Grist Mill Road

by Christopher J. Yates

  All you ever do is watch, Tricky, he said, not sounding mad at me, just weary. You stand to one side, watching and watching like a statue. You think because you didn’t join in, that’s OK? You’re off the hook?

  I didn’t say anything, staring at him as I tried to think away the pain.

  So you’re telling me the first time you ever decide to do something is when it’s too late? When it screws me over and screws you over and Hannah’s still just as dead? Matthew’s voice had shifted from weary to bitterly amused. It’s too late, Tricky, he said. You didn’t even say anything.

  He gave me a hard look, daring me to disagree, but I didn’t speak. I don’t know why but something told me I had to lie there playing possum, the grand tactic of my life.

  Matthew’s eyes fixed on my hands. Quickly he moved one of my wrists on top of the other so that he could grip them both at the same time. I had slender wrists but even so, and as weak as I felt, maybe I could’ve wrenched free of his grip but I was in a lot of pain.

  Matthew began to rise, pulling me up with him.

  Once we were standing, he started backing me up. I didn’t look around or fight him. I was trying hard not to cry out in pain as we moved together like awkward prom dates stumbling across a dance floor.

  When we stopped, I think I felt an updraft from the valley floor. If I were an eagle I could have soared away. The screech of the pain was so loud that I let my body surrender to him, like the moment when the lady in old movies collapses into the hero’s arms.

  Him Tarzan. Me Jane.

  I let my eyelids fall as Matthew took his hand away from my wrists and then my shoulder. Open your eyes, Tricky, he said.

  But I couldn’t, it was as if I were standing on a high-wire and even the slightest movement might be enough to overbalance me.

  Matthew yelled at me, I said open your eyes.

  Still I didn’t do what he said, thinking instead about the time we found a fat timber rattlesnake and when Matthew shot it, it moved like a whip and we ran for our lives screaming and when we stopped running we laughed so hard we thought we were more in danger of dying from the laughter than we ever had been from that snake.

  Tricky, I swear … Just open your goddam eyes right now.

  I thought about lake-swimming, deer-stalking and can-plunking. We’d had a lot of fun together in the Swangums.

  My chest felt like it was painted with a bullseye.

  I thought I could sense something moving, only the breeze perhaps, but then after a long pause, I heard Matthew speak, the sound of his voice having moved farther away. OK then, OK, he muttered. OK, Tricky.

  I opened my eyes. Matthew was ten paces back, his shoulders slumped and a look of defeat on his face. He smiled bitterly at me. By the way, your head’s cut pretty bad, Tricky, he said, reaching into his back pocket, pulling out his red bandana and draping it over a rock. You know, he said, you realize no one ever needs to find out you were actually there. Really it was nothing to do with you at all. I’m sorry, Tricky.

  And with that, Matthew turned around, giving me a dejected wave as he headed off into the trees, back toward the bikes.

  * * *

  I FELT FAINT IN THE heat, the sickly pine resin air. Stepping away from the drop, I wanted to sit down and sleep but the pain in my head flared again. I reached back and started pushing my fingers timidly through my wet hair. I had a huge thatch of hair back then—people said I looked like a young version of Bobby Ewing from the TV show Dallas—and maybe that proved to be lucky, as if my head were wrapped in layers of gauze. The hole was right at my crown and all sticky. My fingers moved down and just kept on moving, down, farther down.

  And then I swear I heard a squelching sound, like a boot landing in mud, and yanked my hand away in shock thinking I must’ve touched my brain. Looking at my hand it was almost as if the blood couldn’t be mine. Too bright, too thick, too much. I wiped the hand on a rock, picked up Matthew’s bandana and pressed it to the back of my skull.

  I had to get to Hannah but my head was all swirly in the sick-making heat as I started to wonder how long it would take for a corpse to rot in this weather. When would her body start to smell? And now I couldn’t stop thinking about Hannah hanging there, meat for the vultures, blood dripping from the milky white hooks of their beaks.

  NEW YORK, 2008

  The griddled zucchini lie in a bowl banded with faint stripes of char, flecked with pepper and basil, soaking up olive oil and sherry vinegar, while the steak cooks slowly in water and the potatoes, parboiled and dusted with rice flour, dry off in the fridge.

  Rice flour, don’t ever tell anyone your secret, Patch.

  All the better to crisp them with.

  He sits at the kitchen table reading the comments on his blog as he waits. He will begin preparing the salad as soon as Hannah calls to say she is heading home, his signal to start peeling asparagus into a pile of pale ribbons, trimming the sugar snaps, acidulating apples.

  Jorgé, the doorman, has been enlisted to help with Patrick’s plan to make everything perfect tonight. When he sees Hannah coming through the door, he will buzz their apartment, three quick blasts their agreed-upon signal, and then Jorgé will delay Hannah, complimenting her hair, tutting over the weather, the snow, her poor shoes.

  Please, how long do I keep her, gentleman? A minute would be great, Jorgé. No problem, gentleman. Thank you, Jorgé.

  And action. Deep greens and pale greens will be tossed in the lemony dressing. He will make a wreath of tangled pea shoots on the plate and scatter everything else from above, seemingly at random. The composition of a salad always makes Patrick feel like Jackson Pollock dripping paint.

  No delusions of grandeur in that whatsoever, Paddyboy.

  Once the salads are plated he will begin crisping the potatoes in duck fat and heating his large slab of cast iron on which the steak will be seared to a crust. A half hour of preheating and the metal will take on the appearance of charcoal, hints of white ash in the shimmering iron.

  By the time he carries the salads to the table, Jorgé will have released Hannah, a thirty-second elevator ride to their penthouse floor.

  Patrick will slip off his apron and fetch champagne. When she walks through the door he will be standing by the table in his wedding suit, the same tie as four years ago, the same silk handkerchief in his breast pocket and a white napkin wrapped around a bottle of Pol Roger.

  Soft pop. Happy anniversary, Hannah.

  Hannah will clap and kiss him.

  Everything must be made to happen just so, with perfect timing. Everything for her.

  And then Patrick wonders if the salad needs some crunch. What about pistachios? he thinks. There is a bag in his pantry, vivid green nuts speckled with patches of dusty violet skin.

  * * *

  HANNAH TRIES TO INITIATE HOME-HANNAH mode, anniversary-Hannah, leave-the-streets-for-the-day-Hannah as she rises from her desk in The Shack.

  NYPD in the elevators, NYPD in the corridors, NYPD in uniform, NYPD in suits, the ugliest fourteen-floor stack of stone you ever saw, all clay-colored bricks, little blocks piled high to form a squat square building, all shithouse glam and checkerboard curves, address 1PP, looks exactly like a cubist giant has lain a terra-cotta turd (Detective McCluskey liked that one, she’d heard him steal it more than once, only he dropped the cubist giant and terra-cotta motifs), the most important building in the city, at least if you value not being slain in your bed on a nightly basis, 1PP, One Police Plaza, the headquarters of the NYPD—Major Crime Squad, Real Time Crime Center, Police Commissioner—the place that Hannah calls (among other scatological names) her office, or when she’s talking to anyone in the know, The Shack, because they all call it The Shack, the crime reporters who work there, 1PP’s second floor set aside for the journalists of eight news organizations, rivals fraternizing, hanging out in the same small space, the thin schmear of mustard in the fat pastrami sandwich of the NYPD HQ.

  NYPD in the elevators, NYPD in the corridors,
NYPD in uniform, NYPD in suits, the rub of it, The Shack in the 1PP stack, Hannah loves it, she lives it, she breathes it.

  So that leaving it behind is bittersweet every night—a news day low on blood is a good day for the city, it’s true, but red streets at night, tabloids’ delight. And today? Just a light shade of blush, a good thing, probably, for her anniversarial mood. Is that a word, anniversarial? Possibly not, probably she’s confused it with adversarial, and then she thinks to take the stairs, only a single flight down, not the elevator, because enough cops already, she will see more on the way out anyway, and she does, Officer Kohn (Jets, Mets, Nets, hates hockey, two daughters).

  Four and twelve, Brian? she says. Four and twelve? Unbelievable.

  Yeah, well, we stank up the whole season. But what can I do? When you’re a Jet you’re a Jet, right? Thanks for reminding me, Hannah.

  Would I do that to you, Brian? No, I meant your daughters, four and twelve, right?

  Oh, I see, playing smart, Hannah, huh? You know, we could do with some of that, maybe you could coach the Jets instead of Mangenius—dumbest nickname I ever heard. The girls? Seven and nine. Gang Green? I’d take seven and nine in a heartbeat.

  Come on, dream big, Brian, turn that frown upside down—nine and seven! You know, nine and seven could sneak you into the playoffs next season.

  Right, dream big, sure. Look, I love my kids, Hannah, but I’d sell both their sweet little souls for nine and seven. You have a great weekend now.

  You too, Brian. Maybe take up watching hockey instead. And give Jasmine and Kaylee big hugs and kisses from me.

  Out into the night, the day’s snow no more than a haze in the plaza lights now, and incoming Daniel Ochoa (Knicks, Yanks, fiancée) and Marty Russell (Devils, Springsteen, seven boys).

  Still don’t have my invite, Officer Ochoa.

  Still don’t have a wedding date, New York Mail.

  What gives, Danny? Marty’s sons will have seven brides for seven brothers before you make an honest woman of Isabel. (Hannah’s phone starts to ring.)

  She has like twelve thousand cousins. And they all eat, you know? I’ll be saving up till Judgment Day.

  Now Marty wants in. Hannah, why leaving so early? Come on, Friday night’s just getting started.

  Maybe I was born to run, Marty.

  They wave her away like a bad smell, but laughing, as she picks up the phone, Jen’s number on the screen, best friends from the first day of kindergarten, and she answers, Hey, Jen, you got snow up there?

  Snow? No. I called to say happy anniversary, Hannah.

  Hannah hangs back from saying anything more for a moment, her marriage to Patrick still one of the sore points between her and Jen, not that Jen openly disapproves, would never voice disapproval, but Jen hadn’t understood why, and four years ago, Hannah had felt hurt by nothing worse than a pause after she told Jen the news of her engagement, and then they hadn’t spoken in almost a year, all because of a pause not much longer than this one ballooning now … Thanks, Jen, she says. Four years already, I can’t believe it.

  You have plans?

  Patch. He’s cooking something special.

  Lucky you.

  (Another call coming through.) Yep, lucky me. (Hannah looks to see who it is, the news editor.) Oh shoot, I have to take this other call from … Sorry, it’s work, Jen. Let’s talk over the weekend. Tell the girls arrrrr from their Aunt Hannah.

  I will. You have a good night, Han. Love you. Say hi to Patrick.

  Hannah hangs up the call and pauses a moment before taking the next, noticing the sound of helicopters in the distance, a sense of fourteen floors behind her beginning to hum, sirens winding up everywhere, and she knows she should let the call from her news editor drop to voice mail, she can say she was stuck underground, delays on the subway, and that’s what she absolutely should do, their fourth anniversary, because if she waits thirty minutes before talking to work it will probably all be too late, whatever it is, the news will have broken, and Hannah will be into her first glass of champagne, Patch always buys them the same one they drank in a restaurant, before that first night she had spent in his apartment, so very sweet, Patrick is so very good to her.

  But she answers.

  PATCH

  I was halfway down the trail to Jakobskill stream when I heard what I thought was a blue jay squawking, so it wasn’t until I actually made out the word help that I realized Hannah was alive.

  At this point I should probably describe the huge sense of relief I felt and how it had been like I was carrying a great weight, only now the burden was lifted. But exactly what that twelve-year-old boy was thinking and feeling is often a mystery to me. I’m not sure I know who he was beyond a bunch of things that happened to him.

  You might as well know a calendar. A grocery list.

  What I do remember is trying to run. But running was difficult, what with me holding a blood-soaked bandana clamped to the hole in my head. Plus, the trail was steep and strewn with sharp rocks and now the world was overlapping itself, like when you see a 3-D comic book without the glasses, so I went as fast as I could, stumbling down the scree, stones scraping and slipping under my sneakers.

  As I crossed Jakobskill stream and scrambled uphill, the sounds she was making became clearer. Sometimes the word help or sometimes a strained scream, halfway between effort and pain. Other times just a horrible, feeble sound.

  I pushed the bandana into my back pocket as I darted off the trail. When Hannah heard me crashing through the last of the branches, she turned her head as best she could. Her face was twisted with a wild and desperate look. And seeing me, she screamed again and started fighting the ropes.

  I can still picture the perfect angles of her face as she strained at those knots, the neat curve of her chin, a soft arc of jawbone rising up to her ear. Writing this now makes me think of turning over in bed Sunday mornings to see if she is awake, hoping she stays asleep so that I can wake her with coffee, bagels and newspapers in bed.

  How am I supposed to reconcile any of these things?

  I tried to say something comforting but Hannah was still crying and writhing and I don’t think she heard. So I didn’t move close right away but circled around to where she was facing, keeping my knees bent and hands raised.

  Hannah, I promise I won’t hurt you, I said, getting down into a kneel, still showing my hands.

  Her head carried on twisting like she couldn’t stand the sight of me. And then, slow to catch on as usual, I realized what she was doing—Hannah was trying desperately to see if Matthew was with me—and I yelled, He’s gone, Hannah, Matthew’s gone. I promise, he’s not coming back.

  Her body began to fight less and less.

  When finally she faced me, I dropped my fists to the ground and started to cry. I’m sorry, Hannah, I didn’t know he would … I’m sorry, I should never …

  Hannah sniffed hard, her head shivering in disbelief. Oh my God, she said. Oh my God, Patch. What will my mom say? Patch, my mom’s really gonna kill me.

  I just stared at her. How was I supposed to respond to something like that?

  Hannah clenched her teeth and cried out in pain, Uuurgh, my eye, he shot my eye and it hurts so much. And now I can’t see from my eye, I can’t see from it, Patch. I can’t see from my eye, she said, her breathing starting to stutter. Patch, what does it look like? What’s happened to my eye? Is it bad? I can’t see from it. Is it really bad?

  Hannah tilted her face, having no clue that I couldn’t make out her mashed eye for all the blood-matted hair that was over her face.

  I gulped. It doesn’t look so bad, I said, still on my knees, which made the lie seem that much worse. I started to get to my feet.

  But what’s it like? Will my mom be able to tell?

  No, it’s kinda bloodshot, I said. There were dried leaves stuck to my hands. I wiped them away.

  Why can’t I see anything from it?

  I started to kick lightly at the ground with my toe. Maybe it’s kinda
… shocked, I told her, like unconscious. And the next thing I said was something I actually believed. But if there’s anything wrong, I’m sure the doctors will fix it.

  Hannah’s good eye just blinked.

  I stood there uneasily, as if there existed a zone between us through which I wasn’t allowed to pass, and said to her, Is it OK if…? Can I come over and help you, Hannah?

  She nodded at me, so I walked forward gingerly and then leaned around the tree to eye up the knots. Hannah’s breathing was loud. I have to go get a knife, I said.

  The ropes creaked. Nooo, she pleaded. Don’t leave me here, Patch.

  It’s not far, I said. We keep supplies over there, it’ll take less than a minute, I promise. Don’t worry, I’ll whistle a tune so you’ll know I’m still here, I said.

  Heading deeper into the woods, I started to whistle. The only tune I could think of was Whistle While You Work. And I could whistle the singing bit pretty well but I wasn’t so good at whistling the whistling bit.

  We had this place where we kept all the stuff we’d take up there, everything hidden beneath a tarp kicked over with leaves. Weapons-wise, there was a slingshot, our spear and a load of BBs in tins and plastic bottles. We had soda cans for playing the game we called Rifle Range and sets of paper targets. We had a bunch of food in cans and a can opener, obviously. There were some bones and antlers we’d picked up here and there, although we never really found a good use for them. A compass we didn’t need, a pair of weak plastic binoculars, a hip flask that we’d fill up from the stream and take sips from like we were real men drinking liquor. There were pickle jars for frogs, a couple of cigarette lighters, a pair of toy handcuffs. And we had two knives, a little Swiss Army knife that was nine-tenths blunt and also a scrimshaw hunting knife, its bone handle etched with a grizzly bear marauding down a piney bluff. Matthew loved that hunting knife so much we hardly ever used it, which is why the Swiss Army knife was nine-tenths blunt.