Where the River Ends

by Charles Martin

  Around here it’s known as “the hatch.” It sounds like a car in the distance driving toward you with squeaking brakes. You know the high-pitched sound that makes your skin crawl? The hatch occurs regularly here because this is where the mosquitoes lay their eggs. Up here, where the water is slow-moving and the still pools are many, the larvae are safe. Then, whenever they’ve done whatever it is that they do, they hatch, sending tens of thousands of mosquitoes into the air at once where they swarm and make that high-pitched sound that only a mosquito makes. Normally, you can’t hear it until they’re buzzing around your ear, but fifty thousand is another thing entirely. You can hear that nearly forty yards off. The swarming is an indication that they are hungry, and mosquitoes really only eat one thing. Abbie heard it, too. “Are we near a highway?” I shook my head while considering our fastest escape. “Then, what’s that sound?”

  About then, they reached us. Most of my skin and hair turned black. I grabbed Abbie, put her into the wheelbarrow and started running down the bluff. Every inhale brought bugs down my throat. Abbie was screaming and slapping herself, while the bugs flew into my nose, my ears, my eyes and bit me through my clothes or on bare skin. Within seconds, my skin and face were on fire. We barreled down the hill, up through the long grass, across the open area next to the house and into what would become the garage. Most of the mosquitoes had flown away by the time we reached the house, even fewer followed us in, but there was still a cloud in the house hovering around me. I lifted her out, climbed the steps into the house and when we reached the den, I set her down and rubbed and patted her legs while she slapped my shoulders and face. She slapped me six or eight times in the face, each slap growing harder each time. Abbie hated mosquitoes. She was about to slap me again when I grabbed her hand. “Honey…you’re not helping.” Blood was dripping out of the corner of my mouth where she’d hit me. “Oh…oops.” That’s when she started laughing. I brushed the few remaining bugs off her right leg and sat down. Since those guys on the river threw most everything we had into the fire, I didn’t have any antihistamine, which meant that I was in trouble if Abbie started to swell up. I searched her arms, legs, neck and face for any sign of rising welts, but found nothing. Not a single one. I, on the other hand, was swelling and starting to look like somebody had shoved an airhose up my nose and inflated my face. I took my shirt off and Abbie started to count the red bumps from my waist up. She quit when she got to a hundred. Finally, she sat back and chewed on a fingernail. “Oh, Doss. Does that hurt? It looks painful. Is that painful?”

  Her adrenaline was pumping and she was talking fast. I closed my eyes and laid down on the concrete floor with enough bug juice flowing through my veins to kill a small animal. I sneezed, clearing my nose of the last of them. “No, honey…” My lips were growing numb and fat. “It feels good.”

  “Well, I’ve always wanted to know what you looked like as a baby. Now I know.” She stared at her arms and legs, marveling at the absence of bites. “I guess mosquitoes can sense the difference.”

  “Difference in what?”

  “Between blood that has been poisoned…and blood that hasn’t.”

  MY SWEET LITTLE REUNION was over. My face was on fire and both my left ear and left eye were nearly swollen shut. The tops of my hands and fingers were so fat that the paddle felt twice as thick as it had an hour ago. If I could have come out of my skin, I would have. I packed up the canoe, shoved off and shook my head.

  While the view downriver had changed, the framework had not. The trees—swaying with Spanish moss—had spiraled taller and leaned in further across the river, but the bend still swept right in a slow easy arc disappearing some four hundred yards into the distance where the horizon merged into one unbroken treeline. The broken bench passed high on my right. I didn’t look. Two more paddle strokes and I inhaled deeply, holding it. I scanned the view before me, closed my eyes and focused on the one thing that I couldn’t live without.

  She held me there a long time. Maybe three minutes. When I exhaled, I didn’t feel a thing.

  19

  The sun poked its head up over Fort Sumter, then crawled up the Battery as we talked and dreamed and tried to figure out what we were going to tell her parents. I could take or leave the big Charleston wedding—I wanted whatever Abbie wanted. But it didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that she and her mother would need a mediator to navigate the details of a wedding—especially one they hadn’t agreed to. They would have come to blows. And heaven help us if her father got involved.

  A city bus slowed to a stop behind us, its brakes metal on metal, and picked up a young mother and pigtailed girl wearing a pink backpack and pink shoes. The air brakes hissed, the bus pulled off and Abbie placed her palms on my face. “Let’s leave right now.”

  “What, today?”

  “Right this second.”

  “Don’t you want to plan something?”

  “Doss, I’ve wanted to marry you since I first laid eyes on you. Now marry me right this minute.”

  “Honey, no minister or priest in his right mind will just up and marry us on the spot.”

  “Doss, I don’t have to marry in a church. God knows my heart.” She laughed. “He’s probably tired of hearing about you—I’ve been asking Him for you most my whole life.”

  The thought of that struck me. “Really?”

  She held my face in her hands. “And I loved you long before I met you.”

  There it is again. That thing that is my wife. “Where, then? Who?”

  “I don’t know, but you’d better get creative.” She tapped her watchless left wrist. “The clock is ticking.”

  “But, Abbie, I don’t have a ring.”

  She put her hand on her hip. “Well, you should’ve planned ahead.” She chewed on her lip. “I have plenty. We’ll used one of mine.”

  “I’m not marrying you with one of your own rings.”

  “You got any other options?”

  “Well…this is Charleston. And it’s the Friday following Thanksgiving. National holiday. Biggest shopping day of the year.”

  “If we go shopping around here, word will spread and we wouldn’t make it out of the first store before my folks met us at the second.”

  “What about someplace where we could sort of look without really looking?”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Slave market.”

  “Perfect.”

  We walked up the Battery and north to the slave market where the women were already busy at work on their baskets. Several blocks long and maybe a half a block wide, today it serves as something akin to an outdoor mall. Vendors were unlocking their cases and spreading wares across their tables. Inside was a combination flea market, craft store, antique shop and sports memorabilia bazaar. It was the last place in the world that a lady like Abbie should have been shopping for a ring. The brick walls were those see-through kind that let the breeze through but still housed the bazaar inside. We walked in hand in hand. “You know,” she said, “slaves were never actually sold here.”

  “Then why do they call it the slave market?”

  “Because it’s the market where slaves were unloaded off the ships before they were hauled off to the auction blocks elsewhere. Later, it was used by slaves to sell their goods.” She thought a moment. “Although, I suppose from the slaves’ point of view, it’s merely a matter of semantics. A transaction took place somewhere.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  She twirled and sang softly, “‘I’m Charleston born and Charleston bred and when I die…’”

  “I know, I know.”

  She pulled on my arm and led me to a display where a lady was selling sterling silver flatware. Most of it was called Old Orange Blossom. In a case on the far end of her display, she had a dozen or so old, plain silver bands. Abbie pulled her sunglasses down over her eyes and began looking.

  The lady asked, “Can I help you?”

  Abbie pointed. “Are those silver?” />
  The lady shook her head. “Platinum.”

  “May I?”

  The lady nodded and slid the ring tray out of the display. Abbie tried on several until she found one that fit. The price tag read “$280.” Abbie asked, “Do you have any men’s sizes?”

  The lady smiled and pulled another tray from the display. She looked at me. “Do you know what size you wear?”

  I shook my head.

  She glanced at my finger. “You’re either an eleven or something pretty close to it. Try this.” She slid a ring on my finger. It was a little stubborn going over the knuckle but I couldn’t sling it off.

  I turned to Abbie. “Will this work until I can buy you a real ring?” I shot a glance at the lady. “No offense, ma’am.”

  She laughed. “None taken.”

  Abbie spun the worn ring around her finger. “Doss, I don’t need a diamond.”

  “Abbie, every girl deserves a diamond.”

  “Well, then, I’ll just keep this one until that day comes. And even when it does, I’ll wear them both.”

  “How much for the pair?” I asked.

  “Four hundred dollars, normally, but today we’re having a spur-of-the-moment sale that’s twenty-five percent off.”

  “Sold.”

  “You want me to gift wrap?”

  She had no real intention of gift-wrapping these rings. She was prying and we all knew it. “No thanks. They wouldn’t stay in the paper very long.”

  I gave the lady my credit card, signed my name, slid both rings into my pants pocket and steered Abbie toward the jail.

  It was the Friday following Thanksgiving. A national holiday. Which meant the courts were closed and most of the judges were off fishing or golfing. Surrounded by so much history, I remembered my twelfth-grade history class. The Magna Carta mandates that an arrested individual must see a judge within twenty-four hours of being incarcerated. Charleston was no hotbed of criminal activity, but certainly at least one person had to get stupid on Thanksgiving Day.

  We glanced through the window into Judicial 1 where the Honorable Archibald Holcomb Fletcher III was holding court. Abbie smiled slyly. “Follow me. I’ve got this covered.” We waited quietly while Judge Fletcher dealt with three kids who got caught painting a carriage driver’s horse with blue spray paint and then two DUIs. When the courtroom cleared, he looked up over his glasses at Abbie. “Abigail, what are you doing in my courtroom with that young man?” I got the feeling he didn’t really need to ask.

  “Getting married.”

  He laughed. “Not in my courtroom. You’re daddy’ll have my hide. As will the rest of Charleston.”

  “Your Honor, I’ll make this easy for you. You can either marry us”—she smirked and raised one eyebrow—“or not.”

  He paused, not knowing exactly what card she was about to play. The tone in her voice told him that she knew something about him that few others did, but he didn’t want to suggest he had anything to hide by asking what she was talking about. “You got a license?”

  Abbie shook her head. “Nope.”

  “You’ll have to wait ’til Monday morning when the office opens. Eight-thirty a.m. Once you apply, there’s a twenty-four hour”—he spread his hands across the air like a fan—“‘cooling off’ period. It’s called that so impetuous young kids don’t do something”—he stared at me—“stupid. In the meantime I’ll just call your dad and make sure he’s comfortable with”—he waved his finger through the air at me—“all this.” He folded his arms.

  “Judge Fletcher? Has my daddy been pretty good to you? Helping you get reelected a couple of times?”

  He nodded. “And that’s exactly why you’re not getting married in this courtroom.”

  “I don’t want to marry in this courtroom. I want to get married down there under that little arbor.”

  He stood up. “Abbie girl.” He pointed with his gavel. “That thing is cheesy as hell. You need a proper wedding. St. Michaels, white dress, bagpipes…a priest.”

  Abbie crossed her legs and looked at her fingernails. After a minute she looked up at him. “Two things. First, anywhere I get married will be in the sight of God, so I’m not worried about His blessing. Secondly, Your Honor, over the years I’ve come to know quite a few reporters. Many here in town. And seeing as how they need you in their corner, they’ll probably turn a blind eye to your Tuesday-night poker games. Although I imagine the South Carolina bar would love to hear about it. But I think it’s those circuitous and long trips home that will grab their attention. Just how long does it take to drive a mile? Mrs. Cather’s house lady says sometimes it can take four or five hours. Even longer when Mr. Cather is out of town.” She smiled earlobe to earlobe. “And to think he’s actually home when you’re snooping around his pool house. Now, I’m no reporter, but I imagine that will make the front page of every paper in South Carolina.”

  I whispered out of the corner of my mouth, “Remind me never to play poker with you.”

  He looked at me. “Son, what is your name?”

  “Doss Michaels, Your Honor.”

  “You do realize that if you go through with this her father will skin you alive, draw and quarter you and then cut off your head and post it on a stick at the city gate.”

  That pretty much sums it up. “Yes, sir.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “And Abbie?”

  “The same, sir.”

  He threw his gavel down. “Follow me.” His heels made a clicking sound on the tiled floor. We reached a door that read “Marriage Department” and he said, “Wait at that window.” Then like a sliding door in a doctor’s office, he pushed it open.

  I gave him our driver’s licenses and birth certificates and he said, “Seventy dollars. And we don’t take credit card or check.”

  I handed him seventy dollars cash and he filed our application for us. Five minutes later, we stood beneath the arbor, where wilting silk flowers draped around our heads. The arbor stood in the corner of a small, paneled room. A couple of benches led up to a 2×4 frame covered in ribbon and decade-old Christmas lights. The arbor was rounded like a tunnel and the lights flashed sporadically. Abbie looked around her and laughed. Judge Fletcher held a printout of the vows in one hand and looked at Abbie over the tops of his reading glasses. “You realize what this is going to do to your mother?”

  Abbie looped her arm inside mine. “Judge Fletcher, with all due respect, my mother’s not getting married here.”

  “I don’t have to do this, you know.” What he was really saying was that just because he was doing this didn’t mean he was admitting guilt, which of course he was. It was a weasel statement.

  She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and smiled.

  He turned toward me. “You know, she gets this from her father.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “You seem like a smart kid. Don’t start thinking with your plumbing. Take her home, drop her at her parents’ house and run the other way.”

  Abbie put her hands on her hips. “Like you’re one to talk—a model of discretion. Your Honor, this is one of the only guys I’ve ever met who doesn’t think with his plumbing. You might take some lessons from him.”

  I whispered out of the corner of my mouth again. “Well, maybe I have been a little.”

  She whispered back, smiling. “A little’s okay.”

  He cleared his throat. “We are gathered here today to witness this man and this woman joined together in matrimony, which is an honorable estate and therefore not to be entered into”—he glanced at us over his glasses; it was more of a frown than a smirk—“unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently and discreetly, into which estate these two persons present come now to be joined.

  “Doss Michaels and Abigail Coleman, if it is your intention to share with each other your joys and sorrows and all that the years will bring, with your promises, bind yourselves to each other as husband and wife.”

  I heard him say t
he words joys and sorrows, but I really had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Doss.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Will you take Abigail Grace Eliot Coleman as your wedded wife?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Not yet, son. Just hold on.” I nodded. “Will you take Abbie as your wedded wife. Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, and forsaking all others keep only unto her, as long as you both shall live?”

  “I will.”

  “Abbie, will you take Doss as your wedded husband? Will you love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, and forsaking all others, keep only unto him, as long as you both shall live?”

  Abbie said, “I will,” as the words as long as you both shall live rattled through my brain.

  “Abbie, repeat after me.” Her eyes were wet, glassy and I wanted very much to take her away to a church, for a proper wedding. Abbie should have been dressed in white. Not denim and a white T-shirt. She should be dragging a long train, and flanked by fifteen sniffling girlfriends catering to her every need. There should be flowers spilling out of the church, an organ, a soloist, a man playing bagpipes, a priest with a long robe, flower girl, ring boy…But in every scenario I created in my head, her parents appeared. And when they did, Abbie’s glassy-eyed smiled disappeared. Abbie would have endured it out of obligation and when we looked back on it, there would be no joy. The smile on her face, framed by that cheese-dog arbor and lit by yellowed decade-old lights, would never have occurred in anything in which her mother or father played a part.

  Sometimes when I look back I think that maybe I should have stepped in, brokered a peace, but I wasn’t strong enough then to face her folks. I didn’t know how, and to be truthful, I didn’t care about their peace. I cared about hers.

  Abbie finished repeating her vow and there it was again, keep only unto him, as long as you both shall live.

  Judge Fletcher motioned to me. “I, Doss, take you, Abbie, to be my wife. I promise to stand beside you and with you always, in times of celebration and in times of sorrow. In sickness and in health, I will live with you and love you, as long as we both shall live.”