Mary says. “Sometimes he was Joe Workman. Other times she was Quartina Backhand, the most dangerous woman in captivity.”

  “What a lovely name that is,” Christie says. “She-males are so amazing.” “I don’t think Benji wants a lady-man,” Nina says.

  “You’re probably right,” Mary says thoughtfully. “He probably wouldn’t know

  what to do with him-her.”

  I groan and lay my head down on my arms. “Please, just shoot me now.” The Trio laughs.

  Mom rubs her hand over the back of my head. “Girls, you’re embarrassing him.

  You know Benji’s a bit of a prude.”

  “A bit?” Mary snorts. “He’s the biggest prude we know.”

  “I am not a prude,” I snap at them, still hiding my face, knowing I’m blushing. “How come your neck is turning red?” Nina asks. “Are you hot?” “What about Carl!” Mary says excitedly. “He’s strapping and available and only

  one town over.”

  “We tried that already, remember?” Christie asks. “It turned out he was into

  some very kinky things.”

  Understatement. Over dinner, Carl told me that he was into fisting and wanted

  me to wear his arm and be his puppet.

  “A prude,” my mother says lovingly. “You are taking the day off today. One of

  us can take the store today.”

  I shake my head as I yawn. “I can’t. I’ve got two oil changes and Abe is

  convinced that there’s a rattling sound under the hood of the Honda, even though

  there never is. Today is busy.”

  My mom sighs. “Then tomorrow.”

  “I’ve got—”

  “Benji,” all four women scold at once.

  I throw my hands up in the air. “Fine. Tomorrow.”

  Mom grins at me as she takes my cup from my hand and pours the coffee into a

  travel mug. All four women then stand in a line and I kiss their cheeks, the Trio

  telling me not to worry, that they will find a homosexual or two, even if they have to

  think on it all day.

  I shake my head as my mom hands me my mug and motions for me to turn

  around. I do, and she lifts my backpack up and sets it on my back. They treat me like

  I’m twelve, but I like to think it’s more for their benefit than mine. Mom’s fussing

  with the zipper on the back of my bag when alarms start ringing in my head. I’m

  about to turn when she opens the bag to see what the zipper is caught on. A feather falls to the floor.

  I bend to scoop it up, but Mary beats me to it. “Where in the crap did you find

  this?” she ask
s, holding it close to her face.

  Christie plucks it from her fingers. “This has got to be the biggest bird ever.” My mother grabs it. “Benji, where did this come from?”

  I make a move to take it back, but she holds it away from me. “Near Little

  House,” I say defensively. “I just like it, okay? Give it back.” I can’t tell them the

  thought of anyone other than me touching the feather makes me want to snarl and

  lash out. I can’t tell them I spent the remainder of last night sitting in a chair in the

  corner of the room, my knees curled up against my chest, watching the feather as it

  lay on my bed. I can’t tell them where it came from, but somehow I know it is mine,

  that it is for me.

  “Can I see it?” Nina asks quietly.

  My mother looks to me. I shrug, every fiber of my being screaming for me to

  take it back, that no one else should touch it, but I don’t want to be forced to explain

  these ridiculous feelings, seeing as how I don’t understand them myself. Not so ridiculous, I tell myself. It’s mine. It’s mine because it came from my

  dre—

  She hands it over to Nina, who moans softly as it touches her fingers. “It’s so

  pretty,” she whispers. “And so, so blue.” Her eyes flick to mine at this last. I look

  away. “Did you see him?” she asks me.

  I close my eyes.

  “See who?” Christie asks, baffled.

  “The bird?” Mary asks, confused.

  “It must have been huge,” my mom said.

  I open my eyes. All are watching me. But it’s Nina I look at. “No,” I say. “I

  didn’t see him.”

  She nods as if she’s received the answer she expected. She watches me for a

  moment longer before handing the feather back to me. There’s a burst of heat as it

  touches my fingers, and I know she can feel it too when her eyes widen, when a coy

  smile dawns on her face. “It’s blue,” she says after a moment. “Isn’t that right,

  Benji?”

  “Yes, dear,” Mary says, smiling at her sister. “The feather is blue. That’s very

  good!”

  I shove it in my backpack and turn to walk out the door, unable to take her

  knowing eyes on me anymore. My mother calls after me, reminding me that I’m

  taking the day off tomorrow, that she’ll open the store. I wave without looking and

  then am out the door into the cool morning air.

  “This whole area used to be gold!” Abraham Dufree tells me a few hours later,

  standing above me while I lean under the hood of his ’89 Honda Civic. “That’s why Roseland was founded, you know!” I know only because Abe tells me the same thing almost every single week when he brings in his car for a rattling he’s sure he hears under the hood, or how his tires seem to be low, or he’s sure there’s a brake problem because they feel squishy to him. More often than not, there’s nothing wrong with the car. “He just needs someone to talk to,” my father had told me once. “After Estelle died, he got lonely. It’s what happens when you’re with someone for over sixty years, Benji. When that is suddenly gone, you’re lost. He just needs help finding his way back.” After Big Eddie, Abe still brought his car in and transferred all his stories over to me. I don’t know when it happened, but I suddenly found myself with a best friend who was an old man.

  “In 1851, right?” I say, tightening the spark plugs that I loosened only moments before to make it look like I was doing something.

  “That’s right! This place was just empty fields and hills, and then they found gold! Over the next year, over two thousand people made their way up here, thoughts of riches flashing through their eyes, wouldn’t you know. O’course, once the railroad moved south, the town pretty much dried up along with the veins buried under the rock.”

  “But somehow it’s still here, right?”

  “Oh, sure. There’s something special about this place. There’s something about Roseland that kept it alive, even when everyone else thought it would die.”

  “What makes it special?”

  He laughs, as he always does at this point. “The people, o’course! I’ve lived here all my life, Benji. It’s always the people. They’re the ones that kept it alive. You and I have kept it alive.”

  “And what was it Estelle always used to say?” I ask him, even though I can tell him verbatim. “What did she used to tell you about the gold?”

  He grins and nods, his dentures sturdy and slightly yellowed. “She used to say, ‘Abe, there’s still gold up in those hills, I can just feel it! I’ve almost a mind to head on down to the hardware store and pick up a shovel and a pickax and just start hitting rocks to see what I could find!’ That’s what the missus used to say. Sure as I’m standing before you, that’s what she said.”

  I don’t know why, but I choose to deviate from our usual conversation. I’m supposed to tell him that I wouldn’t be surprised if his late wife was right on the money, that there were nuggets of gold the size of footballs just waiting to be discovered. Then we’d move on to the weather and how it seems to get hotter and hotter every summer and the season approaching should be a doozy. It was March and already in the seventies? Gosh!

  But I don’t. Somehow I know things are changing, and I can’t stop myself. I’m thinking of the feather when I say, “And did she ever?”

  The grin slides from Abe’s face. He looks confused. “Did she ever what, Benji?”

  “Did she ever get a shovel? Did she ever get a pickax? Did she ever head into the hills and split rocks until she found gold?” My hands feel cold, even though it’s warm; wet, even though they’re dry.

  His old face wrinkles further as he frowns. I wonder if I’ve made a mistake. I wonder if things are supposed to always stay the same. I wonder if it’s too late to take it back. Then, in a quiet voice, he says, “No. She didn’t. It was just something she always said. She liked to talk big sometimes, you know. I think we all do.” He sighs as he looks out the front of the garage, sunlight dancing through the trees. The shadows sway along the ground. “But that was her talking, the old girl. Something she said when she was dreaming out loud. Do you ever dream out loud, Benji?”

  Now he’s changing the script. I’m immediately on the defensive, attempting to resist the blinding, fiery urge to run into the shop, to check my backpack to make sure the feather is where I left it. It’s probably gone, I think. It’s probably gone because it was never there to begin with. It was just a dream. It was only real to me because I dreamed it out loud. I dreamed it real.

  I stand up and close the hood of the Honda gently, pressing down until it latches. I grab an old rag off the workbench and wipe a smear of grease off my left hand. Some of the black is caught under my thumbnail.

  And still he waits. He pulls out a pocketknife and starts twirling it deftly through his fingers. It’s an old thing, scuffed and tarnished. Estelle had given it to him on their first wedding anniversary he told me once, reverence in his voice. They didn’t have a lot of money, he said, but she knew they would only ever have one first anniversary. So she had taken some of her savings from her little jar on top of their old green fridge and marched out one pretty fall morning and had come back with the beautiful knife. Engraved in gold on the side were the words I love you, my husband. Forever, Este.

  My heart is a little sore at the thought, but I can’t ignore his question. Not now.

  Do you ever dream out loud?

  “Sometimes,” I say. All the time, I really want to say.

  Abe nods. “I thought you might. You and I are the same, you know.”

  “How do you figure?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.

  “We’ve lost,” he says simply, but what I hear in those two words is my half is gone, my everything is gone, and Big Eddie… wasn’t he almost the same to you? Wasn’t he just
almost the same? There’s a hole, isn’t there? Some hole in your chest or at the pit of your stomach that is not filled, that won’t ever be filled.

  A bell dings overhead. Someone at the gas pump.

  Abe glances out the windows. He narrows his eyes. “This can’t be good,” he mutters.

  “What is it?” I follow his gaze out the window. A nondescript black sedan is sitting next to the gas pump, its engine ticking loudly as it cools. There’s no movement that I can see, but the tinted windows are just dark enough to block any views to the inside.

  “Government,” Abe says.

  I laugh. “What? Abe, you’ve watched too many movies. Let me go take care of them and we can finish up here. They’re probably just lost.”

  “Not like us,” he says as I walk out the front of the garage. The driver’s door opens and a man climbs out of the car, maybe in his late thirties, early forties. The sleeves of his dress shirt are rolled up to his elbows, his tie loosened around his neck. His black hair is short, his eyes hidden behind mirror shades.

  “Help you?” I ask.

  “You the owner?” he asks, his voice higher pitched than I would have thought. “Yes, sir.”

  He sizes me up and down and glances up at the sign spinning overhead, and I

  wait for it to come, as it does with all outsiders. “Big Eddie, huh?” he says, sounding amused.

  I shrug. “My father.”

  “Is he around?”

  Sometimes I think so. “He’s dead.”

  “My condolences.”

  “Sure. Thanks. Did you need gas or….”

  “When did he die?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “When did he die?”

  I pause. It seems outside has gotten brighter and I squint. “Who are you again?” A thin smile reaches his lips before he reaches back down into the car and then

  stands back up, closing the car door. He walks toward me until only a few feet separate us. He raises a badge. Joshua Corwin, it says. FBI.

  You win that one, Abe.

  “Your name?” Agent Corwin asks.

  “Benji. Benjamin Green.”

  “How’d your dad die, Benji?”

  My throat is dry. “Car accident?”