Rory and Garrett decide to escape their deadbeat families by floating away down the Connecticut River.
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| Image generated with OpenAI |
It starts and ends with the raft, more or less. That whole green summer before high school started, all me and Garrett talked about was building it. We daydreamed of floating down the Connecticut River, which started somewhere up in Canada and carried on past – somewhere farther than either of us could imagine. Instead of hanging around Bellows Falls we’d ride the river south to Brattleboro, meet up with Cindy and Hannah, whoever else happened to be around. Or maybe we’d cross to the banks of New Hampshire and see what they were about over there. Instead of Huck and Jim, these guys in a book Mister Calloway made us read, it’d be Rory and Garrett. I’m not much of a reader but parts of that book stuck. Those guys had set out down another river, named after the state of Mississippi, and didn’t plan on coming back. Both of ’em were trying to get away from something or someone, or trying to find something, I can’t remember which. Some days they’d take it easy, chewing long stems of grass, smoking tobacco and catching fish. Other days they’d get into all kinds of trouble. They were in it together. It sounded like the dream life to me and Garrett, and we were always trying to think of ways we could get ourselves a raft like that.
It was in the whirls of a gas high I thought of it. We liked huffing at this inlet spot on the Connecticut where we caught fish – perch and trout mostly. Each time we emptied one of those cans, after the high wore off and both of us laid out by the river with sore heads and sick stomachs, Garrett’d kick it to the bushes and swear off ever doing it again. I always agreed. But as long as things kept staying the same there’d likely be more huffing.
Anyways, I remembered seeing a stack of wooden pallets earlier in the week at the old Holloran place up on the hill. A fancy, three-storied mansion built in another century. It had sat empty for months waiting for some other rich family to move in. Kids would mess around up there. On the hill, the houses were bigger and sat farther apart, with yards of lush green grass – not like the grubbed-out patches of dead lawn and dirt we called yards in town, where the houses were all smashed on top of each other like it was New York City. In town, folks thought nothing of keeping their washers and dryers on the porch. They piled their trash bags out in the middle of everywhere. Some put up trampolines, or those above-ground swimming pools – like kiddie pools, only for grown-ups – so that on hot days the whole block stunk with a mix of garbage and chlorine. Garrett’s foster dad and uncle salvaged wrecked cars and they had engine parts stacked all over their back yard on Pearl Street. Bodies and frames of cars lay about, a mountain of tires with their treads worn. Everything they owned was coated in oil. Some days Garrett and me’d belt ourselves in to the shell of the old purple Buick and imagine driving ourselves right out of there.
And that was Bellows Falls, mostly. Everyone poor white trash and owning it. Even before the Hollorans moved out, around the time my sister Rachel ran off, Glenn always bitched about the richies – folks from California or wherever they made their money coming out here for the nature. Before anybody new even moved in to the Holloran place they had Jimmy Balch and his crew up there doing the landscaping. All these fancy plants, trees even, big trees Jimmy had to haul in by crane. All the stone paths and patios around the place, Jimmy put ’em all in. People said Jimmy had a good eye. He’d been educated, knew all about design. He’d match all the stones and plants to the colors and shapes of whichever house, keep the hedges trimmed into the likeness of rabbits or a deer, if that’s what the owners wanted. And he kept their green lawns gleaming. Even though the houses on the hill seemed to look down on us like they were judging, once Jimmy got done with one it seemed less of a menace.
Well, Jimmy had stacked the old pallets the stones came on, the ones I was just now remembering, along the driveway. After a strong huff off Garrett’s old Celtics T-shirt, I leaned against the oak tree and let the fumes trickle down my throat and up my sinuses. The fumes stung my eyes, my face and chest warmed up. Garrett’s mouth started moving but I couldn’t hear words. The leaves on the trees, the grass, the ripples in the river – everything hummed with a low, lazy moan. The whole world throbbed, zoomed in and out around me. I shut my eyes to the swirling, felt the brain-buzz, felt my thoughts pulse through it. I was right where I wanted to be.
Once the humming stopped I got an image of two or three of those pallets tied up with twine onto a whole pile of spent gas cans, and Garrett and me shoving off the bank with our cane poles and floating away. As the idea came, I tried describing it to Garrett. My voice felt deep and slow, sounded unnatural, the way things do when you’re in the haze of the fumes. One thing about me and Garrett in those days, we were always saying something to each other, whether we were talking or not. Our families went back three generations. Our folks had gone to the same elementary school up the road, just like us. And Garrett’s foster dad beat him the same way Glenn beat me – with fists, and not just when it was expected. In that sense we were blood brothers. Some things we never talked about, and those unsaid things meant just as much as the said things.
When I opened my eyes, Garrett had this big grin on his face, which meant he was thinking how to get up to no good. He shoved his face into the T-shirt, all crinkled up and wet with gasoline, and took a big huff. Then he sat back, tossing the cloth in the grass, and leaned his head against the oak.
“Two pallets,” he said. The words leaked out of him, like they needed a push. “Each of us takes one. Wouldn’t need more than that.”
I felt guilty at the idea of stealing from Jimmy Balch’s construction site. The Hollorans or whoever came next wouldn’t notice if some pallets went missing, but Jimmy might. Glenn said Jimmy’s crew was some of the only men actually had jobs in Bellows Falls, that’s how down-and-out it was. For every guy with work, there was twice as many standing around the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot hoping for it. It almost felt wrong, taking the pallets. But Jimmy did all right for himself. He had a reputation among the richies. They all hired him for their yards, passed him around like it was some kind of club with Jimmy as honorary member. I thought he’d manage to get by with two less. Just a couple of those pallets would be of more value to me and Garrett than anyone.
So that afternoon we stole ’em. I snuck home after that to swipe a ball of heavy twine from Glenn’s workshop and Garrett grifted two gas cans from his dad. A few old faded cans had been sitting around in the bushes, and we bought three fresh five-gallons from the Sunoco to make up the difference.
Back down at the inlet we secured each can to the splintery pallet boards. Garrett was smartest about the design. He’d shout out this or that direction about how to place things, then I’d get to it since I had a better grasp of the hands-on. Near the end, Garrett knelt to help tie a knot and gave himself rope burn. I told him he’d better just sit back and do the thinking for us, let me do the hard stuff, and we had a good laugh about it. Grandpa Mort had taught me a bunch of knots he knew from the Navy, and I made sure each one was tight and wouldn’t come undone if we hit a rough spot on the river. All in all we put the thing together like a real team. When we were finished, it was a sturdy raft, at least on land. You could kick the thing and nothing would budge. I checked the nozzles were tight, and we declared the thing sea-worthy. By then the mosquitoes were starting to drain us pretty good and the sun was so long gone behind the mountains it was nearly dark. We agreed we’d meet up first thing in the morning to test it out.
Walking back along the train tracks, Garrett wondered out loud how the fishing might be on the New Hampshire side. I told him I wasn’t sure, but I’d heard they had more perch over there. Then we split up in town at the Sunoco, where we always split, and went home.
I was late for dinner. From outside the doublewide I could hear a whole crowd in there, joking around with Glenn in the living room, the TV blaring. I came in to a covered plate on the kitchen table with a glass of milk. Dinner was Hamburger Helper and peas, and instant mashed, all smothered in butter that had melted but turned mostly solid again, which I love.
I rinsed a fork from the dishwasher and as I sat down I heard Glenn call out, “You must like your food cold, boy,” and he sauntered in from the living room and opened the fridge. “‘Cause you’re always comin’ in right after it’s cooled off.” He stuck the necks of four Budweisers between his fingers and shut the fridge door with his boot. I didn’t say nothing, just shoveled the noodles and peas into my mouth, hungry as all hell.
“Hurts your mom’s feelings,” he added finally.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was out with Garrett. Lost track of time.”
He twisted one of the beers open with his free hand and took a slug. “I’ma need you to work tomorrow.”
“I got plans with Garrett,” I said with a mouthful.
Glenn took another big sip. “I don’t give a fuck what you got planned, I got a job needs doin’.”
Glenn’s people came through from time to time with heroin and pills and such. Sketchy, but that’s how we lived now that Glenn paid the bills. Mom was always quick to remind me and Rachel of it, before Rachel moved out. Glenn kept us afloat, and I got some money for the drops I did – enough to keep me and Garrett huffing.
“We built a raft,” I said, like he’d give a care. “Down by the landing. We’re taking it out in the morning.”
“No yer not.” He tossed back his beer, set the empty bottle on the table, and belched. “Tomorrow you’re runnin’ some shit down to Brattleboro. Meetin’ Timmy at noon.” He belched again. “Anyways, stay outta that river, lest you wanna catch the E. Coli.” And he went back to the living room where all the noise was coming from.
I forked the last cold lumps of potato into my mouth and rinsed my plate in the sink. I made a ruckus jamming it in the dishwasher when Glenn yelled out, “Them are clean!” My head pounded from the gas fumes and my thoughts were fried, and I just ignored him, opened the freezer door to see if the ice cream had escaped the druggies.
“Gone,” said Glenn, appearing back in the doorway. “Gotta be on time for dinner if you want dessert, kid.” Everyone was laughing, but I don’t know whether or not they were laughing at me.
I slammed the freezer. When I brushed past Glenn toward my room I saw Tucker, my little brother, scrunched into the couch cushions in the living room, surrounded by our guests. He was barefoot and shirtless, his shorts and face grungy from playing all day. He sat hypnotized by the TV lights, reflections of blue and green flashing in bursts from his eyes. Bits of dinner smothered his face. One of the men I recognized from the blue tattoos on his face but the others I’d never seen. They all ignored me. On the coffee table sat piles of junk. Bottles and bottles of pills. Baggies all neatly tied and divided. The man sitting by Tuck was rolling up his shirtsleeve.
“Tuck,” I called. “C’mon with me, little man.”
Tuck came out of his trance long enough to frown at me and whine and point at the TV. Fine, I thought. I just left him.
Mom lay passed out in her clothes on top of the covers when I peeked in on her. The room was mostly black, lit only by two soft triangles of light thrown out from the bedside lamp. It felt stuffy and smelled how it always smelled, like dirty socks, which made me sick. My baby sister Millie had stood herself up in her crib. She gripped the railing with both chubby hands, doing a little waggly dance with a huge smile on her face. Such a happy baby, she hardly ever cried. I snuck in quick and gave her a kiss, and she smiled even bigger. Then I leaned back out the bedroom door and hollered to Glenn that Millie was awake.
“Bring ‘er here then,” he called back through the noise. But I just kissed Millie once more and left her there, turned and headed again to my room.
“Don’t bother your mother,” Glenn called after me when I’d shut her door.
Then: “Rory?” came Mom’s muffled voice. “You get dinner?”
I stepped back up and spoke through the door. “Yeah. Thanks, Ma.”
She muttered something I couldn’t hear. For one small moment everything went silent except for the TV down the hall.
“Come in here, baby,” Mom said.
When I opened the door again she had sat up in bed, her hair all a mess and rubbing her eyes, wiping her hands across her face to wake herself up. She straightened her hair and patted the quilt for me to sit. I settled by her feet and tried not to breathe too deep.
“Closer,” she said. “I want to look at my baby.”
As I shuffled up to her, she reached her arms out and I saw they were clear of tracks and I wondered where she shot it these days. She smiled at me, and her yellow teeth glowed in the dim room.
“How’s your summer?”
“Garrett and me built a raft. Gonna take it out on the river in the morning.”
“Kiss your mother,” she said, closing her eyes and leaning her cheek toward me. I kissed it, soft and fuzzy like I remembered. She took my head in both hands and rubbed my hair. Pulsing over the noise from the living room I heard the strain of blood through the veins in my head, zipping past my ears and swirling around my brain. My eyes ached.
“You smell like a lawnmower,” she said finally, opening her eyes. I just kept quiet.
She took her hands from my face. “Seen Rachel?”
“Not since a couple weeks ago.”
“She okay?”
“Seemed all right,” I lied. My sister hadn’t set foot in the house for nearly a year. She had her own good reasons for it. But then she shacked up with Timmy, which didn’t seem to me like much of an improvement. She wasn’t all right. She was busy in that world, strung out like Mom.
“Millie’s awake,” I said.
Mom looked over to where Millie held herself up, smiling. “Get her for me, will you? She’s hungry.”
I was glad to move away from her. I squeezed between the bed and crib and lifted Millie up, turned and held her out.
“Aw, sweetie,” Mom said, taking her. She lifted up her shirt and put Millie to her breast and I turned to leave them alone.
“Stay,” she said. “Stay with me while I feed your little sister.”
“I’m tired, Ma. Been a long day. Gotta get up early tomorrow.”
She gave me her disappointed pout.
“And I got a bad headache.”
She waved me off. “Get some sleep, hon.”
I left as Millie nestled into feed, thirsty and suckling. She was curling her little bare feet, jabbing her legs around like a frog’s when I shut the door.
Back in my room I stood at the worn-out mirror, looking into my own eyes like I do whenever I need to figure things out. I thought how to get the job done and still have time for the raft. I didn’t want any of this, just wanted to spend what was left of my summer on the river with Garrett. Tuck wasn’t my responsibility, neither was Millie. I wasn’t the one went and had sex, Glenn and her were. Then that made me think of Rachel living with Timmy. Timmy, that slinky rodent, face littered with tattoos. I thought of a weasel trapped in the corner and what he wouldn’t do to get out of it. He was a creep, intimidating, and I made sure never to cross him. He’d done time in prison for shoving a fork through the neck of the last guy he’d been crossed by. I wondered what Rachel saw in him. She wasn’t much older than me, just seventeen, but old enough to get out when the time came. I never asked to have nothing to do with the drugs in the first place, though I wasn’t about to take a risk with Timmy. I always dealt with him fair and square. And fair and square’s how I hoped he did Rachel. Since she left home I was about the only sober, sane one in the family.
I stayed at the mirror a long while. By the time midnight rolled around I’d done some science and had settled on a plan. Garrett and me’d head out early on the raft, run the stash down to Brattleboro. As long as the current flowed steady tomorrow, there’d be enough time. Then, once we’d taken care of business, we’d light-out-for-the-territory, which is how Huck from the book had put it, which meant just keep on going down the river, keep floating and floating, on and on into the unknown, to see what’s out there.
Most summer days you’d find a bunch of kids at the falls down off Main Street by the bridge in Brattleboro. Rachel and Timmy lived in the old paper mill that hung out over the falls. Whetstone Brook flowed through West Brattleboro and emptied right there into the Connecticut, and long ago the old-timers had put up a dam to power the mill. Now the mill was apartments, and below the dam sat this odd swimming hole, nestled right there in the middle of town. It got deep, though, and there were huge smooth rocks jutting out the brook, ten feet in places, that you could jump off of into the water. Someone, so long ago no one knew who, had hung a ladder off the canal wall so you could climb back up to the rocks and jump again. That’s where Cindy would be, Garrett said when we met just before sunup at the raft. That’s where we’d head to first. Garrett had a crush on Cindy but the tough thing was Cindy liked me. It was obvious to anyone with eyeballs. But Garrett didn’t see it, being so blind in love, and I didn’t have the stomach to point it out. I didn’t want nothing coming between us.
I told Garrett about the drop, and he said no problem. He’d helped me with this kind of thing before and knew the drill. He estimated we’d make it down the river in plenty of time. But right away I sensed something off. He’d brought a paddle, his fishing pole and tackle box, a cooler he’d filled with Cokes and Icee-Pops he said we needed to eat soon before they melted, but he didn’t seem his normal chipper self. He looked slunk into himself. His left eye was swollen half-shut, too, and bruised, which he said he’d got in trade for the paddle.
Along with the knapsack full of Glenn’s junk, I’d brought my own pole and tackle, which I put down in order to tear open an Icee-Pop with my teeth. It was gonna be a hot one. You could tell by the mist. The thicker it was by sunrise, mornings when it crept up off the river and in along the banks, the more humid it got as the day came along. After sucking down the Icee-Pop I stripped to my underwear and jumped in. The Connecticut warms up a little by the end of August, but first thing in the morning with the mist still hanging there just above it, swirling in around the trees of the islands out there between Vermont and New Hampshire, the water felt just cool enough to wake me up.
I still felt sick. There’s nothing better to put off the sickness than a little hair of the dog, and after I’d shook dry and was throwing my pants back on, Garrett came trampling out the bushes with what remained of the gasoline. The T-shirt lay on the ground where he’d thrown it the night before by the oak, and he dumped some gas on it and huffed. Then I took a turn. We both got good and riled and together we heaved the raft up and over across the patch of grass between the oak and the river. We set it down by the bank – it was damn heavy – and for the first time I wondered to Garrett if this thing would actually float.
“‘Course,” he said, his eyes high and red. “Physics. Water displacement.” Garrett was the smarter of us two, I’ll admit. He paid attention to things like that. Me, I was like Huck from the book. I didn’t have much time for Math or Science. I was too busy pondering things like where this river ended up, where it came from in the first place, who lived where along either side as it wound down through New England. Wondered what kind of people they might be, whether there were kids like us, further upstream or somewhere on down, who’d built rafts like ours, and what their reasons might be for doing it. I pictured kids our age, each just as bored or fed up with their lives as we were, and soon I saw a whole slew of rafts in my mind – people from all over the place, gathered out on the river. Together we’d float south, learning about each other as we went and figuring life out that way.
Garrett clapped me out of my daydream. “Let’s get on with it.”
We lifted the raft again and slid it down the bank. It splashed into the water and sunk but just as quick it popped back out and floated, the slats of the pallets up above the water line. Garrett crouched on the shore, holding the raft steady while I gathered our stuff – the cooler, the junk, the gas can, our poles. Once we were both settled on it, I launched us off the shore with a push of the paddle.
Out on the river everything felt open. Garrett cracked a Coke and sipped it, then started baiting his hook with worms. The river crawled beneath us. The trees along the banks were so still, and they seemed to lean in, like the shorelines were pinching the river to slow it. I paddled out into the middle where the current would be strongest, worried again about making the drop on time. But the gas cans held us up all right. Here and there water splashed in between the slats and got our asses wet when we were sitting, but the thing mostly floated fine. As I paddled I looked east to New Hampshire, thinking what kind of adventures we might have if we just let the river carry us. I said it’d be nice to catch ourselves some lunch – we could build a fire later out on one of those islands, fry up some perch. Or trout, though I was hoping for a nice perch. Garrett caught a trout right off but it measured too small and he pitched it.
There’s times when I think a lot about stuff, and there’s other times when all I want to do is not think. After a while I laid the paddle down to let us float, baited my own hook, and cast it out into the water. We’d already gone a number of miles – I don’t know how many, five? We passed Putney, just two guys drifting down the river on a hot summer morning, fishing and sipping Cokes. Chill and easy. I let my line bob and watched the skyline pass, the green of the New Hampshire forest shooting up into deep blue. Not a cloud. The sun still sat low and it shot through the treetops in beams. When I leaned over the side of the raft I saw my reflection, spotted with tiny stars of light that landed in dabs on the water. The air out on the river felt clean. It cleared my sinuses, smelled silty fresh like the earth. I inhaled deep, and when I focused I swear I could just about taste the algae and eelgrass, the fish – all the things living beneath the surface as we floated past.
“I wish this river went on forever,” Garrett finally said, and swapped lures.
“We could find out,” I said, wanting it to be so. I thought of Timmy’s place, seedier than ours, with all these junkies hanging around, scoring, sleeping, stinking up the place. I hated going in there, wanted to just stay afloat all day.
Somewhere past Dummerston Garrett took out some tobacco and rolled us each a smoke. We lay there, letting the sun bake us, little bursts of water lapping at our backs through the slats. I could feel my chest start to burn, and the heat felt good.
“Rory,” Garrett said finally. “How ’bout we just keep going.” He toed the knapsack where it sat on the cooler. “Take this shit down to Northampton. Get the fuck outta this place for good.”
“What makes you think down there’s any better?” I said.
Garrett said Bill Gray’s brother lived in Massachusetts and had connections. “We could set ourselves up good,” he said.
“And whadda we do when Timmy comes looking? And Glenn.”
“Fuck ’em. We get protection. Anyways, can’t be worse than here. This place is nothing.”
I dragged hard on my cigarette. I was thinking how small-time we were when Garrett’s line went taut. He eased up, tossed his butt in the river, and grabbed the rod just before the fish pulled it over the side. A big perch, over a foot long, but Garrett wrestled it on the slats of the pallet and slipped the hook. He brushed the knapsack off the cooler, took out the last Coke, tossed the fish inside.
“That’s how you do it,” he said, and shut the lid tight. He took a drag off my cigarette before he lay back down. “Suffocate ’em quick.”
Brattleboro was coming up around the next bend and it wasn’t close to noon. This part of the river must’ve been wide as two football fields, and I thought of what Mister Calloway had said about Pangea, which was like this big shifting of the earth long ago, before the Indians even, where huge pieces of land moved around and crashed into each other and made the seven continents. Pangea made it so that even though there was only the Connecticut River between us, the land over in New Hampshire was all different from the land in Vermont. They each got different geology, which means rocks and dirt, trees, the stuff that makes up the land. But out here in the middle of the river, looking back and forth to each bank, I saw only green. The trees all looked the same to me – oaks and pines and birches and whatnot – same trees leaning over the water from New Hampshire as leaning over the water from Vermont. Garrett said some of those trees on either side were native, but some were what they call invasive, which means even though they don’t belong they still take root. When he said that, this dread rose up in me and clenched at my gut. I wanted to see everything out there, wanted me and Garrett to just keep floating past Brattleboro, past our friends and past responsibility. To do what Garrett said, start a life of our own out of the shit.
The sun’s heat soaked me now and I wanted to cool down, so I let my line float and jumped off the other side of the raft. The water out there felt cold, refreshing, and I swam under and out toward the Vermont side. When I broke the surface I turned on my back, closing my eyes to the sun. I thought of Rachel again. Soon my sister’d be on her way to Pittsburg or someplace with the junk crammed up inside her. She’d unload it all, come back with mad dough. I felt jealous thinking of her getting out of town for a minute, the excitement of it.
I was still floating, thinking darker thoughts about Rachel – why she left home, how on earth she got mixed up with Timmy – when the log sideswiped me. At first I nearly pissed myself, thinking it was some river creature. The woody pain of it jabbing into my ribs winded me. As I flinched up and went under I gasped for air but swallowed some water with it. I’m a good swimmer, and knowing it was a log and not an alligator was a relief. The river I could handle. But once under I couldn’t find the surface. A current sucked me down, and my lungs gagged, wanting air quick. The river pushed on me from all sides like it wanted to hold me there. A sudden hot panic swished through my blood. The taste of silt filled my throat. My brain sizzled, wanting oxygen, felt like it might burst. My limbs went tingly. Light shimmered up and down all around me and instinctively I swam for it. Flailing, I choked in what breath I had left. What felt like my last moment alive lagged into the next moment, then the next, each new moment my chest heaving harder. My vision tunneled. Little red stars sparkled up in it.
That’s when it comes, the peace they say you feel while drowning. It really does happen. It’s better than any kind of drug rush. When I felt this, I let my arms and legs go limp. Suddenly, taking a lungful of water seemed like the exact right thing to do. I’d let go. It was my time. I’d allow the river to take me.
But then my reflexes kicked in and with a strong flail of my limbs I broke the surface and coughed in a big gulp of air. All that ragged breathing made my ribs ache sharper. I’d drifted a ways away from the raft, but I could hear Garrett hollering. He’d hooked another fish and was struggling to stay balanced while he reeled it in. Through the pain I struggled to breathe and tread water, but I kept quiet. Somehow I felt embarrassed for Garrett to catch me drowning. Still gasping, I watched him wrestle the fish into the cooler, and watching that simple motion centered me. My ribs burned against the cold river water. I couldn’t see if there was blood or not through the murk, but it sure felt bloody. This was the danger of swimming in the Connecticut, the reason parents warned against jumping into it. At any time there could be stuff like that, an old dead tree branch or something jagged skimming by just deep enough and out of sight. Stan Bailey’s older brother Ron had died that way, diving off the Church Street Bridge. Impaled himself on a length of rebar jutting out from an old section of pressure-treated lumber. That was before any of us could remember, but saying his name was all the warning we should’ve needed. We all jumped anyway.
After the shock wore off, the pain became bearable. I dog-paddled back like nothing was wrong. It was a hassle getting myself on the raft again – I hadn’t thought of that when I jumped in – but Garrett heaved me up okay. The log left a long row of scrapes across my ribcage, but not much blood.
When he saw my wound Garrett said, “While you were out there wrestling with logs I caught us lunch.”
The second fish flapped its last flap in the cooler as we floated into Brattleboro. We could make out Cindy and Hannah at the falls, six or seven other kids we knew jumping in the water. I saw my sister too, jumping, and scanned the crowd for Timmy. Most likely he was peering down on us from above.
We pulled the raft in smooth beside the falls and tied it to the landing, a small dock that had seen better days. I took the knapsack and we left everything else. As we climbed the bank I said to Garrett, “After the drop we’ll find an island and grill up that fish.” He smiled and nodded.
When we reached the top Garrett broke off with me to give Cindy, who was climbing the ladder out the water, a hand. She had on this purple bikini and she acted like she knew she looked good in it. As they hugged she glanced over at me and smiled. I smiled back and sat on the big rock. When Cindy helped Garrett remove his shirt I saw him tremble, and for the first time ever he looked scrawny to me. The two of them jumped in the water together.
Up came Rachel in wet cut-offs and a tank top. She looked thinner. She sat next to me, took out a cigarette. I asked her for one and she gave it to me with a roll of her eyes. “Started smoking?”
“Later than you started,” I said, flicking her black lighter.
Then she lit up and sat back, exhaled like the drama queen she is. “How’s Mom?”
I shrugged. “She’s Mom. She’d be better if you’d ever come by.”
Rachel thought about it, kept smoking. The air got still. She glanced at the knapsack. “That the stuff?”
I nodded, swatted a mosquito away. “Timmy home?”
“Will be,” she said.
Again I nodded. Garrett had climbed back out and was helping Cindy up again. She kept looking over at me and I kept avoiding her eyes.
“How’s Millie?” Rachel asked.
“Okay I guess. Stands up in her crib now.”
Rachel studied me. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Glenn hit you much?”
“Not lately.”
“He touch Tuck or Millie?”
“No. How should I know? Millie’s a baby.”
Rachel shrugged. “That don’t matter to a perv.” She reached over and ran a hand through my hair.
“How’s the life?” I said. “Makin’ big money?”
She took her hand back, pulled on her cigarette. “It’s alright. I get to travel around.”
“Timmy treat you okay?”
“Better than others,” she said, and there was a long silence where the two of us just smoked and smoked. I tried not to think of Timmy’s hands on her. All of a sudden I felt tired.
“Be nice if you came home,” I said finally.
“Ain’t gonna happen,” she said, flicking her butt into the falls.
Just then Cindy came up to me, all wet and dripping. “Hey, stranger, how’s your summer?” She gave me a soggy hug where I sat.
“Alright,” I said, trying not to get too into the hug. “How’s yours?”
She flicked a wet strand of hair back from her face and sighed. “Good. Relaxing. Garrett says you got in a fight with a log,” and she lifted my shirt up to find the scrapes. Then, as if she’d only just noticed my sister, she let the shirt drop and said, “Hey Rachel.”
Rachel got the hint. She stood and headed over to the other swimmers.
Cindy looked all embarrassed, and I felt like getting up and following my sister, getting this whole deal over with, but my feet felt glued down. Garrett was swimming but I knew he saw Cindy sit right up next to me on the same rock.
“You gonna take me for a ride on your raft?” she asked.
“It’s Garrett’s and mine,” I said. “We built it together.”
She lowered her head a touch, looking right into me, and said, “I’d like a ride with you.”
Garrett was coming back out the water toward us. “Hey,” I said a little too desperate, before he even got there. “How’s the water?”
He shook his head from side to side to get the wet out, slapped away a mosquito, and looked at me sort of confused. “Water’s fine,” he said.
I took off my shirt and put Garrett in charge of the knapsack while I left the two of them at the rock and jumped in. The water stung my side like hell, but it woke me up. I stayed there treading water, let it soak into my wound, and watched Garrett and Cindy talking. My headache was back and I thought to have another huff soon. Thing was, Garrett and me kept the huffing a secret. I wanted to go back to the raft and get high, jump back in the water all buzzed, and I didn’t want Cindy in on it. But when I looked again Garrett had left the knapsack behind and led Cindy back down to the raft. By the time I’d climbed the ladder and got the shit, he was already dumping gas.
Cindy had her face buried in the shirt when I finally stepped on the raft, and she giggled when it shook her off balance. I gave Garrett this look, pointed out how he’d left the knapsack. He gave a look back and offered me the next huff but when I said, “No, take it,” he sat on the cooler and did one, then tossed the shirt at me.
I poured some fresh gas and breathed in deep. The fumes swarmed through me, through my limbs and fingers, toes, hummed around inside my skull.
“Show Cindy the perch,” I said, and it came out all warbled. “Garrett caught two fish this morning.”
But Garrett didn’t move. Cindy sat cross-legged in a trance on the raft.
“It true you guys got shit?” she asked, staring at something only she could see in the water.
I looked to Garrett but he looked as confused as me.
“Who’s saying that?” he asked.
Cindy grinned. “So you do.”
“Nah,” I said. “We got gasoline.”
She slid her eyes from the water to me like she wasn’t one bit fooled. “I mean to sell,” she said.
Garrett and me didn’t say nothing.
“Everybody’s saying it. This isn’t New York City, you know.” She swatted at a mosquito, annoyed. “You can’t do shit around here without people knowing.”
Garrett stood and yanked his shirt on. I could tell the fumes helped his rage along. “Well, we don’t have any drugs, so we ain’t sellin’ any.” He stepped off the raft onto the landing. “C’mon off there now,” he said, and headed up the riverbank. We followed, Cindy the whole time giving me the eye.
Close to noon, everyone else took off to find food and Garrett and me sat together at the falls, smoking. He’d stay with the raft so no one stole it and I’d do the dirty work. Timmy didn’t like Garrett anyway, and Garrett was fine with that.
“How much do we get?” he asked.
“We’ll see. Depends.”
Garrett got real serious then and wrapped his hand around one strap of the knapsack where it sat between us. “We should cut out now and sell it ourselves.”
I didn’t pull the bag away, but I held a solid grip on the other strap. “We got no hook-ups,” I said. “Even if we did, we could never come back, Garrett.”
“That’s what I mean.”
I thought of Mom, and Tuck and Millie, pictured them cooped up in the double-wide their whole lives. I pictured them strolling happily down Main Street.
“I got family here,” I said.
“So do I,” he said. “If you wanna call it that. They sure as shit ain’t worth stickin’ around for.”
I thought of Rachel, knew why she couldn’t stick around, wondered why she hadn’t gotten farther away.
“I can’t leave ’em,” I said.
Garret let go of the strap. “I don’t see why not. They left you. Minute your mom took Glenn in she said goodbye.”
I wondered again how Rachel was any better off with Timmy. It was the same world. Everything around here was the same. There just wasn’t enough of anything or anyone to make it much different. Rachel’d moved from one shitty life to another.
Then the church bells rang over town and told us it was noon.
“Huff for the road?” Garrett said, standing.
“Naw.” I snubbed my cigarette and stood. “Should be clear-headed for this.”
“Whatever,” he said, and headed back to the raft.
“Soon’s I’m done,” I called after, “we’ll take off. We’ll float to the ocean. Figure out a way back once we get there, if we still want to.”
Garrett shot me the thumbs up and hopped onto the raft. I watched him splash another dose of gas on the T-shirt before I disappeared around the corner and into Timmy’s place.
I took the stairs slow. My headache was coming back, and I wished I’d taken that last huff. The whole apartment building was dim, the halls and stairs lit by weak bare bulbs. There were buildings like this all over the valley – cold wet brick places that whenever I walked into them I sensed another time, when things must have been brighter. I pictured old-timey people coming and going from these buildings in their hats and parasols, doing business and what have you back when the mills ran heavy. In my mind everyone smiled and things seemed all right. Somehow even the sunlight seemed brighter then. I saw my sister Rachel weaving graceful down these stairs, on her way somewhere in her own hat and parasol. I saw Mom decked out in fancy garb, strolling down Main Street with Millie in one hand, Tuck’s hand in her other, smiling to people as she passed. It was the right time, back when things flourished, and the people flourished too. Ladies and gentlemen greeted each other with civilized nods in the street. You could see it in their faces, a glow. Now everything felt old and musty, used, past its own time, and that’s how the people felt, too. Like life had already ended, and everyone was only waiting around to realize it.
When Rachel let me in to the apartment I saw the usual gathering of losers hanging around, junkies wandering the hallway or nodding off against the wall, pouring cereal in the kitchen, standing around smoking. In the living room Skip and Robbie, Timmy’s thugs, watched porn on a cracked TV with the sound turned off. Timmy sat on the couch doing bong hits.
“Roryyy!” he shouted between coughs. That’s how he always greeted me, all condescending.
I flung off the knapsack and set it on the glass coffee table. “Hey Tim.”
“How’s things?” he asked, lighting a cigarette.
“Cool,” I said.
“How’s yer dad?”
“You ain’t ever met our dad,” Rachel interrupted.
Timmy eyed her. “You know what the fuck I mean.”
“Glenn’s fine,” I said.
He looked around. “No sidekick this time?”
“He’s waiting down by the river.”
Timmy looked at me blankly. Then he dropped his cigarette in an ashtray and unstrapped the knapsack. I wanted to sit but stayed standing, wanting worse to get paid and just get out of there, get on the river. I felt dizzy, the ache in my ribs came back strong, and again I wanted a huff.
“What the fuck’s this?” Timmy asked. He was staring into the open bag.
“What the fuck’s what?” asked Rachel, sitting down next to him. With a confused giggle she reached in and pulled out the perch.
By the time Skip and Robbie dragged me back down to the landing the raft was gone, Garrett was gone. Skip dug his thumb into a nerve in my shoulder and yanked my face so close I caught his nasty breath. “How long you been doing this?” he said, “You never leave the shit unattended.”
Timmy stood above us at the top of the bank, too still and silent, with Rachel close beside him. I thought about the fork in the neck. Rachel was begging Timmy to take it easy on me and she must have finally got through because I saw Timmy nod, then Skip loosened his thumb and shoved me off. He and Robbie paced back and forth by the dock like rabid dogs. “Stupid fucker,” Robbie said. “Can’t get far.”
Up above Timmy lit a cigarette and we all stayed quiet.
When he’d smoked enough he tossed the cigarette and said, “Get the van.” Then he walked off, calling back to Rachel, “Keep him here.”
Skip and Robbie climbed the bank. “We’ll catch the shit before he reaches Vernon,” Skip assured me, and Robbie said, “Your friend’s a dead man.”
When they’d left I sat on the dock, bummed a cigarette off Rachel, and smoked like it was my last request.
“Some friend,” she said, sitting next to me. “You guys,” she jammed a finger in my face, “are in deep shit.”
I thought of Garrett, thought of the chances he’d given me to come along. Now there was no place for him here. I knew he didn’t want it anyways, saw he didn’t need me. My head felt so fried I couldn’t know exactly how to feel about it. I ached for a huff, tried to figure how to sneak one from Glenn’s chainsaw when I got home. Garrett wasn’t stupid. I hoped he’d think to ditch the raft on the New Hampshire side before Vernon and make a run for Massachusetts on land. Though something in me knew Timmy’s bunch would most likely catch up with him.
Rachel stared off into nowhere, crushed out her cigarette. “Guess you’re gonna have to go home at some point.”
I pictured the doublewide, thought of the beating Glenn would give me. He’d own me now after fucking up this big. My eyes burned, my brain felt flat and sour.
“I been there before,” I said.
The air got still again, and the water. A mosquito stung the back of my neck and I slapped it dead. I sat there on the dock with Rachel and looked out across the river to the shores of New Hampshire at all those green trees leaning in on their own reflection.
