Rivers: A Novel (14 page)

“What kind of sight is that on your rifle?” he asked and nodded toward the rifle that had shot him.

“The kind that you can see far with.”

“And I’m guessing the kind you can see in the dark with.”

Aggie nodded. “You’d be surprised what you can find clutched in the hands of a dead man.”

“How many dead men you been around?”

The man held his palms out to the fire. “Enough. Everybody down here’s been around enough. If the weather don’t get them, something will.”

Cohen looked around again when a light flashed in a window. “Who are they?” he asked.

Aggie lifted his head and his eyes went from one trailer to the next, slowly, as if he were trying to remember something about each one. Then he said, “You want something to eat?”

Cohen moved his leg a little and grunted. “I don’t want nothing to eat.”

“Got plenty.”

“Why they locked up?”

“Drink some more whiskey. You need to keep it in you with that leg.”

“Why you got people locked up?” Cohen’s voice raised as he spoke, no fear of the man. No sense in any fear now. He had been shot and dragged up and his house was done and he was sitting on the wet ground surrounded by a circle of trailers tied down with ropes and it didn’t seem to matter. Didn’t know if he had been done a favor by being allowed to live but he didn’t care and if he was going to die the least he could do was get a straight answer about something before he was shot by this old man who seemed to be the gatekeeper of this prison or slum or whatever it was. He had come for Elisa’s keepsakes and he knew that the boy and girl were behind one of these locked doors and that was all he cared about.

Aggie stood still and quiet, turning his hands in the warmth.

“Where’s that boy and girl?”

Nothing from the man.

“That girl’s got some stuff of mine and I want it and then I need some gas and I’ll be on my way. I’m getting to the Line.”

Aggie laughed a little. “What Line?”

“You know what Line.”

“You must’ve been way down in a hole somewhere, not laid up in that nice house of yours.”

Cohen adjusted some to sit up straight. “What does that mean?”

Aggie then turned from the coals and walked slowly to a stack of cinder blocks on the other side of the fire and sat down on top. “The Line is our problem.”

“I don’t know what your problem is. It ain’t my problem.”

“The Line is the problem for us all. Those above it. Those below it. Those who drew it. It’s the symbol of hate. Fear. Symbol of disbelief.”

Cohen took a swallow from the bottle.

“The Line don’t do nothing but point fingers,” the man continued. He sat with his legs crossed and his arms folded. “It tells us some people are all right. Some people ain’t.”

“Well. It’s true. Some people ain’t all right. Nobody down here is all right. Except for me. I was all right until about a week ago.”

“You ain’t all right, either,” Aggie said, looking at Cohen. “You
think you were, but you weren’t. What makes you all right? Alone. Nobody to talk to. Nobody to pray to. You pray to anybody?”

Cohen took another swallow, ignored the question.

“The Line thought it was taking away, but it don’t. The Line gives. Gives those who believe and who care about something more a place to go and live their own way. With their own kind. It’s them above that will wash away. Not those below.”

He spoke like a man who had thought for a long time about what he was saying. Either that or he spoke like a man who had rehearsed. His tone was certain and the air of certainty was in his face and eyes.

“So who are they?” Cohen asked again.

The man raised his arm and held out his hand as if reaching for something, and then he began to wave in slow motion. “They are like me. Like us. They belong here. They are who I take care of. Who I am responsible for. They are for me and I’m for them and we are for you. You came to us and we’ll make a place for you.”

“I didn’t come to nobody and I don’t need a place. I need that girl and some gas.”

“You need a place. We all need a place.”

“Why are they locked up?”

Aggie lowered his hand. Got up and walked a circle around the fire and then sat back down. They were quiet for a while. Cohen’s leg throbbed and the bleeding slowed and they watched the fire dying out. There was no more use in talking, Cohen thought. Not now. Not tomorrow. Talking wasn’t going to get him what he wanted and talking wasn’t going to get him out of here.

The whiskey caught up with Cohen and he felt light and numb. Around them the night was black and still like a painting.

But then the quiet was interrupted by a knocking. Cohen seemed to be the only one to hear it as Aggie didn’t move. It kept on. A patient, consistent knock coming from the trailer closest to them. Cohen looked over and there was the round beam of a flashlight in the window and the knocking kept on, turning into a banging, and then there were the
voices of two women calling out. “Aggie, open up. Aggie, come on. She’s ready. It’s ready. Open up.”

Aggie stood. He reached into his pocket and took out a ring of keys, and he turned himself toward Cohen so he could see the revolver stuck in his pants. Then he walked over to the guns and picked them up and opened his door and set them inside, locked the door and turned, then walked over toward the voices. “Get back,” he called out.

“Open the door. She’s ready,” a woman called back.

“I said get back.”

From behind the door, there was a painful moaning.

Cohen got to his feet and stood with his back to the fire. Aggie unlocked and opened the door and one woman held the flashlight on another woman who stepped out. Her face was twisted in pain and she held her hand across her big, round belly and she was wearing two coats, one with a hood pulled over her head. She stepped out of the trailer carefully, as if the ground might crack beneath her. The woman with the flashlight came out behind her and held the pregnant woman by the arm.

Cohen almost didn’t believe it but he had learned that in this land you should believe everything. And not believe everything. Somewhere in the midst of his thoughts, in the middle of this night, the woman’s moaning seemed like the perfect sound. He watched her walk with her back arched and her steps small and her anguished expression, and he momentarily forgot about the pain in his leg as he realized what type of hurt was coming for her. He felt for the knife beneath his coat. In its sheath, tight against his belt. Then he felt for the picture of Elisa folded in his back pocket. And then Aggie reappeared, holding what looked like the medicine bag of an early-century good country doctor.

AVA WALKED WITH AGGIE AND
the pregnant woman, holding her arm and hand, asking Aggie what they were going to do as if having this baby in this place was an idea that only moments ago had occurred to any of them. While they walked laps around the fire, Aggie moved away from the circle of trailers and off into the field to a cow trailer with two pieces of plywood laid across the top. He opened up the back of the trailer and the iron groaned from rust and he stepped up and in. Cohen stood still as the women passed him around the fire and they acted as if he wasn’t there until he asked if he could do anything.

They stopped and the pregnant woman shook her head and the other said, “Why don’t you run on down to the hospital and bring back a doctor and a nurse and a grenade to shove up Aggie’s ass.” They were short women and the one who did the talking wore a faded blue bandana tied around her head and the same kind of army coat as Aggie and mismatched gloves. The pregnant woman’s hands were bare and she made fists when she grunted. She pushed her hood back and sweat glistened on her forehead in the dim light of the fire.

Their names were Ava and Lorna. Lorna about to become the mother.

“You need to get some help out here, Aggie,” Ava said. She spoke as if she were unafraid of the man with the keys. “And figure out where the hell we gonna do this.”

“We don’t need any help,” he said and he set the worn black leather
bag on the ground. He lit a cigarette and sat down on top of the stack of cinder blocks. “Ain’t no hurry.”

“You don’t know that,” Ava said.

“Holy Lord,” Lorna said, squeezing at Ava’s hand.

“Breathe big and let it go. Breathe big.”

The contraction lasted a long minute. No one spoke as they watched her breathe. When the pain subsided, they walked over to where Aggie sat and he got up and the pregnant woman eased down.

“That your new boyfriend?” Ava asked without looking at the men.

“How long you think it’s gonna be?” Aggie asked.

“Don’t know. Before the night is over.”

Another contraction came on and the woman clenched her jaw and threw back her head.

“This ain’t a good idea,” Cohen said.

Aggie cleared his throat, spit. Took a drag off the cigarette and looked at Cohen and said, “At times I am afraid, I will trust in the Lord.”

“Go tell her that,” Cohen answered.

“Holy Lord, holy Lord,” Lorna cried out. “Holy Lord, here it comes again. Goshdamn it hurts. Holy Lord, holy Lord, holy Lord.” She talked through it, her voice rising and falling with the rise and fall of the contractions, and almost as if summoned by the gods, the sound of her voice and the promise of a new life into this land brought on the spirit of the winds and the sound of thunder.

Cohen looked at her and at all the other women pacing about and then he thought of Elisa. When I’m big and fat people are gonna open doors for me and give up their places in line, she had said. They already do that, he told her. Because you’re so damn pretty. I’m gonna eat and eat some more and you know some women eat dirt and he didn’t believe that but she explained that it was true and then she stuck a pillow under her shirt and patted her belly and said she was gonna get fat and not worry about it and he’d better not, either. And enough with all the sweet talk ’cause you already knocked me up. The work is
done. She took the pillow from under her shirt and threw it at him and he said if the work is all done then I’m getting a beer and she didn’t like that, either. Didn’t like that he could drink beer and coffee and smoke a cigarette and she couldn’t and she didn’t like that he didn’t mind doing any of these things right in front of her. Drove her crazy. Made him laugh.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Lorna said, breathing hard as the contraction eased.

Cohen walked around. He remembered being right, though she was certain it was going to be a boy. Told him every day for three weeks before they found out. It’s a boy. I know it’s a boy. Nope, he told her. And I’ll bet you twenty bucks. She laughed and said you don’t have twenty bucks and you’d better hope like hell it’s not a girl anyway. Because you won’t be worth a damn if it is.

“Oh hell, it’s coming again,” Lorna groaned and the intensity returned.

He thought of the twenty dollars she had given him when they got back to the house after the doctor visit and the piggy bank he stuck it in. He thought of his hand on her belly. Her stomach was round now and it all seemed more real than it had before they knew it was a girl. As he walked around the compound and listened to the woman cry out, he held out his hand and tried to feel that round belly again, tried to feel the baby in the only way that he had ever felt her. But his open hand didn’t feel anything but the cold air and his memories of Elisa were chased away by the sounds of the pleading woman and the notion of what Aggie had done to her.

NEARLY DAWN BUT NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE
to tell beneath the cover of thick clouds. The women had gone back into the trailer, where Lorna could lie back and spread her legs. The labor had lasted through the night and nobody knew if it was time to push or not but she was going to anyway. Aggie had let out two other women to help and the four of them were inside the trailer, Lorna’s grunting and sometimes screaming and the
voices of encouragement blending with the beat of the storm. Cohen was inside an empty trailer, only a bare twin mattress on the floor and a rack of empty shelves against one wall, and he slept on his back with his mouth wide open and his hands at his sides as if posing for the portrait of a dead man.

The other women who had seen what was going on were beating on their doors, calling to be let out so they could help, but Aggie ignored them until they stopped. He braved the storm, leaning against the trailer, holding on to one of the ropes, soaking wet, listening to Lorna, and he wanted it to be a boy. He was going to need boys to make this what he wanted it to be.

Cohen jerked up from his sleep as if a grenade had exploded in his dreams, wide-eyed and with quick breaths he looked around frantically. The bullet hole in his leg stung and he grabbed at it and tried to remember where he was and what was going on. He looked around at the empty room, the cabinets and mini-kitchen ripped out, leaving scarred walls, and it smelled like old sweat. He got to his feet and out of the window, through the storm, he saw the man with the revolver leaning against the trailer, and then he saw other faces in the windows of the other trailers and he was reminded that this wasn’t a bad dream but the real thing. He licked at his dry lips and rubbed at his throat. The ring of whiskey in his head. He lay back down and calmed himself, recalling what had happened and where he was so he could figure out how to get out of it.

Then the pregnant woman screamed. A twisted, howling scream that split through the storm.

He limped to the door. He unbuttoned his coat and lifted his shirts and he opened the sheath. He took out the bowie knife and he turned it back and forth in his hands, trading it from palm to palm. It was cold and he squeezed it and he felt strong and then the woman screamed again. Cohen slid the knife back in the sheath and put his shirts over it and buttoned his coat. He hobbled out and over to Aggie just as Ava opened the door and yelled out, “Something ain’t right.” She stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips and the look of the confused.
Aggie stepped up to her. Inside, Lorna screamed again. And again and again. They all just looked at one another.