The river

It was half past ten, when he pushed the door of the biggest pub in the town open, panting, his neck soaked in cold sweat. At first, he couldn’t see a thing. The light was too bright, the air so full of smoke, that a feeling of claustrophobia surged into him. The pub was unbelievably crowded on that saturday night and, for a second, he thought about leaving. But then, he remembered the reason that brought him there in the first place. He needed a drink. Making himself unnoticeable, he managed to make his way through drunk and raucous people and headed to the darkest corner of the pub. Some acquaintances, he didn’t care to identify, waved at him but he just turned his gaze away, not feeling the least of the world like mingling and making noise. In fact, he didn’t feel like doing anything. All he needed was to forget…

-Hey, Springsteen how ya doing ? asked the bartender, Need something to cheer you up ?

How sarcastic, like there was something in this world that could do that.

- Yeah, yeah, right, he answered, pour me one.

He sat in the darkest place at the bar, and welcomed the giant cup of cheap beer with groans of satisfaction. If there was one cure for every wrong in men’s life, it was the liquor. No matter how unreasonable it was; killing your body to temporarily drown the bit of feelings left in you had always been appealing. He remembered the number of times he’d gotten into his house, at dawn, completely drunk… Uncountable, almost. His wife was usually already sleeping, and he had felt this urge each time to wake her up, yell all his pain at her face, blame her for sleeping peacefully when every day he lived was a continuous stream of deceptions and boredom…

He remembered their conversation. The one that kept nagging him the whole day. When it was eight o’clock in the morning, and he had headed to the kitchen for his breakfast as usual :

- ‘morning, he had mumbled to his wife

- Good morning, she had answered with her calm and emotionless voice.

There were scrambled eggs on the table with bacon, and he had attacked the breakfast with great appetite. The immortal silence had been present as usual, until he’d been done eating, and his wife done cleaning around. She had sat on the porch, he still recalled, for her coffee, reading her daily newspaper.

- What’s on the news? He had asked mechanically.

- Nothing special. There was an accident yesterday, on the main traffic lane that caused the death of two people. It’s the third this month. There’s also a kind of celebration that will take place in our neighborhood, and oh ! Your contestants are building this huge complex in the Curtis River.

- What?

- The Thomson’s. They finally found the right field for them. Don’t know why your firm didn’t think about the Curtis. The river had been dry for years.

The river had been dry for years…

He closed his eyes and rubbed them strongly, until all he could see was a blur of black and yellow circles… That was a mistake again to replay those thoughts. Didn’t he come to that bar to forget?

Getting off with his beer with long and thirsty gulps, he yelled to the bartender:

- Another one here!

Slowly and as the pub cleared little by little, James drank. He wasn’t exactly an alcoholic, but he liked to drink. Even liking didn’t fit that much. He was pleased to tell himself that he only drank because it was great to feel numb and careless from times to times. Even if these times to times meant every day in his life… he knew it all of course, the fact that it didn’t make sense too. But nothing ever makes sense in life, so he kept drinking…

An annoying mainstream pop song was playing on the radio, and some other cheap girls were dancing by the jukebox, when a sudden dizziness took him aback. Weak and tired, he rested his head on the counter. In spite of him, his eyes closed. It felt great to just lay there and rest his bones…“I need some rest”, was the last thing he thought before all his senses drifted away, in a deep and static sleep… 

Chapter 2

- Hey, man, are you feeling right?

- Huh?

James awoke from his state of voluntary semi-unconsciousness and, dazed, stared at the black man who had looked like he wanted to say something.

- Scuze me?!

The man took a sip from his drink, a weird mixture between a hairy navel and a cherry hooker, if it wasn’t a screwdriver for the latest. James waited impatiently for the man, who seemed to degust his drink with great pleasure.

- I asked if you were fine, he answered.

James sat down decently, and after wiping the stray of saliva running down his cheek, shrugged.

- Yeah, yeah, I’m fine… Why wouldn’t I be ?

He blinked. Once. twice. He didn’t feel that fine, but well… He stretched is arms, numb with hours of inactivity.

- You were talking in your sleep, figured there must be something wrong.

James heart pounded hard at this remark, and he felt all the blood rush up to his head.

- What was I saying? He asked, afraid of what he might hear.

- Some nonsense for the most, and you kept talking about a river…

All the dizziness blew away and, against all expectations, James felt awake. Even worse, he was conscious. He stared at the man, who seemed very concentrated sucking on an olive.

- You can talk about it, if you feel like doing so, said the man, I don’t mind.

The man put the olive kernel on the counter, and took another olive from the bowl.

- Talk about what? Asked James stupidly.

- Talk about what’s bothering you. The river maybe.

James turned his gaze away from him.

That was crazy! Why would he talk about the river? And who was that man anyway? He was nobody he knew. It was nonsense. it was… useless… It wouldn’t help…

…would it?

Apprehensive, he stole another glance toward man who was sipping his drink peacefully…

There was a long moment of silence, one of those who managed to exist in the most raucous places on earth. And he knew it was his to break.

- The river, he whispered suddenly, it was where I used to dive… years ago…

The man didn’t say a word, but he stopped sipping his drink. He was listening.

- It’s… in the valley, in Northwood, added James, I guess you know where it is… I come from there, in a little town.

He kept silent for a minute, and then by an unknown force, he started to talk… louder, feeling more and more reassured with every word he adds, turning his debit form the lowest, to the fastest:

- The town is a very small one, he said, A very few people know about it. There mister, when you’re young… they bring you up to do, like your daddy done… My father worked in a construction farm, y know, the Johnstown! My late grandpa too, and I don’t know where the hell his own late dad got this idea of bringing it to life. I work there now. Can’t imagine worse job, really. Spending your whole day getting yelled at and filling paper over and over again… I never wanted to do that. Nobody would want to, I can tell. When I was like eighteen, my folks planned for me to go to California, after my studies, to help my uncle with his new company. Sounded cool. At least it was warm up there. The sun, the girls, the beaches… a dream, right?

He laughed, a sad laugh, and then stopped suddenly, to drink once more.

- I’ve never been there eventually, He continued, California, I mean. In fact, I didn’t even attend college…

He took another sip of his drink, and started playing with his coat buttons.

- Why was that? Asked the man, was it for the money?

James looked dazzled at first, as if he couldn’t make out the link between college and money…

- Oh no! He exclaimed after a few seconds, that wasn’t that, really… Let’s just say that I met this girl…Mary.

Blurry images drew on his head, of a beautiful girl at her seventeen... long wavy hair, red lips, blue eyes… he couldn’t assess the reason, but a forgotten melody played into his head… she had eyes of the bluest skies, as if they thought of rain…

- I can’t remember well, but I think I was in love with her, he declared, She wasn’t like the other peppy girls and bigmouths that you seemed to find everywhere. That girl… was special. Always peaceful and shy, no matter what circumstances. She was bright too. Made the honor roll twice. I remember that my friend at the time, Franklin he was named, used to have the hots for her too. She was driving us crazy. We sometimes sneaked out in her garden, to catch a glimpse of her while she undressed in her room. By her window. We climbed every possible tree, but I can tell that the only naked flesh we’ve come to see was her father’s, the reverent. That was such a trauma, man.

The man watched James, as this latest was bursting out laughing at the memory. By the look in his eyes, he could tell that he hadn’t been thinking about his high school memories for a long time. Maybe he thought he had forgotten all about them…

- I asked her if she wanted to be my girlfriend, James added suddenly. In a hill close to the river. I didn’t expect her to say yes, I didn’t, really. I thought she preferred Franklin and it was killing me inside. So I asked her out before he could do it instead. She said yes. It took me hours to fully realize my chance. Franklin was so upset; he never talked to me again. He still doesn’t, but what did I care? I had the girl, as they say.

The man nodded slightly. James was too busy smiling to notice it.

- We went down to the river after this day. It became our secret place. I remember us driving on my brother’s car, on our way back. Her body was so tan and wet and I was pulling her close just to feel each breath she takes… She was so irresistible… her eyes, I mean, they were sparkling so bright! And she couldn’t stop smiling, and we couldn’t stop staring at each other’s like… I don’t know, we couldn’t resist it! I guess, I was really in love with that girl… and I bet she had loved me too… I don’t know, with me, she just seemed so…happy…

His voice broke, with this last sentence and James paused abruptly. His expression was no longer happy nor was it depressed. It was just showing a deep sadness. … The man realized that bitter memories were on their way. Those, he suspected, that had everything to do with the destroyed man who had just crossed his path.

- And what happened? Asked the old man.

- We got married on the 3rd of December.

This last sentence broke in, heavy with meaning. The man turned his head away. His job was done…the poor guy would finally face his torments and stop running away…

Chapter 3

 James stood up, and threw some dollars on the counter. He didn’t even count, he just knew that it was enough… It could even be too much… he walked away of the bar, fighting the blur that obscured his sight…

The 3rd of December. It was his nineteen’s birthday…and his wedding day. The day he understood that life was a colored poison that would taste like red wine… An embellished disguise that hides the most scarred of faces…

And he asked himself, why? Why wasn’t he able to foresee what was coming to him? Why couldn’t he guess? He would have run away from Northwood, run away from this sick town where happiness was faked and offered as a gift you should be grateful of. If only he knew, he would have left it all behind him. All those people; he would have let them die in the cages they had built for themselves…

But then, he just remembered the way Mary had looked that day. The way wrinkles formed between her joined eyebrows, witnessing her pain… the way little sparkling tears were crowded together under her pupils, just before they fall alone, one after the other… and the way her slim fingers were trying to hide her pregnant belly with shame…

Was that the definition of life? Give you everything you ever wish for, and then turn it against you in the glimpse of an eye?

James got out of the bar and reached for his truck in fast strides. With trembling fingers, he opened the front door and rushed in. The good old engine made a loud snoring noise with the contact, and within seconds, was already doing sixty on the freeway. James wiped the sweat on his forehead. He had no idea where he was going; he was just driving to keep his mind clear. Just as he started thinking about leaving town for an unknown destination, a dry, small river, caught his sight.

Hesitantly, he slowed down.

What remained of the Curtis River was still in place, agonizing but always proud. The huge shadowy trees on the both sides looked threatening, as if to dare anybody to come closer and disturb their mourning. Taking a deep breath, James parked his car between two giant trees, and glanced down to the river. The good old river. It was still unbelievable for him that it was going to disappear under the big buildings of the Thomson’s. Though it has been there in the paper this morning… soon enough, it would become nothing more than a memory…

James opened the door hesitantly. Who would have said that he would come back there after such a long time? Seven years have passed since then. And he wondered that it was this exact river that had caused all of this mess. It was right there, in the dust, that he had made love to Mary for the first time…

If they hadn’t been swimming down there, they would never have fallen in love. Mary would never have got pregnant. He would have attended college, got a diploma, found a job somewhere and got back to get married to his beloved full of pride and success. They would have had a wonderful wedding, with beautiful bridesmaids, pink flowers and the most luxurious wedding dress for his wife, just like they’ve been imagining together… but then again, he was getting in the same old infinite circle of regrets… it was like a curse, and this time, he loved to recall himself in a sadist way, how events truly happened… how they were married in a court, on the third of December, after he’d been accused of felony sexual assault. How the only way for him to avoid a jail sentence was to get married to the girl he had made pregnant. How both families’ had agreed with that, though, his never looked at him the same way. How that was nothing compared to what Mary had to endure…

He still recalled as anything else, their night together. The breaking point. Mary couldn’t stop crying, sitting in the corner of their bed, thinking about the cruel words her father had said and the way he had hit her hard on the face. Her sobs were getting harder each time and he could see her body bending and her tears drowning her face, her hands, her neck… She was holding her belly tight with desperation… And not, in the slightest moment, did it occur to him that, maybe, he should have comforted her. Passed his arms around her frail body, said some soothing words. Kissed her wet face or stroked her loose hair… he didn’t guess that these simple gestures would have made the difference. Instead, he just stood there, silent, too caught up watching his dreams fly away…

Mary had cried that night, and the night after… It went on for weeks. With her quiet sobs, she was singing his pain, and it was almost comforting to hear it daily… It was like this lullaby that reminds a child of the weak little thing he is. It was his lullaby that reminded him of the unhappy miserable man he was damned to become. And it was right to know it, at least he wouldn’t be surprised when life would turn against him again. He would be used by then…

Rush was not his biggest mistake. But he did regret this moment of rush next to the river that had cost him seven years without love to warm up his soul… Mary woke up one day, wiped her tears, and that was the last time he ever saw her crying. She stood up, made breakfast, sat on the porch, and in her face…there was nothing. It was blank, lifeless. It was cold as the wind playing with the cemetery gates. The beautiful and loving girl he had wanted for so long had turned into a cold and insensitive stranger… She never forgave him. Even after such a long time, she still didn’t forgive him. Their love was born with this exact river, and it was giving its last breaths with it.

He turned around, to get back to his car. Maybe California was still a good idea. Maybe he could go there after all. Find him a job. Start him a new life. “After all, there is nothing left to lose”, he wondered, while wiping his cheek. He looked in his pocket for his car keys, when he felt something wet in his cheek again. He wiped it another time, before a sudden realization stuck him in place:

Was it raining ?

Dazzled, he looked up thinking it was an illusion. But the teardrops were there, falling from the sky with an exponential speed that he couldn’t ignore. After seven years of cruel drought, it was finally raining! He watched the rain fall out from the sky in cold and hard strays soaking his clothes. Little streams were already rushing in the river that was thought dead just a few seconds ago. At that moment, he felt the forest breathing; he shared the river’s life and the happiness of the hundreds of people who’d been living in the town. He felt his heart beat hard. How stupid he has been all along. The answer had been there, if only he had cared to take a glance. Nothing was lost, there was always a part of life in every dead thing. It just asked to be seen.

He turned around, smiling like a child. He knew what he has to do. He got into his car and got on the road before the engine could even fully start. He turned the radio on. A Springsteen song was playing, and he turned the volume up. He was thinking about buying some flowers, but it was way too late, so he figured he might just cut some from the neighbors well preserved garden. He remembered some lyrics from his teenage years, and tried to sing along with the song...

With the sound of the rain crashing on the glass, and the wind hitting hard, he was driving to the place that he would hopefully start calling home .