The River in Winter

by Matt Dean

  "I weakened. I know, I was weak, but-."

  "I have watched you sin and sin and sin. You beg for forgiveness, but you never change your behavior. Forgiveness without repentance. You are holding on by your fingernails." As if to illustrate, he jabbed his own fingernails into my flesh. "You will stand or fall tonight. I intend to see you stand."

  His eyes were wild. Brilliant spots of color shaded the sharp ridges of his cheeks. His fingers were translucent, bloodless from the tightness of his grip.

  My left hand was going numb. I tried to shake free, but he held me fast.

  "Eliot-."

  "Do you love God?"

  "Of course. Of course, I do. Eliot, you're hurting me."

  "Do you intend to renounce the sin of homosexuality?"

  In sudden and perfect stillness our eyes met. Blood rushed in my ears. I should deny him, I thought, curse him, throw him off. And yet-. I bowed my head. "I intend to renounce that part of my life, yes."

  "Tonight, once and for all, I intend to purge you of it. Will you do what I say?" Letting go, finally, of my hands, he stood facing me. He lifted my chin. "Will you do what I say? Everything I say?"

  In the light of the fire his eyes were amber. His pupils were enormous.

  I cast my eyes down. I nodded.

  "I'll be right back."

  I stood. I turned to face the hearth. I stared into the fire. Orange flames lapped the charred bodies of half a dozen logs lying in the grate. Sweat dampened the back of my shirt. I reached back, plucked the sticky flannel away from my skin.

  Behind me I heard a door open and close. Eliot set a box on the hearth, directly in front of me. It contained books, cassettes, videos. I knew the titles. Go Down on It. Streets of Los Angeles. Interview with the Vampire. Men on Men. ABBA Gold.

  "What is this? Where did you get these?"

  "From your living room."

  I felt myself faltering. I fell back and landed on the sofa. "You? You broke into-?"

  Eliot sat next to me. "Don't be absurd. You went away for hours. When you didn't come back, I went looking for you. You left the door open, did you know that? I walked right in."

  "Was-? Was Spike there-?" Spike and Eliot in the same room-. The idea alarmed me.

  Eliot didn't answer me. He shook the box. "You were supposed to throw all of this away, Jonah, not save it as some kind of altar to your sinful nature."

  I looked at him. In the firelight his face was a mask of gold.

  His hand squeezed my shoulder. "It's time, you know. You have to throw every bit of this trash into the fire," Eliot said.

  He stood, stepped toward the fire. He held his hand out.

  I reached for him. Fingers intertwined, he pulled me toward him. Fred and Ginger.

  We stood very close to the fire now. My face burned.

  He squeezed the knotted muscles on either side of my neck. "The box."

  My hands hung heavy at my sides. I felt the sore places where my belt had dug into my flesh, where Eliot's fingers had dug into my flesh.

  He said, "It hurts to remove a tumor. Even something that can kill you becomes part of you, until you tear it out of you."

  Strangely easy, to throw away the audiocassettes and the videos-even Spike's videos. They contained only sex and music, after all. ABBA Gold. Command Performance. The Best of Blondie. I cast them into the fire.

  Black smoke oozed from the slots and crevices of each tape. Beige plastic, black plastic, clear plastic. The tapes puckered, shrank, collapsed. I watched them burn.

  Streets of LA. Go Down on It. Into the flames.

  I breathed the smoke. It stung my nose and the back of my throat.

  Tom's books next-Rice, Leavitt, Holleran, Bram. Though they had belonged to Tom-or perhaps because they had belonged to Tom-it was liberating to destroy them, to rip them apart page by page and watch the ink and paper curl and blacken and burst into starry brilliance.

  But Walt Whitman-. Walt Whitman in Tory's handwriting-that was something else. I held the notebook Tory had given me, caressed its leather cover, squinted at the beige stitching along its spine.

  Eliot stabbed his thumbnails into my back. "I should have made you take that one first. That's the most dangerous of all. Tory gave that to you. I looked at the first page, the inscription. You don't love him. He's nothing to you. He's not a lover, he's a friend. You said so yourself. After tonight, he won't be anything to you."

  I looked at him. "After-?"

  "Rip it up. Every page."

  I peeled the cover from the notebook. I crumpled the first page, on which Tory had written, simply, "Whitman." I tore free the blank pages at the back. I ripped away the second page, the page on which Tory had written his inscription.

  To Jonah, my good friend and fellow Beethoven enthusiast, my fellow lover of poetry. I hope this inspires you as much as it has inspired me, and I hope when you read these lines, you will think of me with fondness and friendship.

  Below that, Tory had signed his first name in sprawling cursive letters.

  "Don't make the mistake of doing this mechanically, unthinkingly. It shouldn't be easy. Every single page should feel like it's ripped from your own heart. Do you feel it?"

  Not yet, no. I hadn't yet torn away anything of substance. I hadn't yet consigned a single line of the good gray poet's writing to the fire.

  Eliot told me, "I should have brought all of your poetry. All that metaphor. Not one line that means what it says. It's distorted your whole way of thinking." His voice twisted in on itself, mocking me: "Does heaven really exist? Isn't it just a metaphor for happiness? Does evil really exist? Isn't it just a metaphor for dissatisfaction?"

  Here, finally, the first page of poetry. It came away with a ragged sound. I glimpsed a few words as they sailed into the fire.

  Do not remain down there so ashamed ? I have long enough stifled and choked.

  "You think a few bombastic lines of Whitman stand for something real, and the Bible is a collection of symbols and indirections. It's precisely the opposite."

  A page, and another page, only sheets of paper. Words, only letters strung together. Nothing of substance. Just a poem, just words, nothing real. And yet as the pages, the lines, the words vanished in the fire, I found myself weeping.

  To escape utterly from others' anchors and holds!

  To drive free! To love free! To dash reckless and dangerous! .??

  To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!

  Words, only words.

  Eliot said, "Until you stop this cycle of sin and shame and begging for forgiveness, you'll never be free. Until you learn to keep your eyes fixed on the final goal, the final prize, you're a dead man. Dead in the eyes of God." Standing close, wrapping himself around my back, he stroked the stubble on the top of my head. Into my ear, he said, "Lost."

  Lost, like Tigger. Lost. Lost and dead, like Tom.

  "Don't get me wrong," Eliot said. "Faith is the key to salvation, but what kind of faith can you profess to have, if it doesn't transform you into the beautiful soul God wants you to be? If it doesn't free you from the stink of your own bodily desires? The stink of it's on you right now. The stink of fucking."

  I ripped a page from the notebook. On it, Tory had written:

  the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana, solitary, in a wide flat space,

  Uttering joyous leaves and its life, without a friend, a lover, near,

  I know very well I could not.

  Louisiana? Why Louisiana? I pictured a marshy seaside plain, a bruised sky hanging low over it, and a lichen-stained tree, chattering to itself in its native language of creaking branches and scraping leaves.

  Walt's words vanished in the flames. The bruised sky, the trembling oak. The page-words, only words-rose as smoke into the flue.

  "Think how you've sickened yourself," Eliot said. "How many times have you thought you were finally turning a corner, only to be dragged back into the mud by your own filthy and selfish desires? F
aster now." Leaning over my shoulder, he tipped the book. "See how all these little booklet-like things are sewn together?" I saw. "Take a whole section at a time."

  Balancing the open book across my thighs, I tore a sheaf of pages from it.

  "I know it's difficult to think of a life without these desires, without this sickness at your core, but it's within your power. You can be free."

  He leaned against me, a hand on each shoulder. I was trembling. I clenched my teeth.

  "You'll be surprised," he said, "how rich and happy your life can be, without the constant struggle to snag a man, without the constant futile prowling and hunger."

  More pages into the fire.

  "It will be difficult," Eliot said. "This may not be the last time we do this." His lips were near my ear. As he whispered I felt the moist warmth, smelled the apple-sweetness, of his breath. "You'll have to learn to live in a new way, to think in a new way. But I'm here to help you. I'll be here for you every minute."

  Eliot's hands crept down my spine. "You'll be new-baptized," he said. "You'll breathe, sleep, eat, talk, and dream the Holy Spirit." His hands girdled my hips.

  Here it was at last. The last remaining page of the notebook, the words that Jonquil had read at Tory and Christa's wedding.

  I have clothed your path in velvet; kiss one another, I am not looking. Love one another, love one another and if you are happy, instead of a prayer to thank me kiss again.

  Into the fire. It was done.

  Eliot thrust into my hand a sheaf of onion-skin paper. Grieving Songs. My fingers trembled as I held the delicate paper.

  "Eliot," I said. I couldn't raise my voice above a whisper. "This doesn't belong to me. This is borrowed. It's not mine. I can't-."

  "Burn it, Jonah. Cast it into the flames. It's filth."

  Far beneath in the earth's deep flesh,

  In the flanks, in the cavities and bones,

  As Eve was hidden in Adam's rib,

  The spring is hidden. The promise of summer's

  green is hidden under the white snow,

  under the blue ice.

  The fire made short work of the onion-skin paper. The page flashed and flared and in a second was ash.

  Eliot nuzzled my neck. "You'll walk through fire."

  Along the path the leaves are crimson, orange, and gold,

  Like crackling fire beneath our feet.

  "When you fall, I'll punish you. I'll set you right."

  Against the sky, the leaves of crimson, orange, and gold

  Are trembling flames upon the wind.

  Eliot wrapped his arms around me. He laid his cheek between my shoulder blades. Softly his fingers stroked my belly. He lifted my shirt. His lips brushed the nape of my neck.

  "I'll be with you all the time," he said. "I'll keep you in line, keep you on the straight and narrow."

  I held a page in my hand, half-crumpled.

  I am no priest. I cannot absolve him.

  There is nothing to absolve. The body

  is salt and water, seeks water and salt.

  It hungers, hungers for other than food.

  Hunger must be fed, and thirst must be quenched.

  He is an animal. So are we all.

  Animals. There is nothing to forgive.

  "We'll be together forever," Eliot said. Through my shirt, his hot breath burned my back. His hands roamed my shoulders, my arms, my belly, my chest. "Forever. Now, and through eternity."

  With one hand Eliot grasped the top button of my fly. The buttons popped open. He tugged my shirt free.

  A single brutish shove sent me sprawling forward. The rough stone of the hearth chafed the heels of my hands. I cried out. My face-inches, now, from the fire-burned. The skin of my face tightened and smoothed.

  All at once he bent over me, curved his body against mine. He yanked at the waistband of my jeans, pulling them down.

  I shouted his name. I struggled, pressed myself back against him, forced him away.

  He slumped away from me, and I rolled away from him. I stumbled, fell, landed on the carpet.

  "What have I done?" Eliot huddled in front of the sofa, weeping, his head buried in the tangle of his limbs. His fly was open. His cock-a small thing, as purple-red and shiny as a dog's phallus-stood erect. It was flagging, shrinking. "What have I done?"

  I stood. I hiked up and buttoned my jeans. I lifted the box of my belongings-what few remained. I saw that the Guarneri Quartets lay at the bottom of the box, alongside Beethoven in London and The Seventeen Quartets.

  Eliot hugged my ankle. "Don't go," he said. He choked, his voice thick with sobbing. "You're the only one. You're all I have. They all left me-Tigger, Lowell, Rob, Mason, Charlie. They're all gone. Stay. Stay and we'll work together. You can help me. I can help you. It's all about helping each other, being there for each other."

  I yanked my foot away from him. "Get away from me, or so help me God, I'll tear you apart."

  He let go. I walked to the front door, opened it, walked out into the night.

  A crisp breeze stirred the tails of my shirt. My skin puckered in the chill air. The bricks burned my feet with cold. I left the path and let my toes sink into the wet blades of grass.

  * * *

  Epilogue

  The River in Winter

  It's bright red, my new shell-or, no, not so new, now. It's four months old, more or less the same age as Christa and Tory's pink-cheeked, blue-eyed daughter-darling, plump Ruby, who will, I suspect, forever be called Peanut. I named the shell Ruby, in Peanut's honor. They were delivered a week apart, in late July.

  The shell lies in its rack in the new boathouse. It's a thing of beauty-this jewel, this Ruby, this new shell-far lovelier than my lost, unnamed boat. Candy apple red-red and red and red in beating leagues of monotone. Its fiberglass body is sleek, slender as an arrow. I've rowed in it many times, and it's nimble and swift.

  I lift it from the rack, carry it out the broad steel-framed door, tip it into the drying sling on the porch.

  The sky is clear, starry black to the west of me, icy blue to the east. The air is still and cold. The river laps the planks of the dock. Above me, somewhere on the riverbank, birds chatter and whistle.

  I strip off my jacket, my jeans. I lay them aside. I tug my shoes off. I peel my socks off my feet and tuck them into the leg of my unisuit. That's new, too, the uni-also ruby red, to match the shell.

  I drop my shoes into my duffel bag. Something crackles-paper, some kind of paper. I bend over the duffel, open it, look in.

  Christa has packed me a lunch in a paper sack.

  I open the sack and peek inside. On a couple of sheets of notebook paper folded together, in Tory's handwriting, a poem. A new poem.

  Share the midnight orgies, dance with the dancers, drink with the drinkers.

  Create and destroy. Depart and return. Fall and climb. Love your sins, regret your sins. It is all profane, it is all sacred.

  Water and salt, salt and water. Each seeks its own.

  Spirit and flesh, flesh and spirit. Each seeks its own.

  To be holy is to be human. To be human is to be holy.

  I find that I'm smiling.

  So Tory, then, not Christa, packed the lunch. Of course. I see now that there's a thick sandwich of shaved ham and Swiss cheese, a slice of tomato and a leaf of curly green lettuce in a separate Ziploc bag, a packet of mayonnaise and a plastic knife, an apple, thin spears of celery and carrot.

  Irrefutably, Tory packed this lunch. Christa would have made me a peanut butter sandwich-with or without jelly, it's impossible to predict. At the bottom of the paper sack there would be a bag of potato chips, ground to dust underneath the sandwich-that much is altogether predictable.

  I read on. There's a second page, a second poem.

  You pass over it on the freeway in the sealed space of your car.

  It's a flash of light, a rippling reflection of setting sun.

  You put your visor down, you ignore it, you can't
see it for what it is.

  You can't see the river for what it is.

  * * *

  Tory fibbed. When he told me he had other copies of Grieving Songs, he fibbed. He gave me the only copy. I burned it in Eliot's fireplace.

  Eliot put my scores and sketches into the box. He planned for the fire to claim them, but we never got that far. Everything that I set to music remains. All of "fuck" remains, a few lines of "The River in Winter" remain, a couple of stanzas of "Crimson, Orange and Gold" remain. The verses I read as I pulled apart the pages and tossed them into the fire-they remain, as if the fire burned them into my memory. The rest is lost. More than a dozen pages, hundreds of lines-dead, vanished, lost.

  After a few weeks of grieving for the Grieving Songs, after many tears, after a tense time when he couldn't bear to look at me, couldn't bring himself to speak to me, Tory set about recreating the poems. But of course he couldn't recreate them, not precisely as they were.

  And something strange happened. The new poems turned out less sad, less angry, than the originals. They are celebrations, not elegies.

  Lately, Tory's been experimenting with free verse, with long lines of chaotic, Whitmanic exuberance.

  I read on.

  From the bank it's a sliding current, a big puddle of mud.

  Leaves, twigs, the occasional ripple of a fish's mouth claiming an insect skating on the surface.

  The trees arch over it, bending their limbs toward it.

  You see the trees, the forest, the twigs, the mud, but you can't see the river.

  You can't see it for what it is.

  I can hear a melody. A crazy, vigorous melody turning in on itself-eighth notes, sixteenth notes, the words coming fast. A piano thumping chords underneath, a viola in counterpoint.

  I am still smiling.

  I put the paper sack and the poem back into the duffel, shove the duffel into a corner. I close and lock the door.

  I carry Ruby to the dock. The planks are dry underfoot but chilly. The rough, cold wood bites the bare soles of my feet. I put my socks back on.