Silence on Cold River

by Casey Dunn

  I have a flashlight in my hand, but I don’t dare turn it on. I need to get to the highest place in the woods so I can see first light. Timmy said you can see them when the first rays of sun come through—you can see them chasing the last bit of dark.

  I reach the peak, puffing and sweaty despite the chill in the predawn air. Coyotes yip and howl somewhere close, regathering after a hunt. I wonder what they ate. I wonder if they left any parts behind, and I think maybe I’ll go look once the day breaks.

  The yelping stops, and the gray air goes a thick kind of silent. The hairs on my arms stand on end. I turn ’round and ’round, searching for a wisp of gray, a flash of a checkered shirt.

  “Father?” I call out. My voice sails downhill on two sides. “Father!”

  Vapor rises in twists from the lower elevations, and I wonder if that’s all Timmy saw, if he looks out at the steam and rising fog and sees a ghost. I nearly laugh until I think of my mother’s face, all peaks and edges, and see a hungry beast.

  A tangerine line breaks the horizon, and rays of sun laser through the trees. My eyes burn with light, but I cannot turn away. I see shapes in the glow, black and moving, and I hold my breath. Someone is walking toward me. Someone is calling my name.

  “Father,” I say. I blink against the burn in my eyes, and when I open them, I squint, shielding my view from the light. It is not my father’s face. It is my mother’s.

  Her hands are upon me, and she is dragging me down the wrong side of the hill. She is moving so fast I nearly trip.

  “Why do you keep coming into these woods?” she seethes.

  “I was trying to see Father.”

  “Your father is dead! This place, these woods, killed him, Michael! Don’t come back here!”

  “You’re going the wrong way,” I plead. She doesn’t answer. “Mother. Our house is the other way.”

  “We’re not going home,” she says between breaths.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re going to the river, Michael. You said you want to see your father. If he’s in these woods, I can’t think of where he’d rather be,” she says, slowing her steps, her voice suddenly soft.

  I reach out for her hand, but she pulls it out from my fingers. I follow, my insides turning, my body light and heavy at the same time.

  I have not seen this section of the river before. The banks are more rock than earth, and the drop from this point is nearly double in height, despite the darker, louder water, which rushes by, foaming and frothing as it passes.

  “Is this Dad’s favorite place?” I ask.

  “No. It’s mine,” she says.

  “Dad said you can’t swim.”

  “I am not here to swim. I am here to teach you.” She steps closer, and my blood runs hot. “I grew up on a very simple rule. The Rule of Three.”

  “Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is mastery,” I say, reciting the rule.

  “Yes. Tarson has a hold on your soul, Michael. As long as you are drawn to these woods, you will never amount to anything, do you understand me? You will never be free. This place, the factory, your father’s obsession with these woods, it killed him.”

  “He died trying to save people,” I whimper.

  “Your father died because he wanted to be a hero,” she says, her face curling in a sneer. “A hero for everyone but you and me. He could’ve come home that day, Michael. He could’ve been our hero, left when they told him to and come home. But still, these woods would’ve claimed him sooner rather than later.” Tears bead on her lashes, and she laces her fingers through mine. “If you are meant to waste your life in this town, I would rather you not suffer it.” She leans forward and stares down at the water; then her gaze slides to me. “I don’t want you to suffer, Michael. I want you to be a master of your own life.”

  “What are you saying?” I lean away, but she squeezes my wrist and twists my hand around the wrong way. I yelp, but she doesn’t seem to hear it.

  “Three times is mastery. Are you going to be a master of your life, Michael? Are you going to amount to anything outside this town? The way out of Tarson is uphill on all sides. You have to be strong. You have to be willing to do whatever it takes. Pain is the best teacher for those who understand it.”

  “Mommy?”

  Tears leak from the corners of her eyes, and for one split second, her face softens and her brown eyes glisten with something warm for me.

  “This is for you,” she says as she shoves both hands into my chest. I tumble backward, arms pinwheeling; then there is no ground, and the air is rushing up, up, up.

  The slap of the water forces the breath from my lungs, and I plunge under. The current floods my mouth and fills my nose. I kick and claw at the water, my body spinning. My shoulder glances off an underwater stone, and I inhale water. I force my eyes open. It does little good, grays and browns sliding by at a dizzying rate.

  I strike out blindly in one direction, and my knuckles drag along something solid. I reach forward with both hands, bumbling over roots and stones. At last, I grab hold. Anchoring my hand turns my body into the tail of a whip, and I slam into the bank, nearly losing my hold. I work my feet under me and claw my hands higher. My fingers feel the weightlessness of air, and I push off whatever is underneath me.

  My face emerges, and I gasp for air. I grip the twists of roots that jut out from the bank and pull my head and shoulders out of the water. Shivers claim my whole body, and my hands shake so hard that it is difficult to hold on. I can’t tell what side of the river I’m on, and I try to remember if it had been flowing to my left or my right when I was above the water. But Mother is not on the bank. She is in the river downstream, hip deep in the water, the ends of her hair sopping wet, her nightgown see-through and clinging to her sagging body. My father had said that she could not swim, that the river scared her. Is she so angry with me that she is no longer afraid? I could climb this bank and run somewhere—anywhere—but then I could never go home.

  I let go and drift toward her. I have to press down on the river with my hands to keep my face above water. The current speeds up, but suddenly my toes drag against the riverbed. Three more seconds pass and I can stand. My mother stays where she is. She will have me walk to her. So I do.

  “You are here by accident,” she says.

  Snot streams from my nostrils, and my limbs ache with exhaustion.

  “Are you going to be a master of your fate, Michael?” she hisses.

  Water and tears and mucus pool under my chin and drip off in slimy strings. It takes every ounce of strength I have to stand still in the current, which pummels my back and tugs on my legs, bending my knees. I nod, but I wonder if she can see it through how hard I’m shaking.

  “I won’t push you again. You need to jump. Your father said, ‘All things for a reason.’ He believed that things are meant to be a certain way, that we have no control over our lives, that no matter what choices we make, we will live a certain way and we will die a certain way. That’s called Fate. You want to see your father, you want to remember him, this is how. Go back to the place you fell in, and jump, and Fate will save you, or she won’t.”

  “Fate is a lady?” I ask, somehow struck by this idea that there is another woman in this river so interested in seeing whether or not I will drown.

  “She must be. She might as well have been your father’s mistress.” She glowers, her dark eyes focusing on something other than me for a full second. “You will need to jump two times more. Surviving once more would just be a coincidence. Three times is what, Michael?”

  “Mastery.” I can barely hear my own voice.

  “If Fate saves you, I will do everything in my power to bring greatness out of you, to make you feel the music. If you are going to leave this town, you must do something or be someone no one else has done or been before. That’s the only way anyone from Tarson can go and stay gone. I will not let one more piece of me die in the shadow of that factory. Get out of the river, Mic
hael. Go find your fate.”

  I walk sideways to the bank, keeping her in view until I step onto the muddy shore. I can feel her stare on my back as I pick my way up the ledge and walk to the place where she pushed me in. My toes curl over the edge. My fingers ball to fists. I suck in a breath, seal my lips, close my eyes, and leap.

  * * *

  I wake in the middle of the night to screaming, but it is not my voice in my ear. I try to throw my legs over my bed and to the floor, but my stomach is a knot and my sides are two bruises. I push myself to stand with my hands and hobble across my room. The screaming has turned to gasping and sobbing, and something heavy crashes to the floor.

  I tiptoe down the hall, one shoulder pressed against the wall, and my mother’s room comes into view. I turn on the light. She’s kneeling in the center of her room, her matted hair spilled over her downturned face. Her bedside table is flung on its side and her lamp is broken in a dozen pieces on the floor.

  “Michael, turn on the lights! I can’t see.”

  “The lights are on, Mother,” I whisper, hanging back in the doorframe.

  “They’re not!”

  I flip the lights off and then turn them back on, keeping my toes behind the threshold to her room.

  “They’re on, Mother.”

  She slaps her hands against every surface within reach. She strikes out again and again, and then she waves her arms around, fingers outstretched. She makes contact with the quilt strewn half off her bed and yanks it the rest of the way to the floor. I watch, paralyzed and fascinated, as she balls it in her hands and then pulls at it like she’s preparing dough, and I wonder if she’s dreaming.

  Then she screams, a pure, singular note, rising in volume, consistent in clarity and pitch. The air inside me swells, and my heart begins to race. I could run to the piano keys and find that note, I could. It’s just two or three keys to the right of the very middle key. Or is it four?

  The sound fades, and my mind loses track of the note. I am left empty and breathless. I nearly want to stick Mother with something sharp to see if the note will come out again. I step one foot forward, disbelief flowing through me. Another step.

  “You did this.” She lunges in my direction, swinging out with a hand. I jump back to the threshold.

  “What did I do?” I ask, nearly pleading.

  “I can’t see! I can’t see!” She crawls on her hands and knees, panting and raging, but she can’t find me. My limbs tingle, and everything inside me screams to run back to the river, to jump in one last time and let it carry me to the next town, maybe all the way to the ocean. Doesn’t every river flow to the sea?

  Even in my mind, though, my mother is in the river, her fingers manipulating the flow of the water, turning the current, making it flow into Tarson from both ends. Lady Fate has her by the shoulders, shaking and shaking, and if Mother truly can’t see—if she’s blind somehow—I can’t help but wonder if Lady Fate is to blame. But when it comes to the river, when it comes to me, I think… I think Mother might win.

  A burst of pain makes me gasp, and I realize my mother’s nails are on my shoulders, digging for the grooves at the sockets, and she’s shaking me.

  “What have you done?” she shrieks, and I let her push me down to the floor, like I should have let her push me under the water at Cold River so Lady Fate would’ve had to go through Mother to make me live.

  AMA Chapter 17 | 7:50 PM, December 1, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia

  JONATHON HAD RAMBLED ABOUT HIS mother for what felt like an hour: her demand for perfection, her gift of music, and her utter disappointment that it didn’t pass to him. The more he mentioned her, the quieter he became and the faster he paced. He forgot where he was going with a story in the middle of a sentence and slammed the heel of his hand against the side of his head.

  “So you have mommy issues? That’s it?” Ama attacked, trying to push him over the brink while his mind teetered, hopefully far enough to get sloppy, to make a mistake. From what she could tell, a loud, aggressive woman was one thing he’d bow to. “Do I look like your mom? Did I insult your shit piano playing and so now you’re taking out the years of rage on me that you never had the stones to do to Mother Dearest? I have to agree with her. You should never touch a piano again. Do you have any idea how many clients I’ve defended whose childhoods make yours sound like a fairy tale?”

  He tore his shirt over his head and turned as he stepped into the lantern light. “Is this a fairy tale?” What Ama had thought were acne scars before looked different up close, more organized. Almost as if they were in lines. In stanzas, she realized, and sucked in a breath. His back read like a sheet of music.

  “She wanted me to feel the rhythm. She thought this might work,” Jonathon said quietly. He knelt in front of her. “But now I know it wasn’t my ear that was wrong, nor my hands. I was just trying to play the wrong instrument. Now I’ve found it.” He slowly ran the end of his thumb down the front of her throat, pausing at the base. “I can hear the music now. I can feel it, each and every note. I’ve started writing my own songs, and you’re going to help.” From his backpack, he withdrew a small black voice recorder, a frayed metal cord, and a lighter. He set the recorder to the side and flicked on the lighter, holding the end of the cord over the flame.

  “It’s something you have to feel to understand.” Jonathon clicked on the recorder and then pushed the record button. “Ama, introduction,” he said. He studied her in silence for a moment, his steady gaze probing her flickering eyes. Then he pulled the burning end of the cord out of the flame and pressed it against the inside of Ama’s bare thigh. She grunted with shock and then shrieked with pain as her skin died where the cord burned it away.

  “A-sharp! Did you hear it?” Jonathon asked, a note of excitement in his voice.

  “Hear it?” She spat the words out between gasps. “You just branded me like a steer!”

  “Emotion is music, Ama. It’s human music. Here, I’ll play it for you so you can hear it.” He rewound the recorder and then pressed play. Ama’s scream, razor-sharp and high, played between them. Ama stared at the device, heaving breaths.

  Jonathon picked up the recorder and clicked it off. “The note didn’t translate well, honestly. The acoustics are very poor out here, especially with the mist and the trees. There’s a lot of noise interfering with your voice.”

  “You’re insane. You are fucking insane!” She flung herself against the rope, but her bindings held fast.

  “It’s okay to feel angry or disappointed with yourself. That’s natural. You can take it out on me. You may just feel the notes at first until you learn to interpret them. But you will. I’ll help you, and we’ll make music together. I’ve learned how to teach people—how to play them, I guess you could say. I will show you what magic you’re capable of.”

  “That’s what you’re doing?” Ama cried, panting. “You’re torturing people for sounds?”

  “It’s not torture, Ama. It’s production. The three of us are going to produce music together.”

  Ama’s entire body went still, except her heart, which galloped in her chest. “Three?”

  “I’m working with another instrument. Are you prepared to be outshined by a nineteen-year-old girl? Her name is Hazel. She’s brilliant, the most talented instrument I’ve ever held in my hands. Stubborn, though. Talent gets in the way of work ethic sometimes. I’ve been tuning on her for a year and still haven’t been able to produce what I know she’s capable of. She needs to be motivated, to be challenged. This is so perfect, you coming here, crossing paths again now. Hazel needs a mother figure. She’s an old soul, but she’s young, and she lost her mother several years ago. You can help her; you can be that for her. I’ve never played two instruments at once. The layering we could do.” He blinked rapidly, his eyes staring at something far away.

  “Where is Hazel now?” Ama asked quickly.

  “I have to keep her where she can’t hurt herself. She can stand, sit, and lie down. I’m trying to make
her happy. I really am. But she won’t sing for me anymore. Not a single note and not even a word—not a sound—going on six months, and trust me, I’ve tried.” His expression darkened, and Ama felt sicker. “You know my path crossed with Hazel’s for the third time in these woods, just like you. You’d think I’d be better prepared when I go on hikes here. Although twice is just luck, I guess. If it happens again…” Jonathon trailed off, a disbelieving smile on his face.

  “If what happens again?”

  “Three times is Fate, Ama,” Jonathon said. “That’s how I know who Fate is choosing for my instruments: three random meetings. I should thank you for that. You gave me the idea.”

  “So what, this is fate? That’s why you chose me? Because by my count, we’ve only crossed paths twice,” Ama argued, wishing she didn’t sound so desperate.

  “Don’t you remember what you said? I never want to have to cross paths again. You are why this started. You are the genesis—my muse—my freedom. That moment, that day, is when this dream of mine truly began. This is when I say thank you. Not then. Now.”

  Then? Ama said to herself. Thoughts collided in her aching head. He’d said something similar before right before he hit her: This is when you say, “Thank you, Michael.” Her heart skipped over a beat.

  Long-forgotten pictures of an old crime scene bloomed rapid-fire in her mind, images she saw in her sleep for months after the trial, until she slowly, methodically convinced herself it hadn’t been him, couldn’t have been the work of a fifteen-year-old boy.

  “Michael Jeffery Walton,” she whispered. “But you’re dead. You’re supposed to be dead.”

  “They say these woods are haunted, you know. But I am not a ghost,” he whispered back.

  The hair on the back of her neck stood up as the memory of walking out of the courtroom seventeen years before, knowing he was free, washed over her. Responsibility struck her hard in the stomach: How many people had he killed since then? This girl he’d had for a year, doing God knew what to her… she wouldn’t be his prisoner if not for Ama.