River, Sing Out

by James Wade

  “Well, he don’t particularly see himself that way. I wouldn’t let him hear you say that. Hell, you ought not be letting me hear you say it.”

  The man laughed.

  “My friend, I do not mean to insult. You are the muscle, as am I. Can we not speak freely of our employers to one another?”

  “I’m not one for speaking. Freely or otherwise.” Cade looked the man up and down. “But you don’t much seem like the muscling type.”

  The man smiled.

  “Americans. Always they are thinking the biggest must be the best.”

  “Worked out for us so far.”

  The man smiled again.

  “Perhaps one day it will not.”

  “We can find out right now, if you want, haas.”

  “No, my friend, I am not wanting to fight you, here. If it is meant to be so, we should let it happen naturally. After all, anticipation is the sweetest fruit.”

  “I’d rather just get to the point.”

  “Yes, I see this. This is a shame for your women. Or your men.”

  The big man turned and stared down at his grinning counterpart.

  “Cade,” John Curtis said, “time to go.”

  “I’ll be seeing you again,” Cade said to the man.

  “No, I think we have seen the last of one another. But if not, I look forward to our meeting again.”

  “Cade,” John Curtis repeated.

  8

  She ran blindly through the bramble and burs and stinging nettle, the thorns tearing at her clothes and her skin. She stepped on the stunted side of a fallen branch and went tumbling down the slope toward the river. She crashed into a tree with her hip and covered her mouth to keep from screaming. She pulled herself to her feet and followed the river southeast, limping and crying silent tears.

  By dawn she was lost and exhausted and she needed a hit. She sat back against a thick cypress trunk and opened the backpack. The crystals looked as if they belonged in some gift shop where kids can fill their bags with different colored rocks and gems. She dug through the bag and there was no spoon or syringe or anything else to mix a hit. She unzipped the front pocket of the pack and found a small steel pipe and a miniature Bic.

  Her heart was pounding as if it was something she’d locked away, something that did not belong to her, now demanding to be set free. She rolled the pipe across her palm, then back the opposite way.

  She watched the red sky through the trees on the far side of the river. The outline of a dozen limbs lay across the rising sun like fault lines, as if the sun itself were fracturing from within. She imagined her own body fracturing, her beating heart exploding from her chest, scattering pieces of her along the bank.

  The birdsong closely followed the light, and the girl watched the world awaken and the clouds moving in with their purple underbellies against the pink hues of the morning. A doe emerged on the east bank, silhouette against the sunrise, and drank from the river and raised her head and looked across the water. A fawn came in behind her, looking both ways as if making ready to cross a busy street. The doe urged her forward and the young deer stood above the water and lowered her head and began to drink.

  The girl was a long time watching the pair, and finally, once the sun had unfastened itself from the horizon, the deer moved back into the woods. The girl stood and watched after them. She threw the pipe into the river and the lighter as well for good measure. She zipped the backpack and began to walk on raw and bloodied feet as the first drops of rain fell from the swollen clouds above her.

  9

  “Well, let’s get right to it. You all come up here for a reason. What is it?” John Curtis asked.

  The two older men looked at one another, then at their younger companion. One of the men leaned over and whispered into his ear.

  The young man nodded and brought his hands together atop the table.

  “We believe there is a problem,” he said.

  “Not on my end.”

  “We believe it is on your end. You are taking certain, uh, liberties, that are not good for business.”

  “Not good for business? Hell, son, I’ve expanded my territory to cover the whole damn river basin. From the Gulf all the way to Van Zandt County, the tweakers in East Texas are buying pure Mexican ice. No shake and bake, no Nazi labs, just me. Which means just you. How in the hell is that bad for business?”

  “It is true, you have grown the clientele, expanded the market. We appreciate your sacrifices in the territory wars. But—”

  “A war which we won. Me and that big sumbitch in yonder. We were the last men standing. We were the ones putting our lives on the line. Y’all Mexican motherfuckers didn’t send one goddamn gun up here, let alone a soldier or two.”

  “Yes. And again, we appreciate this.”

  “Well, what’s the problem then?”

  “There is the matter of the murdered banker.”

  “What matter?” John Curtis asked.

  “You killed this man, yes?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You don’t know of the dead banker?”

  “I heard about it. Don’t got nothing to do with me.”

  “It has caused several issues with our business.”

  “Sorry to hear that, but like I said—”

  “Yes, I heard you, you did not kill the banker. Still, it has caused several issues. The first is the authorities who will investigate this death. They will link you and the banker together. Whether they can prove you killed him is not relevant. If they link you, they might link us. You can see how we do not want to be associated with the murder of an American bank man.”

  “Well, I can tell you right now—”

  “Second,” the man continued, cutting off John Curtis, “this banker did more than your modest timber dealings. He was used by several friends of the business for certain . . . purposes. These friends are now asking for answers, you understand.”

  “Yeah, I hear you, it’s just that I don’t give a shit. You understand?”

  The young man looked to his elders who did not speak, then he turned back to John Curtis.

  “Mr. Curtis, I am sorry this is not going well. I am sorry you are upset.”

  “Like hell you are. You’re just sorry I’m not gonna be your little monkey on a string. Y’all may be hot shit in Mexico, but this is Texas, amigos. It’s not Mexico, and it’s not the United States for that matter. This is something different. Purgatorio, if you will. Our people have always done things our own way. Independent like. And on my river, I’m the judge, jury, and executioner. You want to stop that flow of cash coming back to you, by all means let’s replay the Battle of the Alamo; but I’d warn you, gentlemen, the sequel ain’t likely to go your way.”

  The young man pressed his hands together.

  “Mr. Curtis, we too are judge and jury, but we are not executioners.”

  “Tell that to the headless bodies piling up on your side of the river.”

  “Unfortunate outcomes. But, as I said, we do not advocate for violence. However, we are businessmen. And we take very seriously every aspect of our operations. If there is something not working properly, something, say, out of order, then we make the adjustments necessary to fix it.”

  “Adjustments? That’s what you call it?”

  “It does not matter what I call it. The only thing that matters is that you understand what will happen to you, and your men, if you are not agreeable to our terms.”

  John Curtis sighed.

  “And what are these terms, that you would offer me here under threat of adjustment.”

  “You will increase your payments by five percent, on top.”

  John Curtis laughed and pounded the table. The glasses rattled.

  “Hot damn, boys, if you’d told me we were going to a comedy show,
I wouldn’t have ate so many beans at dinner. Cade likes them chain Mexican joints, but they make me gassy as all get out. Especially when I laugh at something as funny as paying five percent off the damn top.”

  No one spoke.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, please, continue with the sketch.”

  “You will increase your payments by five percent, as a means of placating our partners whose business interests were buried with the banker. Also, you will pay one hundred thousand dollars to us upon our next meeting. This is a one-time restitution. A penance for your recklessness, as well, if I may say, for your attitude here tonight.”

  John Curtis leaned back in his chair. The young man leaned forward across from him.

  “I have watched you closely, Mr. Curtis, for many years. I know you are not a stupid man. I know this shit-kicking cowboy act is simply a ruse. You are too smart to mistake our civility for weakness, so I warn you, do not also mistake it for apathy.

  “You see, it’s true you mean very little to us. Our operation is run on a scale you could not imagine. You might, in your limited view of things, believe us to hold some position amongst our people. In other words, you might believe us to be in leadership. I assure you, we are not. But we do answer to leadership, and they in turn answer higher, and so on until we reach the top.”

  “And who’s at the top?”

  The young man rose from his seat. The two elders as well. John Curtis drummed the table with his fingertips.

  “Not who, Mr. Curtis, but what. And the answer to that is the same in every gated neighborhood and crumbling ghetto in the world.”

  “Cade,” John Curtis called. “It’s time to go.”

  “You have one week, Mr. Curtis. We eagerly await your payment as a sign of our continued business together.”

  “Cade.”

  John Curtis mixed the hit while the big man drove. He waited for it to dissolve. No chunks, no cut.

  “A little something to center ourselves after that clusterfuck,” he said.

  “Think they’ll be trouble?”

  “No. There’s too much money to be lost by trouble. Told the boys to be ready though, just in case.”

  He filtered the hit through a cotton ball and drew it into the syringe. The liquid swirled then settled. He took an alcohol wipe from the console and passed it across his neck, flexing his throat like a war-ready reptile. He brought the needle point to a forty-five-degree angle and pressed it into his neck and brought down the plunger.

  His eyes were open and opened more and opened to a world only he could see, as if every atom belonged to him and him alone. He clutched at the leather pouch. He let his thoughts go, let them run and saw them running each one before him and with the care of a surgeon he extracted the one he knew was right. He reached into the pouch and ran his fingers through the thin tuft of hair.

  “You can get word to that cousin of yours in Ojinaga?” John Curtis asked.

  “Yessir.”

  “Good.”

  “What do you want me to tell him?”

  John Curtis breathed out, long and heavy. He cracked his neck.

  “Go on and get your hit. Business can wait.”

  The big man pulled the truck over at a rest area called Lovers Lookout. One of hundreds, perhaps thousands of rest areas with the same name existed across the country. This one was on a ridge overlooking cattle land, pine trees, and the river valley below.

  Cade was an oilman and he conducted each excursion accordingly. He studied his own body like a map of a shale, envisioning where he could pump and where he couldn’t. He imagined small red and blue dots popping up along his forearm, between his toes, even on his neck. His very own Well Legend. He surveyed it. It was ripe for drilling.

  His whole life there’d been injections. Liquid shot down at high pressure into subterranean rock. He’d break the earth and take its resources until there was nothing left to take, then the trucks would crank up and he’d move on until he was overtop of a new valve. Drill down, inject, turn on the spigot and watch money rise to the surface.

  He squeezed his fist a few times and watched the veins rise up under his skin. They approached the surface like eager fish at feeding time. He thought of them as willing participants, friends on this journey. His network of tributaries. A sea of oil and gas under his feet and a river of blood inside his body. It would all be utilized—helping with production, satisfying demand, and keeping him moving toward whatever’s coming next.

  He leaned against the window as the dome light went from bright to Holy. His eyes avoided the glow and focused instead on the rain drops as they fell on the windshield like a growing pox. The drug was already crawling through his body like an insect, spilling from his ears and eyes and fingertips. He felt the familiar cold glide into his chest and throat as he worked to loosen the belt around his arm. He needed to cough, but his lungs felt like they were constricting. The drug weaved in and out of his ribs with every breath he took. The dopamine slithering around his brain made his scalp tingle like a menthol shampoo. The chills traded off with waves of heat, rippling through him, making him sweat. He was shaking too much to put the cap back on the needle.

  He couldn’t remember if he’d ever coughed, but it was too late. He was scared the drug would fall out of his mouth, so he breathed through his nose as the euphoria settled in. The drug slid its hand up his back and grabbed him behind the neck, pulling him close. He leaned in and smiled. The rush was subsiding, but the high had made a comfortable home for itself, and he could tell it would be staying for a while.

  He held his arm up and inspected the fresh drilling site. There was a trickle of red smearing his map.

  “How come you never get tweaked out like the rest of us?” Cade asked.

  “What?”

  “When you use, how come you don’t get high?”

  John Curtis grinned, slow, measured.

  “I get high. I just do it on my own terms.”

  “What are those?”

  “For most folks, the drug’s in charge. It’s doing the driving. See, they’ve got nothing inside of them strong enough to control something that powerful.”

  “But you do?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Don’t suppose you wanna tell me what it is?”

  “It’s hate, Cade. It’s my hate for everything that keeps me strong. Keeps me from getting lost in all this shit. If it weren’t for the rage inside of me, I don’t believe I’d be able to take another breath. Wasn’t always like that, of course. I used to think there was something wrong with me. Something missing, maybe. But the older I got, the more I understood what I had was a gift. There wasn’t a damn thing missing. In fact, I had something extra. Something other folks didn’t. And I used that to get through those years in the system. Used it to take over this operation and make it into something nobody figured it could be. It was hate, got me through the wars.”

  “Which ones?”

  “All of them. The wars in the desert. The wars in Redtown. The wars still going on.”

  “I remember all of ’em.”

  “Yeah, I suspect you do. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have all this. You know that, don’t you?”

  The big man didn’t answer for a while.

  “I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again,” Cade said at last. “You saved my life. I remembered it. But they put me on a flight, sent me to Germany, then back home, and I didn’t know if you’d lived or died. Then you—you just came walking into that camp, and everything you said I knew was gonna come true. I knew it. I could feel it, that wasn’t nothing gonna be able to stop us.”

  Cade looked out the window and there was only darkness.

  “I don’t feel that way no more,” he said.

  “How do you feel?”

  “You ever think about getting out?” Cade asked without answering the question.

/>   “There’s nothing to get out of. Nothing to go into. This is my world. I built it. I control it. It revolves around me. That’s how it feels, anyway. You wanna know if I get high? Sometimes. Sometimes I look down that hill and see the river, and I know, I truly believe, I could stop it from flowing if I wanted.

  “Like the world is made of a fabric so thin it can be changed with a slow wave of my hand. Like reaching out and touching god. Having him touch me back. I don’t know how else to describe it. I see the river and the trees and sky. I see the moon and the stars and the pictures taken from space. I know about matter and time and existence, and yet, if I close my eyes, it all goes away. Like the universe itself is mine to stop or start or erase altogether.”

  John Curtis took a deep breath.

  “So, go on and call your cousin,” he said. “Tell him East Texas is open for business, and we’re looking for a new dancing partner.”

  “I ask you something else?” the big man said.

  “This is a curious side of you, Cade,” John Curtis told him.

  “That story you told the banker, about your momma and Mac and everything. How do you know all that? I mean, if you was a baby.”

  John Curtis nodded.

  “I was left at Pineland Heights ten months after Cindy Curtis was abducted. Her folks tried to keep it a secret, but word had got around that she tried to come home with a swollen belly and they turned her away. Game warden found her body on the Hill. I read about it, once I was older. I spent a lot of time in the library to avoid going back to whatever foster home they’d stuck me in that month. When I was old enough—man enough, you might say—I went up there and found Mac Stafford. Had some words with him. Filled in some gaps.”

  “Did he say he was your daddy?” Cade asked.

  “No.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “It was too late for all that. I had a story—a narrative—that had kept me going all that time, all those years. And Mac Stafford was the man at the end of that story, whether he wanted to be or not. Actions breed reactions, and it ain’t always clean.”