Into This River I Drown

by TJ Klune

  “Well, then, whatever it is,” I tell him fiercely, “whatever is coming, we’ll face it together, okay? I don’t care what it is, Cal. I don’t care how long it takes. We’ll do it together.”

  He smiles sadly at me. “I really hope that’s true, Benji. I do. I really hope so, because I don’t know anything else right now. I don’t know anything else but you. I can see the others in this town, and I care for them because I must. They are mine to protect. But it’s you. You are the one I want.”

  I straddle his lap and take his head in my hands and pull him to my chest. He rests against me, my chin on his head as he clutches at my back. He shakes against me, and I let him because if there is something coming, he’s going to need strength. I would gladly give him all of my own to help him stand.

  Eventually he calms and props his hands against the roof. I turn and lie with my back against his chest as we wait for the sun. “Should we warn them?” I ask finally. “The town?

  “About what?” he says.

  “I don’t know. We don’t even know if anything will happen.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “But it will.”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  “Cal?”

  “Yes?”

  “I have to find out what happened to my father.”

  He stiffens underneath me. “I know,” he says quietly. “But you must stay away from the river, Benji. Please. I know I can’t explain much, and I know it may not make sense, but you must hear me. Please. Stay away from the river.”

  “It’s Griggs,” I tell him, certain. “It’s Griggs, and Walken. It’s Traynor. It’s whoever they were calling the ‘boss’. It’s them, I know it. They killed my father. They killed Corwin. They killed Arthur Davis.”

  “And they’ll kill you,” he snaps, suddenly angry. “We must wait. We must wait until whatever comes shows its face. After that, I promise you I will do everything I can to help you. But we have to wait, Benji. Promise me.”

  “We won’t have much time. They said they were moving everything on the day of the festival. Jump Into Summer Fest is only a few weeks away. I have to—” “Promise me!” he snarls in my ear, slamming his fist down on the roof. “I promise,” I whisper, though it feels like a lie, to placate. To soothe. And then a sharp intake of breath.

  “What?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

  “Damn,” he mutters. He tries to hide whatever is wrong, but I can see he’s favoring the hand he’s just hit against the roof. I pull on his arm to show me, and my fingers feel slick. He sighs but doesn’t resist. The sun chooses that moment to peek over the Cascades and the first rays of sunlight on a new day catch upon my life, now so unreal.

  Embedded into the side of his hand is a small carpenter’s nail, undoubtedly forgotten at one point on the roof. It’s jammed into his hand almost to the nail head, his skin puckered around it. But it’s not the nail itself that catches my eye; it’s the dark-red blood welling around it.

  I lift my hand in front of my face, staring at his blood on my skin. “That’s not….” I breathe. “You got shot. I saw you get shot and—”

  he is weaker

  “—nothing was wrong with you!”

  He winces as he pulls the short nail out of his hand. I pull my shirt off over my head, the morning air cool against my body. I wrap his hand with my shirt to stop the flow of blood.

  “It’s what the Strange Men said, isn’t it?” I demand. “They said someone like you couldn’t stay here. What happens if you do?”

  He looks away, but not before I can see it in his eyes. He knows. This isn’t a hidden thing, lost in whatever his Father took from him before he fell. He knows this.

  “Calliel! You better fucking answer me on this! I deserve some goddamn answers after everything I’ve been through, after everything we’ve done. If you even remotely care about me at all, you will tell—”

  “I’m becoming human,” he says quietly as the sunlight catches his red hair. It reminds me of blood, and I almost cry out. He looks like he is covered in blood. “Father put it in place to avoid angels becoming corporeal. The longer I stay, the more human I become. And if I stay….” He watches the horizon.

  “Cal?” I ask, already knowing the answer but needing to hear him say it. “What happens if you stay?”

  He turns and kisses me deeply. I can feel the desperation behind it as he pushes into me. He’s clawing at my back, trying to get as much of me as he can. I pull away only because I don’t know what’s wrong. He grabs my neck and jerks me close again. When he speaks, his voice is a rasp in my ear. I tremble. “If I stay… if I stay, the moment I become human, I will die. My soul will not be allowed to ascend. I’ll fall into the black and be lost forever.”

  The sun continues to rise.

  a knock at the door He’s dying.

  Ever since that night on the roof, weeks before, I haven’t been able to think of much else besides blood dripping down Cal’s wrist, the nail jutting from his skin, the curiosity on his face as he felt physical pain for what had to be the first time. Even pressed against me, his lips near my ear as he told me what would happen if he stayed, he seemed to be more worried about me than himself.

  “You have to go back,” I choked out. I wanted nothing less in the world, but it seemed to be the only way.

  “No,” he said, his dark eyes flashing. “I will not leave you.”

  “But—”

  “Enough, Benji.”

  But it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. How could it be? I was angry that he could be so selfish as to allow me to watch him to die, knowing everything I had been through. I had nowhere near recovered from the loss of my father and he was expecting me to go through that again? The bastard. How dare he? I was drowning in a fucking river that he was still attempting to save me from, and he was telling me he was going to push me back in and hold me under. My father’s death had nearly destroyed me. Cal’s death would finish me.

  This, of course, led to the question of how Calliel, after such a short amount of time, could mean as much to me as Big Eddie did. That was the question I didn’t know if I wanted answers to. It’s easier to ignore what’s in your heart if you pretend it won’t hurt you in the end. But even I knew that was a lie I used to placate myself.

  I watched for signs of Cal weakening, of humanity springing forth and leaving his angelic side behind. I stayed awake long into those nights, lying against his chest, listening to his heart beat against my ear, his chest rising and falling with every breath he took. Aside from the nail in his hand and the blood from it, there was nothing else. He looked the same; he sounded the same. He tasted the same.

  In those weeks leading up to the festival, no threads called to him, no reasons to leave my side. Again I wondered if it was because he was already more human than angel and had been cut off from God, or if he had been replaced by a new angel who was watching over Roseland. I listened for gossip to spread like wildfire, but heard nothing unusual. There were other rumors, of course. Rumors about me that I overheard at the diner. Rumors I overheard while shopping at Clark’s on my day off, Cal at my side, dropping box after box of Lucky Charms into the basket (“I think I am just going to take all the green clovers out of each box and put them into one box so I can have a box of just green clovers.”) These rumors were accompanied by furtive glances at us. No one seemed quite sure how we had met. Sometimes these questions were asked to others, sometimes they were asked, almost shyly, to me. He was just passing through town, I told them. He decided to stay a while (“Not so much passing as falling,” Cal would tell me later, a grin on his face).

  Most spoke of the fact that Cal lived with me and that each of us was rarely seen without the other. It’s good for Benji, they said. He’s been such a loner ever since Big Eddie passed, God rest his soul. It’s nice to see him smile again. So they shacked up quickly. When you know, you know.

  But I didn’t know. I didn’t know at all.

  People loved him, though. If h
e left the store without me, he’d be mobbed almost instantly by people who just happened to be walking by the station. Cal! they’d exclaim. What a surprise to see you! What are you up to? Oh, well I don’t mind walking with you since I was heading that direction anyway! Then they’d wave at me through the glass almost as an afterthought, and I’d roll my eyes as Cal turned back to me with a grin, the worry not quite leaving his eyes. If he did leave my side, it was only for a few moments, and only because I practically shoved him out the door. He’d take off on whatever errand I’d sent him on, almost at a jog, his companions struggling to keep up with his long strides.

  “I wish you wouldn’t make me leave you,” he said with a scowl one night, very late. “I don’t like to take my eyes off you. Not when we don’t know what’s out there.”

  I snorted as I rolled off him and onto my back. “That’s life,” I told him quietly. “You never know what is out there. You just have to hope and trust that you’ll see the other person again.”

  He must have heard something in my voice betray me. A slight tremor, a rhythm to my words that belied the teasing lilt I tried to make him hear. Before I knew what was happening, he was atop me, crushing me into the mattress, teasing his tongue over my skin. There was always need with him, but this was somehow more. He held me as if I was something precious, something extraordinary, as if I was his guardian angel instead of him being mine. He spread my legs with his knee, and I saw blue, everything I saw was blue. He took me that night with such abandon that I cried out incoherently as he rammed into me, unable to form words, much less thought. Blue lights shot across my vision, though whether from him or in my head I didn’t know.

  I awake early the morning after, shortly before he rises to wake me for the

  sunrise, heat radiating from him as he presses against my back, draping his arm over my waist. I turn over, my face against his. He chuffs quietly in his sleep, gives a light snore, then falls silent. First, I wonder if he dreams as I reach up to smooth the lines from his brow. And, second, I try to remember what it’s like to sleep alone. I can’t. These are the only thoughts I have until he opens his eyes right before dawn and smiles a sleepy grin at me. There is something there, in his eyes, a deep warmth far beyond anything I’ve seen in him before. I think I know its name, though I can’t bring myself to say the words. It’s as if in me he’d seen the greatest thing in his long life.

  A life he is ending by being here with me, I thought as he pulled me to him. Not everyone was kind, though. I didn’t miss the scowls of Griggs as he drove by us on the street. Walken would nod coolly as he entered his office on the other side of Poplar. They knew, somehow, that I knew. What I was supposed to know didn’t matter, just that I knew. I knew about Arthur Davis. I knew about Joshua Corwin. I knew about my father. These were men who killed to maintain their secrets. I didn’t know which one of them pulled the trigger at Corwin’s head, or hung Arthur by his neck, or ran my father off the road. I didn’t know if the specific person mattered. Not even if it was Traynor, who’d disappeared. They were all complicit, and I would bury them alive if I got the chance.

  Cal knows of my anger, though he says little of it. Sometimes I think he has plans all his own, though I don’t know what they could be. I suppose I should be worried about what he will do. Or about my soul. But I don’t think I am.

  No FBI agents have knocked on my door asking after Corwin.

  No Strange Men have wandered into town.

  It makes me nervous.

  It doesn’t help that the dreams are getting louder and louder. Standing by the roaring river, the rain pounding down from the sky. The metallic shriek of Big Eddie’s truck crashing down the embankment. Crosses. Feathers, both on the surface of the river and in my father’s dead hand. A darkened figure up on the road. My name called, my body submerged. I’ve never really thought about sounds in a dream before, but as the dream progresses, each time an inch or two closer to the window, the world around me is shrieking, enough so that it feels like my head will split and save me the trouble of drowning. I don’t know if the further I am getting in my dream has to do with Cal becoming more human. All I know is I have to get into the truck.

  It also doesn’t help that I’ve started having the dreams while I am awake. Conversations get interrupted because the river has rushed in and engulfed me. I swim as fast as I can (thinking inhale, try, breathe, drown), but the truck’s only an inch closer each time. I’ll snap from the waking dream, laughing it off if I’m talking to a customer or my family. If it’s Cal, it doesn’t matter because he already knows. He’s the one who pulls me away.

  But I’m getting closer each time. I have to see my father’s face.

  “I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” I mutter, sitting on the edge of the

  bed. “As a matter of fact, this sounds like an awful idea.” Cal is standing in front of the mirror, his face scrunched up as he stares at his reflection, trying like hell to tie his tie. For all that he can do, for all that he is, it’s the tiniest of things that trip him up the most. The most human of things. Like tying a tie that I’m still unclear about why he decided to wear. (Where it has come from inspires a whole other set of questions I don’t want to bother with; the slacks and dress shirt he wears are tailored perfectly, as if they’ve been made for him. Someone has obviously been sneaking around.)

  I sigh and walk over to him, knock his hands away and untangle the knot he’s somehow gotten his finger stuck in. “We can just stay in,” I mutter.

  “Your mother invited us,” he says, checking himself out in the mirror again.

  “Vanity,” I scold him.

  “It would be rude not to go. Do you like this tie?”

  “It’s okay, I guess. I don’t know why you want to wear a tie.”

  “Oh.”

  “She also invited Abe.”

  “Yes. Good. I like Abe.”

  “And the Trio.”

  “Nina. Ah, little one. She is so special.”

  “And Mary and Christie,” I remind him. “Who don’t know you sprout wings like a butterfly.”

  He stops looking at his reflection to scowl at me. “I’m not a butterfly. I am big. Impressive, even. Suzie Goodman told me I was the most impressive specimen of man she’d ever had the pleasure of seeing.”

  I roll my eyes as I finish his tie. “And why were you talking to Suzie Goodman?” I ask, ignoring the flash of jealousy that I want no part of. I know as well as Cal does that he’d never do anything with her. He just likes to get a rise out of me. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest, though I do cinch his tie more tightly than I need to.

  “I was reading on the computer that you have to keep your man interested, so it’s always good to make sure he knows others are.”

  I frown at him. “Angels are not allowed to go on the Internet.”

  He winces. “Probably a good idea. That place has so much porn.”

  I don’t want to know. Okay, I do. “Let’s just get through this so we can come back to Little House.”

  Cal kisses me gently before walking out of our room. “Sure thing,” he calls over his shoulder. “I did learn some things on the Internet that I want to try on you. It’s not all bad.”

  I stare after him as his laughter floats back to me.

  It’s a warm spring evening, the Jump Into Summer Festival now only a week away.

  Mom has invited Cal and me up for dinner at Big House with the rest of the family. She and I have kept our distance from each other since that night in the cemetery weeks before. It wasn’t anything unusual for us, at least at first. Even though we live right next to each other, there’s been times since I moved into Little House that we have gone months without seeing each other. We leave notes here and there. Maybe a text message or two. A voice mail if it’s really important.

  But now I have a life preserver of sorts, someone who is trying to keep me afloat. He has his hand curled in mine as we walk up the hill toward Big House, the sun already starting to se
t. A sweet breeze that smells like the trees washes over us, and for a moment, a brief second, I’m able to forget about everything that has happened, and everything that could still happen. For a moment, I’m walking up the driveway to Big House with my boyfriend to have dinner with people I care about. For a moment, I’m twenty-one years old and don’t know what true pain feels like. I am young and alive and ready to face anything the world throws at me. I don’t have a goddamn care in the world. Nothing can touch me. Nothing can hurt us. As long as I have this man by my side, as long as I can look the four women and one man who wait for us in Big House straight in the eye and tell them everything I’m feeling, then nothing else matters. It’s a lovely thought, deceptive though it might be.

  Nina waits for us on the porch. She stands as we approach her, looking almost shy. “Do you like my new dress?” she asks, twirling around. “It was blue so I thought of Blue.” And it is, a dark-blue sundress that reminds me of his wings. It has little ruffles on the shoulders and white flowers sewn into the fabric. “Mary helped me pick it out.”

  Cal lets go of my hand and stands in front of Nina, then bends over until they are face to face. “It’s the prettiest dress in the world,” he tells her seriously. “And you look very beautiful, little one. But then you always have.”

  She giggles as she blushes, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing his cheek. I should have known she would be perceptive to the changes in him, that she could see things no one else would. She stiffens against him and her eyes go wide. “How?” she whispers as she stares at me. “What did you do?”

  Wow. It sure is bright today.

  The stars?

  Oh, no.

  The moon?

  Bless the moon, but no. What did you do today?