River Walk

by Melodie Starkey

His birth had been her death.

Jolon moves slowly along the river bank, peering into the gray-green water that looks so blue from the tall bridge of the freeway, kicking at an empty beer can and smiling at the suddenness of the noise as it clatters over the rocks. He glances across the river, wondering how far it is to the other side. They probably told him that in school when he wasn't paying attention.

The wind stirs and plucks at his shirt, rubbing its hot fingers over his face like a blind person trying to get a clear picture of him. Can it tell his eyes are the color of the river, gray with thought but green when the sunlight catches them? He picks up a few flat stones and skips them across the water: one-two. One-two-three. The oblong ones work best. He's sure they never told him that in school. One-two-three-four-five. He turns away from the river to retreat to the shade of the tree across the road.

He runs his fingers lightly over the letters carved into the willow trunk and scarred over with time. Gideon. He had crawled out his bedroom window at midnight and carefully took the cat's body out of the garbage can where his father had crammed it after putting a bullet through its head for vomiting on his good jacket. On his bicycle he rode furiously through the darkness alive with sudden sounds and furtive movements caught in the corner of the eye, his heart crashing against his sternum and the stiff corpse clutched to his chest with one rigid arm; rode through the streets so comfortingly narrow by the light of day but vast and shadowed in the lack-light of the moonless night; rode to the gravel river path, the rocks popping under his bike tires like bbs from his cousin's gun, the laplaplap of the river louder, beckoning the bike to swerve. He chose the tree in which he had spent the summer being a pirate in the lookout, his blue wind breaker serving as a Jolly Roger. With a fist-size rock and his fingernails he scratched and clawed a grave in the dry clay deep enough to discourage pillage and laid the cat inside, wrapped in the wind breaker that was stained with the aftermath of its death, then filled in the hole. He came back the next day and carved the cat's name into the living grave marker with his father's Buck knife.

Eight years have passed. He doesn't climb trees any more; he's discovered other ways to hide. And lately it seems hiding isn't even necessary. It is as though he has become invisible. He passes through the house, through meals, through weeks at a time without a word being exchanged between his father and himself. He tips his head back and peers into the twisted branches of the tree. Someone has constructed a lopsided platform between two of the main limbs. He wraps his hand around a branch just over his head and tests his weight against it, lifting himself slightly off the ground. He lets go and drops to his knees, then sits with his back against the trunk and gazes out at the river.

"Hey you!"

He looks around. The only visible person besides himself is an approaching girl of twelve or so. He watches her come nearer without responding.

"What're you doing here?" She demands when she reaches him.

"Sitting."

"Duh. I got eyes. Go away. This is my tree."

"What makes you think that?"

"That's my fort, see? I built it. Go away."

"You see that?" He points to the name above his head on the trunk of the tree.

"Yeah?"

"That's me. I'm the spirit of this tree, and I don't like you crawling all over nailing things into me. Got it?"

She squints at him, her head tilted to one side, then says, "You're a liar."

He shrugs.

She watches him for a while, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, then says, "I don't believe in spirits anyway."

He shrugs again.

She shifts a few more times, then sits down by his feet, asking, "Well, are you a good spirit or a bad spirit?"

"There's no such thing as good spirits--only bad."

"Santa Claus is a good spirit."

"Santa Claus is a myth."

"Jesus is a good spirit."

"Another myth."

She looks up as though expecting a bolt of lightning to strike him dead, then, disappointed, says, "I don't like you."

"I don't want you to." He closes his eyes to indicate that he is ignoring her. After a while he hears her moving, and looks to see if she is leaving. But she has only stretched out on her stomach and begun picking all the dandelions within her arm's reach.

Her shirt hangs loose from her body, and he can see down the front of it that she is wearing a bra, although her chest is as flat as his own. He imagines himself lunging forward and grabbing her, overpowering her with the agility he had never been able to muster in ninth grade gym class, tearing her clothes from her and teaching her what it really means to grow up. He closes his eyes and can feel how she will writhe under him, kicking his calves, her arms jerking against the talon grip of his hands, her body arching and straining to get away while his own superior muscles exert only the minimal effort necessary to hold her down, her screams piercing his brain until he smothers them with his mouth over hers, tasting the hot panic of her breath. Or maybe she won't fight at all; maybe she will only cry, filling him with guilt that will turn to anger, and he will have to hurt her, sinking his teeth into her soft cheek until the salty taste of blood squelches the salty taste of tears.

But what if she laughs? What if she sees it and laughs, like the other one--the one he pursued doggedly through his sixteenth autumn, writing her notes with fragments of copied poems, carrying her books, stealing cigarettes for her, doing her homework, being repaid with strawberry lipstick kisses and sometimes the allowance of a hand ventured under her blouse to explore the silky material of the mysterious undergarment guarding the small breasts that fit so perfectly into his cupped hand. Then one day she invited him over, saying her parents were gone and she was alone until night time. He felt like he was dreaming as he so easily seduced her, cautiously at first and then braver and braver until finally, after the victory, he had sprawled naked next to her on her parents' bed, overwhelmed with being undeniably a man. And then she sat up and saw it—the mark, larger than the palm of his hand, occupying the left side of his lower abdomen like a lost red continent, shaped vaguely like the head of a goat so that his grandmother had called it the mark of the devil and his father had only said well at least it wasn't on his face like some people had them--and she laughed. She called him an appaloosa stud, and laughed. She asked him if she could draw in the major cities and rivers, and laughed. He had decided then he would never expose himself in front of a woman again.

He opens his eyes. She has plucked the heads off of the dandelions and is looping the stems into links to form a fragile chain, quietly humming a fragmented tune that blends with the lapping of the river and the whistle of the wind. He wonders if she really doesn't like him, suddenly needing it not to be true more than anything in the world. He tries to shake off the feeling as ridiculous. She's just a dumb little kid; what does he care how she feels? And he'll probably never see her again. And he isn't that hard up for friends, is he? "Hey."

She stops humming and looks up at him expectantly. "What's your name?"

She starts to form a word, then smiles, then says, "Columbia. I'm the spirit of this river, see. And I don't like your tree litter in my water, got it?"

He grins. "Got it."

She sits up and holds the completed necklace up for inspection, adjusts some of the loop sizes, then walks toward him on her knees. "Here."

He leans forward and lets her put it gently over his head, then smiles and says, "Thank you."

She nods and moves to a new patch of weeds to start on another one. Her thick red hair is at that perfectly wrong length that makes her keep tucking it behind her ears to get it off her face, only to fall free as soon as she moves her head. Her eyes are much greener than his own.

Every time he makes a new friend they eventually ask, "Where's your mother?" and it always feels like an accusation, although he knows it is an innocent question.

"What's the matter?"

He glances over at her, shrugging.

"Why were you frowning?"

He studies her narrow face for awhile, then says, "I killed my mother."

"Seriously?"

He nods.

"Then how come you're not in jail?"

"It wasn't on purpose."

"Oh." She thinks about this for a moment, then says, "Sometimes I think about killing my mother. Throwing the hair dryer in the bath tub with her or something. How'd you do it?"

"Being born."

"Seriously?"

He nods.

"I don't think that counts. That's probably more like the doctor's fault, or an act of God or something. It's not like you actually had anything to do with it."

"Mm." She's right, of course, but he's not willing to let it go that easily. He stands slowly, stretching his arms above his head and bouncing on his toes a few times while yawning, then starts to walk away.

"Where you going?"

He points back the way he has come.

"Oh. Will you come back some time? I come here ‛bout every day."

He shrugs again.

"Well, can I use your tree?"

"Sure." He starts away, then stops for a moment and touches the dandelion chain on his chest. He calls back, "Hey, don't kill your mother. You'll end up regretting it."