Many Waters

by William Woodall

  Chapter Twenty-Six - Cody

  I don’t know how, but some way or other I managed to make it back to the motel before I crumbled, and then for the first time since I was a kid, I wept. I cried myself to sleep that night, only to find that my dreams were no better than reality.

  I felt like everything I’d ever believed in was nothing but a pipe dream, like I’d been a fool for ever thinking there was such a thing as true love. I should have known better all along. It made me wonder if my whole life up till then had been a naïve delusion.

  When I was little, I used to have night terrors. . . those kinds of bad dreams where you wake up breathing hard with your heart racing, thrashing the covers and knowing something horrible was happening, but you can’t remember a bit of it. That night I had another one like that for the first time in years, and woke up with fresh tears on my cheeks. God only knows what I was dreaming about. I can’t remember, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to.

  I went on for days like that, mopey and sad and touchy and apt to drive my fist into the wall at odd times for the stupidest of reasons, and I’m never like that. About the third time I busted my knuckles at work, I got written up for having anger problems and they told me if it happened again then I’d get suspended for three days.

  I forced myself to get a grip after that. No matter how miserable I was, I still had responsibilities.

  Nevertheless, the next few days were torture. I hated my job, I hated life, and I was surly and bad-tempered with everybody. I didn’t hit the wall or show it on the surface anymore; I had more self-control than that, but it didn’t keep me from wanting to. I was so curt that people started keeping their distance after a while, which only made me feel worse.

  Eventually Troy caught up with me in the break room one day with a serious look on his face. I was sitting alone at one of the metal tables (a given, by then), and I had to force myself not to scowl when he sat down across the table from me. Company was the last thing I wanted, even from him.

  “Hey, buddy boy. How you been?’ he asked.

  “Fine,” I said automatically, in a tone that probably could have curdled milk. Troy ignored it, like he always does. He’s never been the type to take a hint, by any means.

  “Cody, I’m worried about you, buddy. You’ve been down in the mouth for days now, and you snap at anybody who says hi to you. What’s up?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me it’s nothing. I know better than that. Talk to me, boy,” he said, and I could tell he probably wasn’t going to leave me alone until he got some kind of explanation.

  “It’s only a bad break-up, that’s all. I’ll get over it,” I said, trying my best to smile and not doing such a great job of it.

  “Yeah, that’s bad. Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, and I hesitated. I really didn’t, to tell the truth, but I suspected he wasn’t going to leave me alone until he found out what the story was. So I told him what happened, more or less, and he nodded sympathetically.

  “Anyway, I’ll be all right. Just takes a little while, okay?” I finished.

  “Yeah, okay. I know how it is,” he agreed. I seriously doubted he did, honestly; Troy is the kind of dude who flirts and jokes and plays with all the girls but never takes any of it seriously. It’s all just fun and games to him, and I strongly suspect he’s never been in love before in his entire life. I always used to think it was kind of a shallow way of looking at things, but now I almost couldn’t help but wonder if he was right after all. Love was a joke, and as for all that one-and-only honor-and-faithfulness junk I always said I believed in, well, we see how that turned out.

  “I’ll be fine, Troy. I promise. I just need a little time, that’s all,” I repeated, trying to make it sound as earnest and convincing as possible.

  “Okay, buddy. I’m here if you need me; you know that, right?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I know that,” I said, relieved to be done with him that easily. There are certain people you can talk to about stuff like that, and there are others. . . well, let’s just say they’re not very good listeners. Lisa had been really good at that, but Troy was another story completely. He’s fun to hang out with, but he’s not such a good shoulder to cry on.

  Thinking about Lisa didn’t help my mood at all, but Troy wouldn’t have understood any of that even if I’d tried to explain it.

  After a week or so I did manage to get semi-collected again, at least enough not to snap at people when they tried to be friendly.

  Once I had a cooler head and was able to think a little more rationally, I started to realize how much of a sacrifice that trip had probably been for Lisa, and how much she must have loved me to go to such lengths to ask my forgiveness. I hadn’t handled the situation very well, and I thought several times about maybe giving her a call and saying I was sorry for the way I acted. I remembered what I said about how love is cheap if it won’t stand up under pressure, and wondered if I was really such a hypocrite that I couldn’t take the heat the very first time I got tested.

  But before I could find the right words to say to her, it all turned out to be a moot point when I got the news from Cyrus that she was definitely going out with Marcus. She must have had some feelings for him after all, in spite of what she said before.

  That knocked me back all over again, and all the hurt and anger I’d been feeling before came surging right back again for a day or two. But it didn’t last near as long this time, mostly replaced by a kind of fatalistic hope that maybe things would work out better this way in the long run. I told myself I’d known all along that she was better off with somebody else, no matter how hard it was for me personally. In fact I ought to be happy for her, if I loved her even half as much as I said I did.

  I kept repeating all that until I mostly convinced myself. Deep down in my heart I’m not sure I ever quite managed to make myself believe it, but nobody ever knew about that except me.

  Weeks passed, and after a while I managed to come to some kind of terms with the fact that my life would never turn out the way I always thought it would. I felt hollow and empty inside, like I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted anymore. I remembered what Mama told me about not losing myself and coming home whole, and for the first time I thought I understood what she meant. I felt like I’d lost entire masses and chunks of myself, my whole heart and half my mind.

  In a moment of weakness, I even slipped up and said something about it to her.

  “I don’t guess you’ve heard anything from Lisa, have you?” I asked wistfully.

  “Not for a while. Why don’t you give her a call? You could probably still work things out, if you talked about it for a while,” she said. I’d already told her about everything that happened, of course.

  “No, that’s all right. I just wondered, that’s all,” I said hastily, afraid she might take matters into her own hands and call Lisa herself. Mama could be bold as brass when she thought the occasion called for it. I didn’t want to give her any ideas.

  But that was pretty much the only time I slipped up, and for the most part I suffered in silence. I used to like to watch old Westerns sometimes where the cowboy had to bite down on a bullet while they cut an arrow out of him with no anesthesia, and most times he never even let out so much as a whimper. I wonder what he felt when that sharp knife cut down through his flesh, and whether he ever felt like screaming. I guess I’ll never know. All I can say is, sometimes you can seem tough as nails on the surface even while you’re slowly dying inside.