in the river like a dead, sun-dried snake.
Tab works a drill in Walt Emory’s machine shop three miles upriver. He’s worked there since arriving; just shy of a year ago, drilling holes in chunks of die-cast metal. But so often as he works, his mind is back there, back on the Mekong, drifting along the current. The sweat on his brow becomes river water splashed up onto him from the force of bullets.
The memories make Tab close his eyes. He tries to force the memories back so they can’t overwhelm him —
Bullets. Muddy water. Pain.
In the Mekong, thrown off the raft they had paid river pirates so much to take them on.
Mother screaming. A bullet ripping through her chest, her neck, spraying blood on the boy she carries. Tab grabs the boy, his baby brother, as his mother sinks beneath the murky water. His father is gone, too, the only trace of him a brief patch of rust on the river’s surface. The brother squirms in Tab’s arms, screaming, crying. Bullets slap the water around them. Tab holds his breath. Holds his brother close against his chest. A bullet catches Tab in the back of the shoulder. Another in the back. Another below that. Intense pain, like spears of ice. More bullets zip past his ear, kiss the water like hot drops of rain. He smells cooked flesh — his own — where the bullets entered. Water bites into his eyes.
His brother’s forehead is warm against his chin, his brother’s breath is wet against his neck.
Tab sinks below the surface. Holds his brother with one hand, swims with the other, as brother struggles, tries to break free of Tab’s weakening grip.
Underwater, the bullets sound like grease splattering on a flame. Tab swims deeper. Swims back, to the right, forward, to the right. Impossible to see past the blood rising off his wounds in the dark water. He surfaces. Takes a breath. Plunges back in.
His brother stops squirming.
How many times has Tab woken at night, crying, panicking, the memory so fresh and urgent? How many times has he gotten out of bed to check on Carl, to make sure he was okay, make sure he was breathing? How many times?
Night. Dark. The sounds of flowing water and chirruping frogs. Carl snores heavily in his room. Tab rises from bed and creeps barefoot through the cabin out onto the pine needle strewn ground. He feels his way over the short path that leads to the river, finds the rope that holds the canoe, and unties it from the tree. He tosses the loose end into the canoe and pushes until the current grabs hold. Moonlight glimmers on the water, the canoe a black void traveling slowly down the middle.
Tab walks back to the cabin, feeling guilty. Relieved.
But — morning—
Carl is gone. Tab steps into the daylight, his eyes turning to the tree where the canoe was tied, and his muscles tense at the sight of the rope secure around the tree.
How can that be? He didn’t release the canoe from the rope, he released the rope from the tree. And now there it is again, tight around tree. Had he only dreamed it last night? But there on the ground are the impressions of his feet in the soft pine needles.
And did Carl take the canoe out again?
Tab hurries back inside and goes straight to Carl’s room. He digs through the drawers, rifling through the clothes and books and videotapes. What am I looking for? Drugs? No. Maybe, yes, but…
Nothing. He finds nothing. He opens Carl’s closet. Pushes the clothes aside. Freezes. Scrawled on the back of the closet wall is the word
Carl comes home late. He isn’t sweating.
“Where have you been?”
Carl eyes him suspiciously. “What do you mean? I was on the river.”
“Where does the river take you? What do you do on the river all day? Who do you go see?” Tab holds up the robe and candles. “What are these?”
“You went in my closet?”
“Answer me!”
“Nothing. Just stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
Carl’s eyes harden. “You wouldn’t understand.”
And Carl’s neck. A red scratch disappears beneath his shirt…
“Take off your shirt,” Tab says.
“Father—”
“Now!”
Carl takes off his shirt. Tab gasps. His chest is covered with long, deep gouges.
“They’re just scratches.” Carl puts his shirt back on. “It’s nothing.”
“Who’s doing this to you?”
“Friends.”
“What friends? Who?”
“I’m going to my room. I want to be alone.”
“No,” Tab says. “What kind of friends do this? What would your mother say?”
“I don’t care what Mom would say. She’s not—”
Tab grabs Carl tightly by the throat.
Carl’s eyes widen. “Stop it. You’re choking me.”
Tab shakes. “Don’t ever talk about your mother like that again.” His anger is intense, but brief. He drops his arm. Swallows. “I’m sorry.”
Carl sucks in his breath, chokes back tears. He turns and flees to his room, slamming the door behind him.
Soon Tab hears the sound of Carl’s television, the volume shaking the small cabin’s walls.
Is it gangs all over again? Even up here? In the north woods?
What can I do? Lock him in his room? Forbid him to go out?
Move again?
No…
The roadhouse. Packed. Loud. Full of cigarette smoke. The reek of beer.
“Who’s this?” Tab scribbles
Jim squints. “Hell if I know. Why?”
Tab looks up at the bartender, the only man in the area with whom he’s ever had a decent conversation. His voice cracks. “I think I’m losing my son. I don’t know what to do.”
“He’s what? Sixteen? You gotta let ’em go sometime.” Jim places a shot glass in front of Tab and fills it to the rim with Jack Daniels. Tab drinks. Sets the glass down. Nods at Jim, his face blank. Jim fills it and says, “It’s a bitch. Don’t I know it.”
