by Julia Shupe
“There’s a river? How do we get across it?”
“We’ll be passing far above it on a very large bridge,” Jeremy reassured him. “We’ll make our way across and then camp far from it on the other side.”
His brow was creased with concern. “But I’m not supposed to go near water. Won’t we get sick?”
Sam decreased her pace and fell in beside them. “It can’t hurt us, Marlin. We have to cross it to get to the other side. Besides, it only makes you sick if you touch it or drink it.”
Jeremy assumed the lead.
“Everyone follow me. You’ll be fine Marlin.”
Actually, Jeremy had begun to smell the river some short time ago. It wasn’t that he feared for them to cross it. Sam was right; it wasn’t harmful if not ingested. He just didn’t want them to see the breadth of devastation. The polluted waters of the Mississippi were responsible for the death of the Gulf of Mexico. It had acted like a parasite for so many decades, a parasite or tumorous growth that attached to a healthy body and slowly leaked its poisons. The sight would be bad. It would actually be much worse than the Pacific Ocean in San Diego. Or so he hoped.
He fished through his pack and pulled out a granola bar. “Sam,” he called out, pulling alongside her. “Eat. Can you eat while we ride or do you want to stop?”
“I’m fine. I’m excellent at multi-tasking,” she commented with a wink.
He watched her rip into the top of the plastic with her teeth, and once again caught Seth staring at her with interest. He’d been curious about her illness from the very start.
“She’s like a robot,” he’d exclaimed with wide eyes. With a gentle touch he’d fingered the green florescent lettering of the blood sugar counter at her wrist and pulled back, startled, when she’d lifted her shirt to show him the device at her belly.
“You’re right. It is kind of like a robot,” she’d confirmed. “These devices keep me alive.”
From that time forward, Seth had taken an active role in trying to guess her sugars. He’d calmly pull on her arm when she appeared fuzzy, and from time to time, he’d surreptitiously glance at her number.
“Does it hurt?” he’d asked her once, his eyes lidded with sympathy.
“Not really. Only a bit when we change the disk.” She’d peered at her belly then, and met Jeremy’s gaze. “Which I’m afraid we’ll have to do soon. I’m at fourteen percent.”
Jeremy had nodded. “Yup. Four or five more days and we’ll load you back up Robot-girl.”
“I wanna watch!” Seth had chimed in with far too much enthusiasm.
It was endearing though, the way he doted on her and followed her. She was probably the first child he’d been around for years and she wasn’t even much of a child anymore. But more than his admiration for her or his curiosity of her condition, she’d given him something to focus on. Something other than the death of his mother. Seth was a strong boy. Clearly. Yet Jeremy knew he was still struggling with her death. He hadn’t answered many of their queries directly. Jeremy still hadn’t been able to glean the exact amount of time he’d spent alone in that Walmart, his mother’s spoiling corpse on the opposite end of the store, but judging by the level of decay, it’d been longer than was healthy for a boy his age. But Seth was a well-adjusted child. The zest he still had for life, and the buoyancy with which he tackled each daily task bespoke of a strong parentage. He was obviously loved in his youth, his character shaped and molded by devoted and adoring parents.
The three of them had buried Seth’s mother at the top of a gentle rise at Cedar Hills Cemetery in Scottsboro. It had been a quiet, sunny morning and Jeremy had dug the shallow grave in silence while Sam lay back against the hill, her arms and legs splayed in worship of the sun. Seth had grabbed a small hand shovel and was doing more to fill the hole than to hollow it out, but it’d been strangely pleasant and Jeremy had welcomed the chance to do something right for another.
They’d wrapped her body in soft blankets and Seth had draped her in what he said was her favorite shawl. They’d picked wildflowers, small handfuls of yellow celandines and purple dog violets. Sam had found clusters of baby blue eyes and Seth had argued fervently that a dandelion was indeed a flower and not a weed. Several sprigs of trumpet-shaped foxgloves in bright fuchsia had seemed to make the meager collection ample, and together they’d gathered around the fresh grave for a simple service. Seth had spoken of her love for her garden and her family, and he’d wished aloud that she’d somehow found his father up in heaven.
“I’d like to do a reading,” Sam stated proudly. “Something from Jules Verne.”
They’d made it to the Scottsboro library and she’d found Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and she and Seth had become obsessed with it.
“All right,” Jeremy replied with a nod. “Let’s have it then.”
She cleared her throat.
“The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. The sea is the only embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion.”
She lowered her book and gazed at him expectantly. He coughed into his fist and caught Seth’s confused expression.
“Hmmm,” he began. “Not sure about that one Sam. It’s undoubtedly a beautiful quote, but perhaps a bit obscure?”
“No it’s not,” she argued. “I guess I like to think that when we die we go to heaven—and for me, heaven would be a beautiful, sparkling ocean with red, blue, and yellow fish. Like the book? ‘With life stirring on all sides?’ ‘An ocean, its breath pure and healthy?’ Come on guys. Don’t you see? ‘Heaven would be love and emotion?”
She glanced from Jeremy’s face to Seth’s and back again, and scowling, she closed the book with a sharp snap. Jeremy heard Seth giggle from behind his hand.
“Well I thought is was beautiful. Beautiful and apt.”
“Oh it’s…beautiful all right,” Jeremy jibed gently. “No. Really. I mean it. I think it’s perfect. Thank you Sam.”
He smiled as he remembered that day. They’d actually shared a laugh at the top of that hill, a bit of merriment in an otherwise inauspicious occasion. It may have been at Sam’s expense, but she’d been a good sport. She hadn’t seemed to mind once she’d seen the corners of Seth’s mouth curve into a half smile.
“Dad, I think we’re here.”
He pulled himself from his reverie and focused on the entrance to the bridge just ahead.
“Ick!” Seth complained. “It smells terrible here.” His brow was wrinkled, his small hand squashed against his nose, and when that didn’t seem to help, he lifted the neck of his shirt and tried to breath through the fabric. His words were muffled. “Why is it so stinky?”
Jeremy put on a burst of speed and called out over his shoulder. “Because it’s dead and rotting. Come on let’s get across quickly and get away from here.”
He led them to the foot of the bridge and heard Seth skid to a halt. “It’s huge!” he exclaimed.
Jeremy frowned. “Yes. Huge. Too huge. Now let’s get across it.”
Behind him he heard the whir of their bikes as he edged onto the ramp of the massive steel structure. Weeds hadn’t completely destroyed the paving here and the road was still wide and smooth. He peered out over the immense body of water that stretched far in both direction and nearly gasped. It was worse than he’d expected. Much worse. Sam must have seen it too.
“Oh my God,” she breathed.
She pulled up behind him, swerving dangerously as the green ribbon of water caught her attention. Water? Jesus, could it even be called that anymore?
“Sam, please watch where you’re going.” But even as he said the words, she veered off course again. He frowned and pulled to a stop. “Okay kids. If you’re not gonna pay attention to where you’re going, then let’s just walk the bikes so you don’t kill yourselves.”
They dropp
ed from their bikes in silence and wheeled them to the pedestrian lane at the right of the bridge. There, he allowed them to kick down the stands and set their hands to the railing.
The water was nothing short of putrid. The three of them leaned out over the edge and tried to peer into its murky depths, but they couldn’t see past the surface skin of scum.
“I can’t even see the bottom,” Sam breathed.
“I can’t even see water,” Seth echoed.
Indeed, Jeremy thought sagely. The water was overrun with algae. It was a green field, a consistency similar to that of pea soup, and although he knew it wasn’t warm, it seemed, from his vantage point, to be a bubbling cauldron of filth. It was lumpy and glossy, a curdled consommé of bacteria and other waste products. Streaks of a red unknown contaminant veined through the green like an arterial pathway that ferried poisonous sewage through the agricultural soup. Clumps of dead grasses dotted the green along with clusters of non-biodegradable plastics and other decaying matter.
It broke Jeremy’s heart to look upon it.
Seth leaned out far over the edge and lifted a hand to his narrowed eyes as if that would allow him to see it more clearly. “Are there any fish in there?”
“Of course not silly,” Sam breathed. “There aren’t any fish anywhere. But especially not in there.” She crinkled her nose. “Dad, it doesn’t smell right. I mean it smells like trash, but something else too.”
She was right. The acrid smell scratched at the back of his throat and stung his eyes. He could just imagine what these vapors might be doing to their lungs. So what was it? Bleach? Fertilizer? Probably a combination of both and more. Abruptly he backed away from the edge.
“Let’s go guys.”
Wordlessly the three walked their bikes to the center of the road and began to pedal toward the far end of the bridge. An uneasy silence hung over them like a murky fog. He’d expected them to speak more of the river, or at the very least to pepper him with questions, but they must’ve been caught up in their own musings.
The journey across the bridge was silent but for the creaking of metal against metal as the bridge shifted with unseen movements of the earth. They passed beneath a sign that welcomed them to sunny Alabama, and Jeremy breathed a sigh. Yet another state behind him, yet another small win. But it was also another state in which he’d never set foot again. Not for the rest of his life. And that was a strange and humbling thing to ponder, he noted; a stream of consciousness that led to thoughts of mortality. One day this bridge would fall. One day even, humans would most likely become extinct, and this bridge would topple into the filthy river along with everything else. As he peered at the bilge that stretched north and south he couldn’t help but wonder if that was such a bad thing.
They were reaching the other side just as the sun dipped below the horizon and Jeremy was happy to put this leg of the journey behind them. It was actually quite uplifting when he thought about it. They’d crossed the Mississippi River! They were technically no longer in what was normally considered the eastern half of the United States. They’d make actual measurable progress. He began scouting out the turnoffs ahead. He’d try to take them as far as Bridgeport road where he had thought to find an old motel. They’d never stayed in a motel before and–
“Dad!” This from Sam, her voice shrill.
One glance over his shoulder set Jeremy’s teeth on edge. Seth had laid his bike on the pavement and was picking his way down the embankment toward the polluted waters.
“Seth!” Jeremy called out in a voice that seemed at least an octave too high. “Seth, what are you doing?” In one fluid motion he stopped his bike and laid it carefully on the ground. “Sam, stay here. Do not move from this spot. Are we clear?”
Her agitation was apparent. She was wringing her hands and hopping from one foot to the other. “Sam! Did you hear me? I said don’t move from-“
She cast and irritated glance his way. “I heard you dad!”
He nodded and began to run after Seth. “Marlin, you can’t go down there. What are you thinking, son?”
Seth’s voice lifted from the depths of the ravine and crested the lip of the causeway.
“I saw something!” he called out. “I just want to see what it is. I’ll be right back.”
Jeremy ground his molars and proceeded over the edge of the pavement in pursuit. The slide was steep, and although he hated to touch anything, he found that he had to brace himself against the slimy earth to avoid slipping altogether. What on earth would have peaked the boy’s interest enough to overcome a natural revulsion of this wretched place? The smell alone was enough to make Jeremy vomit.
He had to negotiate his way down carefully. The water level was lower than normal. He could tell. This year it hadn’t rained as much as recent others, and while one would think it would make the downward climb easier, it somehow made it worse. As the water receded, it had left behind a rancid footprint. Algae-laced trash littered the embankment along with thickets of dead leaves and grasses, unnatural in color and smell.
He heard a sharp scream from Seth and nearly lost his own footing. He was only able to catch himself by plunging a hand deep into one of those revolting mounds of decomposing refuse, and suppressed a gag as a cloud of stinking chemical effluvium burned his nostrils.
Seth moaned and Jeremy raised his head and peered down toward the edge of the river. There, at the edge of the bank, Seth lay on his side, clutching his leg and rolling from side to side. Thankfully he hadn’t fallen in the water, but he was clearly injured. Jeremy’s heart clenched at the sight of bright blood sheeting through gaps in his fingers.
He heard Sam gasp from above.
“No Sam. Don’t you dare come down here!” His tone challenged her defiance. “Hold on Seth. I’m coming. Son, roll away from the water. You’re too close. You cannot fall into that water, Marlin.” He spoke through clenched teeth. “Seth! Roll away.”
Finally he reached the bottom and padded out to where Seth lay. Jeremy’s feet were sinking into the mire, mud sucking unnaturally at the bottom of his boots.
“Seth,” he breathed as he stumbled up beside him. “Dear God, boy. What were you thinking?”
Seth gasped through his pain. He peered up at Jeremy, his eyes brimming with tears that hadn’t yet spilled. This kid was brave.
“I just wanted to get her the mirror,” he wheezed.
Jeremy crouched low and pulled Seth against his chest. “What on earth are you talking about? Good grief. Let me see.”
Seth bit his lip and bravely lifted his hand from his wound. Jeremy sucked in a breath. The cut was deep. It was a long and clean laceration that began just below his knee and ended on the fleshy part of his outer shin.
Immediately, Jeremy pushed his small hands back down. “Keep it covered a minute longer.” He peeled off his shirt, rolled it tight, and then in a quick motion, lifted Seth’s bloody hands and replaced them with the white fabric. He pressed down hard, tied a tight tourniquet around the wound, and lifted Seth into his arms.
“You wanna tell me what this was all about?”
Seth’s face was pale. “The mirror,” he pointed out with a red-stained finger. “I wanted to get Sam the mirror.”
Jeremy was aghast. “Whatever for?”
Seth’s eyes darted to where Sam stood atop the bridge. The wind whipped her blond hair against her shoulder as she leaned out over the gorge, and though there was no chance she could hear him, he lowered his voice just the same.
“She told me that she felt ugly, that she hadn’t seen her own face in weeks. I just wanted to show her how beautiful she is.”
Jeremy sighed. “Okay Casanova. Let’s get topside and look at that leg.”
He pocketed the sliver of broken mirror, which had incidentally caused the injury in the first place, and clutched the small boy to his chest. With Seth’s added weight, the uphill trudge was increasingly difficult, and short of breath, Jeremy met Sam’s gaze as he crested the ridge.
“Yo
u’ll have to walk both the bikes by yourself and I’ll ride with him on the handlebars. He can’t walk.” He shook his head then, reconsidering. “No. Leave his bike. We’ll come get it tomorrow. We need to find a place to hole up for the night and then we’ve got to tend to this wound.”
Her eyes were wide, her mouth slightly agape as she stared at the blood-soaked shirt. She lifted her gaze to his. “Is it deep?”
“He’ll be fine.”
“But Dad, it’s so dirty down there. Is it-“
“I said he’ll be fine Sam. Let’s get a move on. We’re going to have to stitch this wound.”
At that a small tremor shook Seth’s body, but stoically he didn’t complain. Jeez this kid had it bad for Sam, Jeremy thought with a wince. He lifted the child over the bike and settled him atop the handlebars. He needed to keep the leg elevated as much as possible and so he propped Seth against his chest, held fast to his waist, faced him outward, and let his feet dangle out over the front wheel.
“You’ve got to stay with me son. Okay? Seth?” There was a lot of blood and Jeremy was afraid he might pass out.
His answer was quiet, his voice weak, and his knuckles looked impossibly white as they gripped the metal bars. “I’m okay,” he mumbled. “Let’s go.”
Jeremy didn’t wait. He put on a burst of speed and led Sam off the edge of the bridge onto the flat plain of I-55. There was a handful of old inns and motels down this road. He remembered from the maps. Though they made quick work of it, Seth’s head was beginning to droop, his chin tucking closer and closer to his chest with each passing mile.
“Look alive, boy. We’re almost there.”
He raced farther west, exiting off a service road and veering left on East Broadway. “There,” he called out to Sam, “Budget Inn.”
It was a cheap-looking sign, the lettering faded, and the plastic coating now warped and peeling. The building wasn’t much nicer than the sign. The left side of the roof had caved in, but the rooms toward the right looked solid.
