The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set

by Elizabeth Sims

  Turning my neck, I was able to see Gina upstream, still clutching the bank.

  But I was on the wrong fucking side of the river. In the tumult we had switched sides, so to speak, and now Gina clung to the bank I’d tumbled from, while my root mat jutted from the other side—the ape-man side whence Gina had come.

  How was George going to rescue me?

  The water surged over my head. One-two-three-smash!

  I saw George to be roughly equidistant from Gina and me: she on his side of the river, though farther upstream than me. He continued to clamber, forced by the configuration of the cliff face to angle downward between us.

  But ah! I saw rocks, a sequence of rocks, a practical footpath of them across the river a short way from me.

  And I furthermore realized that because I could see no more whitewater beyond the line of rocks, they formed the lip of the falls Joey Preston had referred to.

  Well, I didn’t care how big the drop was, because George was about to save me via that rock path. I caught sight of him downclimbing steadily, almost to the river level now, keeping safe, being methodical, but visibly hurrying, coming to me.

  My God, I love him.

  One-two-ka-three-ploosh!

  Is this my limit? My breasts were getting strangled, my hip bones smushed, my lungs compressed.

  Gina can’t last much longer either.

  I could see her and she could see me, and I realized with sudden horror that she was nearing death. Her eyes went duller and duller as the river pounded her, her head lolling into the whitewater, then up again as she choked for breath. She was about to lose consciousness. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Her face splooshed into the foam again.

  As did mine.

  God in heaven, we’ve got seconds to live at most.

  My arms and legs felt increasingly numb from the cold water;

  in fact my entire body felt extremely queer, like pins and needles deep in my guts.

  As George continued his way to me, I mentally said farewell to my sister. He could not save both of us at the same time.

  I had failed her.

  What did my inner vow matter—the one where I told myself I’d take care of her forever, I’d never let her get hurt again? That vow was shattering to pieces like the water in this river.

  I’d let her come up to these crazy woods in the first place.

  I’d rushed to her rescue five minutes ago but had screwed that up like a professional idiot.

  I hated myself with every fiber of my being.

  I choked, my nose full of frigid river water, my vision dimming.

  Nothing to do now but tell her goodbye.

  My fingers began to slip from the root mat.

  I closed my eyes.

  When I open my eyes, he will be leaping the stones across the falls. Ten more seconds and he will be here. Ten more seconds and I will be in his arms.

  Farewell, dear beautiful, brave, fuckup sister. Lance should’ve steered clear of you. Or you of him.

  Had my mind been able to leap forward, I might have pictured the future without Gina. No one to tell the worst of my troubles to (a boyfriend or husband can listen to some troubles, but not the worst ones; they just can’t handle it), nobody to share gin and potato chips with, nobody to pick up cheap chocolate when I forgot, nobody to yell at over the red towel with the whites in the laundry. Nobody to sing Petey to sleep with blues songs filled with allegories about sex and death.

  Hold on, hold on, all I have to do is hold on, I told myself. George is coming. I love him with all my heart. Yes, he is mine, and I am his. It had been true all along, hadn’t it? Only you hadn’t believed it.

  OK. Now.

  I opened my eyes, a smile actually coming to my lips, ready to release myself to his strength.

  I gasped with shock.

  For his figure was not getting larger; it was getting smaller.

  He had turned upstream and was working his way toward Gina.

  What the hell!

  I watched in total denial as he set himself against a rock. He wedged his body somehow, then stripped off his jacket, wrapped one sleeve around his forearm, and flung the other sleeve to her.

  My fingers slipped entirely from the cold wet roots. Desperately, I caught myself with an elbow.

  Gina could not reach the jacket sleeve; evidently her free arm had been disabled somehow—I could not see it in the whitewater; I could only see her face slipping ever more frequently into the killing foam.

  The river sounded like a thousand wolves howling for our lives.

  I couldn’t feel my legs at all now. I tried to swerve my hips to see if they’d simply been ripped off by the cold, boiling current.

  I could not believe George would save Gina instead of me. I simply could not believe it.

  I thought he loved me.

  I thought he thought Gina was a pain in the ass.

  Maybe he was secretly in love with her and was only nice to me to try to get her to notice him.

  Now I could hear him calling encouragement to her.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, said my obscene little heart.

  Or had I gone insane and none of this was happening?

  Yeah, well, fuck you! Fuck both of you!

  To wait was to die.

  From far above I heard Daniel and Petey shouting. Fat lot of good they can do me while Daniel ties his knots and shit.

  Yeah, well, fuck all the whole goddamn bunch of you.

  And my old friend anger came to me. My old enemy.

  It knew I needed it.

  Fair rage, the double-edged sword of my life. Rage, the red curtain that rose from below my eyeballs when I needed it most.

  It was now imperative that I emerge from this river to dump George for the last and final time, if I didn’t kill him—and Gina—first.

  I don’t know how I did it.

  I honestly don’t.

  But I do know that my body was suddenly filled with something like molten knives, because I could feel every cell of it again.

  I could feel my blood cutting through my veins: yeah, I was all here.

  I threw my body weight onto my elbow—if I broke it, I didn’t care; I would endure a body full of broken bones if it gave me the chance to tell George and Gina what I thought of them.

  The river gave me nothing, no respite. It was not going to cough me up on its own.

  I swung my legs upward and from there, I couldn’t tell you. I was on all fours on a flat rock, facing upstream to see George haul Gina from the river by the shoulders.

  Chapter 21 – Our Strong Place

  Since those moments in the river, I’ve thought many times about anger.

  OK, I have an unpredictable temper—to other people. But in fact my temper is predictable—whatever sparks it, sparks it. I’m never surprised by it. What sparks it? Any threat to Petey. Either of us being dissed.

  Getting passed over for a role, however, never sparked my temper. God, actors can’t afford that—the gutters of Los Angeles would be running with blood every single day if the tens of thousands of us got mad whenever we didn’t get a part.

  I’ve had to manufacture anger for parts in a couple of commercials and one radio voice-over.

  The best one was probably an instant-latte commercial in which I portrayed a crazy mom about to crash her minivan into the school principal’s office but who gets turned aside at the last second by a crossing guard proffering a steaming cup of nonfat hazelnut Arabica. The crossing guard was the spokesman for the product, so my part was small. But it had to be intense.

  I remember preparing for my key shot in the vehicle mock-up on a soundstage. It was fun to use some Method, dredging memories of Jeff calling me a whore when he was drunk.

  Every time, his anger and the release of it was the most important thing in the world to him. Ah, how he underestimated mine!

  When you act, you have to sort of digitize emotional samples and have them ready at an instant’s notice.

  If you need to begin a
scene in a calm mood, then work up to anger, the scene itself should give you what you need. But if you need to start hot, so to speak, it’s good to use Method.

  I loved being that crazy mom, foaming at the mouth without simultaneously scolding myself, Get a grip; you’re going to regret this. I veritably chewed that steering wheel, flinging my hair, my eyes practically squirting blood. It was great.

  But my moments lodged against a root mat in the Harkett River rocketed to the top of my rage queue.

  Never had I been so angry.

  Ever.

  Petey—God bless my boy—ran to me with Daniel’s parka as soon as I reached the brink. The wisp of warmth from Daniel’s body made it feel like an electric blanket, for the moment.

  I’d retained my jeans and oatmeal wool sweater, though the sweater was ripped to hell. My clothes clung to me icily. I suppose I’d been in the water five minutes.

  I had stormed across the stones at the lip of the falls, then upclimbed that rock face barefoot, my teeth rigid in my head, on pure adrenaline—surprised that my rage surge had lasted that long, but I guess it just lasted as long as it knew it had to. I had no fear of falling, no intention of it. I didn’t even feel confidence. I had no thought at all as to what I was doing.

  That was interesting.

  I seized a tree branch and was ready to brain George with it as he struggled up from the gorge, helping Gina with the use of the climbing rope Daniel had thrown him.

  Petey screamed, “Mom!”

  I dropped the branch but flung myself at George, raging and crying. I wanted to destroy him for abandoning me, and I wanted to lose myself in him.

  Panting, he pinioned my flailing arms.

  “Rita! Listen to me.” He shook me roughly. His voice thundered in my face. “Goddamn it, pull yourself together!” He held me still.

  I blinked up at him.

  “I knew you couldn’t live without her.” His voice was savage. “Since it was impossible to save you both, I saved the person you would have saved.”

  He kissed me hard on the mouth, then released me.

  Gina was safe. I turned to her.

  Dear God, there she was; she was safe.

  By rescuing her, George had just given me the biggest gift he possibly could: my sister’s life.

  On the farm whenever somebody barely missed getting run over by the mower, or plunged screaming from a treetop only to land on a soft juniper, Gramma Gladys would say under her breath, “All’s tits that ends tits.”

  Except all was not tits.

  I knelt to Gina on the forest duff where Daniel had laid her. Her condition seemed similar to Joey’s when we’d pulled him up: a glassy expression plus a messed-up limb. In Gina’s case it was her left arm that had taken the brunt of something, or, more accurately, her shoulder.

  Her pink down jacket had gotten shredded by the rocks and the current, and all that remained of it was part of the front with the zipper, and the collar. Clumps of wet down stuck to her like a chick just out of the shell.

  Her arm was skewed and her shoulder had a horrible weird bump in front. “That’s the head of the humerus,” Daniel muttered. “It’s dislocated. Petey, stand away.”

  Her face and head looked all right, no obvious gashes, anyway. Her legs looked OK; she was moving them, writhing in pain. Her jeans had stayed on, but she was barefooted like I was.

  Like Lance was.

  Daniel, carefully removing the remnants of the jacket, spoke quickly. “I don’t like the looks of her side here.”

  Her belly and breasts were red in great blotches, where they’d been pounded against the rock she’d been hugging, and a frightening swelling was coming up on her left side above her hips and around her back.

  Her eyes briefly met mine. She registered recognition—she smiled, sort of, and then I could see a bruise rising on her cheek, the swelling already causing her mouth to lop to the side.

  Other than that, her beautiful face was unharmed, her whirly chestnut hair a sleek wet mass next to it.

  Then I noticed the ring. An honest-to-God eyepopper, it was a starburst of white diamonds surrounding a pink pearl the size of a champagne cork, on her left ring finger. Daniel worked it off her finger, saying, “Her hand could swell; here, hold this.”

  I zipped it into Daniel’s parka pocket.

  George turned to me. “Are you really all right?” The hoarse hope in his voice reached straight through my chest wall to my auricles and ventricles.

  By now I was totally freezing, but I said, “Yes. I can wait here while you guys take her back.”

  Daniel had brought little in the way of first-aid supplies. He unrolled a bandage he’d stuffed into his pocket.

  “We came running as fast as we could.”

  “But why?” I asked.

  “Petey got a feeling,” was all he said.

  My boy reappeared with two good sticks about two feet long. He handed them to Daniel without a word.

  “Good,” said Daniel. “I like a man who sees something needs doing and does it.” He bent to my sister. “Gina, you’re safe now.” He spoke in a low, clear tone. “You’re going to be all right. Can you talk to me?”

  “Uhhnnnhhh,” a guttural sigh.

  “Check her tracking,” George quietly suggested.

  Daniel glanced at him, a little surprised.

  He held his finger a foot in front of her face. “Gina, follow my finger with your eyes.”

  She was able to do so.

  “OK. Her pupils are the same size,” noted Daniel.

  A rasping sound came from her throat, and she opened her mouth. We made out the words, “It huuurrtssss.”

  “It hurts where?” Daniel asked, feeling her neck, her shoulders, running his hands beneath her back. “I’ve gotta reduce this dislocation.”

  “Everywhere.” She gave him a faint look, like, Moron.

  I understood. As I knelt there, my body coming back to itself, I felt like a bus had slammed me full-on. My front hurt; my back hurt. It wouldn’t be until nightfall when I’d realize the extent of my pulled muscles, bruised ligaments, and general beat-uppedness.

  “My dine?” she mumbled.

  “What?” Daniel strained to hear.

  “No, you’re not dying, honey,” I said, deciphering her words just as I used to do with Petey’s baby talk.

  “No, not yet!” said Daniel, forcing humor into his tone. “We’re gonna carry you home, but first I’m gonna help your shoulder so it’ll feel better.”

  George, kneeling at her head, pushed down on her collarbone. The nail on his right index finger had gotten torn; blood from it smeared Gina’s white shoulder.

  “Deep breath, Gina,” said Daniel. She took a ragged gulp of air, her scared eyes on his face. “Now let it out real slow.” With a smooth, fast move, Daniel pulled her arm straight out, and with a slightly creamy sound that mingled with her cry, the ball slipped back into its socket.

  I grabbed her other arm to keep it from flying into the guys’ faces in reaction. She fainted.

  Stone-faced now, Daniel probed her shoulder with his fingers. “I think she might have a fracture in there too, maybe a piece of scapula’s broken off, I can almost feel something in there. I don’t know.” He laid the arm across her stomach.

  “As it turns out, Petey,” Daniel told him over his shoulder, “we’re going to reserve these good splints you cut. The long bones of her arm are OK. But I’ll need you to carry them with us and add them to the surgical supplies back at base.”

  “How ’bout her legs?” Petey queried hopefully, wanting his splints to be put to use.

  “Her legs are OK.”

  “OK.”

  The pain that put her out brought her around again. My stomach turned to see her suffering so.

  “You gotta...” she mumbled.

  “Yes?” I encouraged.

  “You guys gotta get Kenner.”

  “Kenner? You mean Lance?”

  “...Kenner...”

  “Wh
ere is Kenner?”

  “Over...over...” She faded out. Then she came around again, getting agitated. “I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die.” She thrashed, and George covered her legs with the silver space blanket. Her eyes were scared as hell.

  Looking at her, facing the grimness of the situation, I was getting ready to freak out myself.

  Seeing this, George took my arm and talked to me in a low voice. “You’ve got to calm her down and make her think she’ll be all right.”

  “But will she?” When I crouched so that Daniel’s parka hem touched the ground, I stayed warmer, so I did that.

  “She’ll have a better chance if she believes it.”

  I knew he was right.

  I creaked upright, went to her, and crouched again. “Hon.” I took her hand and smiled, loving her. Jesus, I thought, I have to act as if. Act, I told myself. Just act. “We’re taking care of you; you don’t have to worry about anything. There’s just one new rule, though: no talk of dying.” I couldn’t merely mouth the words; she was searching my face for the truth.

  So I made myself believe them.

  “No,” said Gina. “I feel so bad.”

  I continued to smile, not overdoing it. My Method at the moment was remembering the way I reassured Petey when he needed it: totally calm, a totally fearless benevolent force for good. “Your system’s been through a shock. Believe me, you’re going to feel better. We’re going to get you to a doctor as soon as we can.” I stroked her head and promised, “It’s all going to be all right. You’ll see.”

  “Gina,” said George, “who was that man who was chasing you?”

  “Uhnnh. Bone.” She made an effort. “Tshop.”

  “What?”

  “Choppeh.”

  I said, “Bone chopper? The guy’s a bone chopper?”

  “Uhm.”

  “Good Christ,” muttered George.

  “Wuz Lance,” she said, finding my face.

  Where’s Lance?

  When I didn’t answer immediately, she focused her eyes on me harder.

  Right there, Method failed me.

  She saw.

  I could do nothing.