by Sarah Wathen
Helen inhaled deeply, winded from the steep climb out of the Big Joe’s compound, but instead of catching her breath, she nearly choked on the thick, humid air of the enclosed square. Cicadas droned inside the heavy ring of trees, their rhythmic strumming adding weight to the muggy darkness. Instead of plunging through that oppressive soup, she decided to take the Riverwalk home, and backtracked a little along the crest of the hill, towards the water. A well-worn footpath led through the trees, and down to an iron gate, opening onto the blessedly fresh air of the wide, quick running, Tenakho River. The river thundered down from a deep cleft between the Eastern and Western Mountain ridges to the north, spraying violent rapids over the rocky riverbed alongside Shirley’s town center, before hurtling around the peninsular landmass on which Buffalo Square was built.
Helen’s family estate sat atop the highest crag, overlooking a quick hairpin: the most violent part of the river’s eastward turn before barreling back down through the south valley. In colonial times the towering structure provided the perfect vantage point for a warring clan to monitor both the lower valley and the opposite shoreline. The river itself had never threatened invaders. It was unnavigable to any but the most avid rafting fanatics in the modern day extreme whitewater rapids world, and even then, only during the calm season. When the Collins family had first settled there, centuries ago, attempts to run the river had always ended in tragedy. Every once in a while, Helen would see a rafting expedition rage past, but mostly the river simply provided a beautiful view from her upper rooms, which she employed as a library and shared with her daughter as a painting studio when she was in town. The Riverwalk provided a pleasant upwards stroll, through the rear family gardens, towards home. Helen chose that path, more and more in her advancing years, instead of the steep climb up endless stairs to the front entrance that faced Buffalo Square.
“A walk along the river is so much more refreshing,” she said to herself, tilting her face into the moonlight and the crisp spray on the wind. She smiled, unsurprised to see another little ember glow brighter at the edge of the river, away from the light of the street lamps. “Good evening, Mr. Castle.”
The disembodied cigarette flew upwards as he flicked it into the river and stood to greet her. He moved into the light and nodded respectfully as she passed. Sam Castle had a rough look about him but he had the best manners of any student Helen could remember in her long years of teaching. “Good evening, Ms. Collins.”
“I trust you have adequate transportation home?” she asked without breaking her stride, knowing he would deny that he did not, yet she felt compelled to extend the offer.
“Yes, I do,” he lied and cleared his throat.
“Take care of yourself, son.”
“I will.”
Helen continued towards home, hoping her butler Desmond would be there to greet her in that cavernous, empty place.
chapter eight
Sam watched her disappear and checked his watch. Time to move.
He headed away from the river and towards the foothills, where the train tracks snaked through the valley, hugging the bends and crags. Not for the tiny population of Shirley, but more for the erratic path it was forced to take right before the hillside opened up onto the wicked Wattahnga Gorge, the train ran more slowly as it passed the diminutive downtown. And it was always on time, one of the only dependable characters in Sam’s life those days.
As he left Buffalo Square, he could still hear the clinking of silverware and the mumble of chattering diners on the outside deck of Big Joe’s dining patio; a guitar gently strumming a meandering tune, in and out of the shushing of water over rocks.
“Crazy as it gets in Shirley.” Even on a Friday night such a bustling crowd was rare.
The noise of the restaurant was swallowed by the steep hillside. As he moved closer to the foothills of the Eastern Mountain, the air became still. The sounds of the river were replaced by wary scuffling and an occasional hoot or chirp of some night creature. Walking quickly, he brushed against the side of a bush and caused a cacophony of squawking from a quail covey. Sam jumped back in reflex and clutched at his thundering heart.
“Damn birds,” he muttered, ashamed of his own skittishness.
There was nothing Sam had seen in a dozen cities across the states that came close to the creepiness of Shirley Valley after nightfall. There was something tense, malevolent, in the air itself that he couldn’t quite name. It felt alive—which seemed a ridiculous thought—but still, he could feel it. Something. He tried to shrug it off as silly, superstitious metaphysical crap that he sometimes recognized in other people he met, especially in small towns. But, it was hard to ignore how similar the damp, warm air of the valley felt to breath in the summertime. The hair on his neck stood up at that repulsive thought, as he tramped even further into the dark field.
A whistle shrieked in the distance, and Sam said a little prayer of thanks to no one in particular. Why do I still pray, when there’s no one to pray to?
He picked up his pace, knowing the engine always sounded farther away than it was, echoing and ricocheting off rocky outcrops, thick stands of trees and receding passages. Jogging closer to the tracks, the train came into view, clamoring around a jut of stone cradling the valley of Shirley.
Sam gauged its speed. Freight train.
“Faithful as an old friend,” he whispered in welcome, and ducked behind a stand of elm trees as the train’s headlights whipped by.
Once the engineer’s window was safely past him, Sam cleared the trees and ran at a steady clip along the tracks. Gradually, the boxcars slipped beside him, and he picked up his pace to match their speed. Looking backwards, he spotted a cattle car and couldn’t believe his luck; the open wooden slats were perfect to hang on for a quick ride, and cows rarely bit, though sometimes licked with strong, sandpaper tongues. As the cattle car approached, he lunged and his callused hands found their grip. He hauled himself up to cling onto the side, his shoes finding purchase against a corrugated metal floor.
“Hi guys, how’s it hangin’?”
The docile cows stood mesmerized by their gently swaying wood and steel prison. He peered into the dim car at the massive, rounded haunches and drooping udders. Dairy cows.
“Oh sorry. Ladies,” he apologized, tipping an imaginary hat.
The breeze whistled through the slats, over the warm bodies and damp straw that covered the floor. Sam stretched his arms to hang away from the car, turning his face into the wind and closing his eyes to enjoy the ride. The wind whipped his hair into a tornado, a tunnel of sound enclosing him within the earthy smells of the cattle car. He felt disconnected, protected. He thought of the cavernous gorge that lay ahead, maybe sixty miles past his destination, and craved that clankety-clank of the rusty wheels over the skeleton trestle bridge; waterfall spray obscuring the river below. Crossing the abyss.
Sam had ridden the train past that abyss once, a few months ago, and landed just beyond it at a monstrous resort flanking the well-trailed, but still remote, Mount-Something–That-Allowed-Hunting. He had even convinced a bartender at the resort restaurant, eager to please visitors and make a good tip, to sell him a beer. It hadn’t been a hard sell.
That unsettling feeling he often sensed in Shirley Valley was absent on the other side of the gorge, and the country gardens at the resort were quiet in a peaceful, charming way. It was almost like an historical fiction novel that let him forget who he was or where he came from. Maybe he would go out there again soon; maybe he would just keep going, one day.
Not tonight.
That night, his mom’s vile boyfriend, Terry Finley might come over. Then again, since it had actually come to blows a couple nights before, maybe not. At seventeen, Sam was broad shouldered and muscular from hours of manual labor, and that helped discourage some of the creeps that wanted to hang around with his mom. Some guys got frustrated when he hung around, preferring to esca
pe with her instead; but if Sam were home, guilt might keep her from disappearing for days. She wasn’t usually hard to find in a place as small as Shirley, but still.
Still. Sam let a shiver run up his spine and opened his eyes to look for landmarks. Before long he saw Witch’s Hat, the crag aptly named for its striking, villainous fairytale features, marking the entrance to a shadowy cleft in the mountainside. Set back from the road, hiding under ancient pines clinging to the precipitous slopes above, lie Southern Cove Mobile Home Village.
Home, sweet home—he’d have rather been anywhere else in the world. But that was where he got off.
Sam blew a kiss to the cows with a rueful smile. He landed with legs loose and springy to absorb the shock, jogging a few steps to avoid stumbling, and then tripped anyway. He rolled with his head tucked, then came to a huddled stop on two feet, with arms splayed for balance.
“Getting better,” he chuckled as he dusted off his jeans and exposed knees, and headed toward the lighted windows sprinkling the shady, breezeless cove. Not wanting to arouse suspicion in his jumpy neighbors, with whom he had little in common, Sam kept his head down as he walked. What was the point in making friends when his mom would probably want to move on soon, anyway?
He was relieved to see that his house looked deserted—the porch light turned out. Searching for the right house key in the dim light, he could feel someone approaching from behind and tensed.
“What’s up, man?” It was only his neighbor, Tyler, a scrawny kid maybe a year younger.
“Hey.”
“You just come back from town? Pick up a shipment?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll trade you for some ‘shine,” said Tyler.
“Eh.” Sam had tried Tyler’s moonshine once before and felt extremely sorry for that decision the next morning. Where the hell does he find that shit?
“I just got the new Resident Evil—you want to play some video games?”
“Maybe.” Sam didn’t mind hanging out with the guy, but his house sometimes reeked of cat piss. “I’m starving, let me get something to eat first.”
“Okay, just come knockin’, man.”
He waited for Tyler to disappear before teasing his front door open. He listened, barely daring to breathe. He hadn’t seen Terry’s truck, but he couldn’t be too careful. After a few seconds, his ears began to pick up the steady rumble of a news-broadcast and he recognized the blue, undulating glow of the television screen in the main room.
“Mom?”
Nothing.
He exhaled, switched on the kitchen light, and slid over to the refrigerator, hoping for something edible.
“Eureka.”
A delivery pizza box sat in glorious surprise inside. But, when he flipped open the lid to find a completely uneaten pie, he became suspicious. He put the pizza on the counter and crept over to the opening of the living room. His eyes adjusted to the gloom. Mom was sprawled on the couch—alone, at least—with one leg thrown over the back and one arm trailing the carpeted floor. As Sam stepped closer, he saw that she had the cordless phone gripped in one hand, clutching it to her chest.
Waiting for Terry’s call all night? Resentment washed over him.
He moved closer and listened to her breath, escaping in gentle snores, lips parted and eyebrows raised in dreaming wonderment. Sam kneeled next to the couch, slipped the phone from her hand and set it on the floor. That’s when he saw it. Bending over to investigate, he picked up an empty vodka bottle. So she was waiting for Terry.
“Sorry Romeo had other plans,” Sam whispered and dropped the bottle with a hollow thud. He plopped down next to her, not worried about waking her any longer, knocking her leg off the back of the couch to fall against his back.
“It’s too bad you missed that Rotary Club meeting at Big Joe’s you were so excited about.” The sour tang of consumed vodka wafted up from her disturbed nest. “Don’t worry, I took notes for you.”
He searched around for the remote, found it lodged under her ass, and yanked it out. He switched off the television, wondering why in hell she had been watching the news. What did she care about current events? He glared hard at her undeniably pretty face, hardly the worse for all its wear, as if he could burn an answer from her. Her features were smooth and serene in a dream state and he had the urge to stab his fingers up both nostrils to wake her up. Wake up, Mom. You spend your whole life in a fucking dream.
“Oh hey, I know you were interested,” he said, now feeling entitled and sorry for himself. “That PTA meeting you were looking forward to is next week. Start my senior year with a bang, right? Don’t worry, I’ll get the Bimmer all shined up for you, so you can roll in looking hot.”
Sam glanced toward a window that he knew looked out over their corroded, beat-up car, permanently parked next to the trailer. He remembered how desperately she had wailed when the Oldsmobile died for good, only days after they had moved to Shirley County. She had talked about a new start, something about better disability laws here, and getting help for her Fibromyalgia. The memory of her perky, hopeful face, describing the ‘quaint little mountain town’ gave Sam’s guts a twist. It had only taken him a few minutes upon arriving in Shirley to realize they wouldn’t be living in the quaint section.
Whatever, who cares? He wasn’t some rich little shit, who had to have crisp lacey linens on a damn porcelain washstand every morning and five-course fucking dinners every night. They were doing alright even if they couldn’t afford a lot. He picked her fallen hand up off the carpet, and held it, watching her sleep.
Afford…
Suspicion flickered.
How the hell could she afford that bottle of—
He leaned over to read the factory label on the empty bottle.
“Grey Goose. Terry’s favorite. If he never showed up, where did you get the money to pay for a bottle of Grey Goose vodka, Mom?”
Sam shot to his feet and stomped through the center room, blasting through his bedroom door in a fury. Scanning his shelves, he quickly confirmed that another of his mint condition Star Wars action figures—still in the box—was missing, and he knew exactly where it had disappeared to.
“Damn it, Mom.”
The figures had been purchased by his maternal grandmother, right after the trouble with Sam’s dad, the rare characters painstakingly sought out and bargained for. Grandma was an eccentric old lady, and had the crazy idea that the figures could be worth a fortune in years to come, and she had stored them away for Sam’s college fund. Her will entrusted them to his care, and she made a last written request that they be saved for “his future.” Sam doubted they could actually help pay for college, but they were from her, so they were precious to him.
Then, a couple years back, his mom cajoled him to take the boxes out of storage, saying how lovely they would look in his room, “You should care more about decorating, now that you’re starting to have girlfriends.”
He had been reluctant, annoyed with her for the “girlfriends” comment. The figurines were probably worth plenty of money all together, if not really enough for college. She persisted and he relented. He didn’t understand at first, but it wasn’t long before he figured it out: not two weeks after Sam brought them home, and displayed them on do-it-yourself shelving from the home improvement store (what a joke), one of the figures had mysteriously disappeared. He railed until his mom admitted to selling it on eBay. Furious, Sam insisted on returning them to storage, but she cried for hours. She looked so pathetic he apologized and just tried to forget about it. Periodically, when cash got low though, he would find another figure missing and they would rehash the fight.
He never bothered to confront her anymore, dreading her tears and his guilt. Instead, he reproduced the lost characters on his walls: in marker, paint, pencil, crayon—whatever he had on hand. His new Shirley County girlfriend, Candy, was an art nut and was enraptu
red by his “ferocity” and encouraged him to “use it in his work.”
He could be so enraged that the drawings would come out looking totally unreal. Sometimes, in the midst of recreating a dumb Storm Trooper or some alien’s features, he would remember how important it had been to his grandmother. It was all so foolish. Then, he would scratch through his drawing, raking at the wall with his nails or his pocketknife, the pain too close and the memory to dear to relive it, again and again, in whatever shitty trailer park his home was currently camped.
Sam surveyed the boxes.
“Who’s missing now?”
Admiral Akbar.
Trying to recall the alien’s features, he plugged in his ear buds and scrolled to a good playlist for the occasion. He rifled through a box of broken oil sticks and worn chunks of pressed charcoal (a gift from Candy), found a blank spot on his grubby bedroom wall, and went to work. He attacked the wall for almost an hour, until he felt a modicum of relief, and stepped back a few paces to survey his work. His boot thumped against a box of paints Candy had recently urged him to take home from The Palace.
Why not?
He squirted paint directly on his hands and did whatever he felt like with the drawing for a while. It felt good. Finally finished, the drawing—technically a painting then, he guessed—wasn’t bad.
“Thanks, Candy,” he said out loud and actually laughed. He saw page after page in his mind of all the expressionist artists she had schooled him with; in support of Sam “finding his voice.” He cocked his head sideways and regarded his recreation of the admiral. He shrugged and tossed the tubes and sticks back into the box, his hands stained with sooty charcoal and sticky with paint, then let out a long sigh, loosening his shoulders.
