Rivers: A Novel (21 page)

“I couldn’t do nothing. No way around it. No trick. A dead end any way you went,” Aggie said. He sighed again, then his voice became sharper. “Like you. Any way you go, dead end. You just think you got plans but you don’t got any idea what you’re doing. What you think
is gonna happen to you? To them? What you think is gonna happen? I know what you’re walking around with. Got the rooms boarded up like you can lock the ghosts away but they only seep under the doors. Seep between the cracks in the walls and live right there with you. I saw your place. Saw what you tried boarding up. What you think is gonna happen when you get to the Line?”

He paused, laughed a little. His voice became confident, mocking. The wind whipped around them and Aggie bound to the flatbed seemed to gather himself with the growing storm and rise up. “That is if you get there. If. You see what we got going here and all you see is the locks on the doors. That’s all you see and all they see. What you and them don’t see is you’re alive out here and you’re alive ’cause I let you be. You’re alive and you eat and sleep and you got protection and I give all that. Every one of them I give all that and I could give it to you too but you’d rather see the locks on the doors and decide that something here is wrong but there ain’t nothing here wrong. Every one of them was either alone or damn near alone without no food. No safe place. Every one of them would be dead or worse if I hadn’t brought them here and given them everything. All you see is the locks on the doors but you and them are gonna find out what’s out there and don’t none of you want to find out. I can swear to that. And here you got me crucified. The one who gave and the one who knows how to live out here and the one who created the family that not a goddamn one of them had or ever will have. So you crucify me except you ain’t even got the empathy to pierce me so that I can bleed to death. Instead you’ll leave me to starve or be devoured by God knows what and all I ever did for every one of them was give, and they’ll know it this time tomorrow.

“When it’s dark and there’s nowhere safe to lay their heads and they’ll look at you like you got some answers but you ain’t got no goddamn answers. You don’t even know how to answer yourself when you ask yourself questions. If you did you wouldn’t be living like you were living. You ain’t got no answers for yourself or for them and this time tomorrow when it’s dark and cold each of you will want for me and want for this place. You’ll want to gather and pray and eat but
you won’t be able to. You’d rather reign in hell than serve in heaven and you’d rather crucify than love. There’s no answers between you. None. Tomorrow you and them will set out for the end of your lives and I’ll be here. The one who gave and would keep on giving if you’d let me. But you don’t want to let me. You and them are going to walk through the valley but you’ll have no shepherd. You’ll have no answers. And you’ll kill the babies. And you’ll die. You ain’t no healer, no more than I am, but I can give more than you. So I guess if I ask whether you want to live or die, you already answered when you tied me up.”

When he was done, he turned his head away from Cohen and fell silent. As if he had been turned off. Cohen stood still and waited. Didn’t know why but he waited to see if the older man had anything else to say. And when Aggie didn’t speak again, Cohen walked back and sat down. The peaceful night had become something different.

Through the rain and wind, Aggie called out to him. “Maybe you wanna die. Then you’ll get to love your ghosts again.”

A half-empty beer sat near Cohen’s foot and he picked it up and took it all in one swig, got up, and walked over to the trailer that held the guns. Leaned against the wall was the rifle with the infrared scope, the one Aggie had used to shoot him. He picked it up, found the shells and loaded it, and then he walked out of the trailer and away from the compound. He walked until he was only a silhouette.

He looked into the sky. Clouds raced and Cohen knew how quickly it could all come on.

He lowered the rifle and through the scope he found Aggie. Arms wide. Head down. The same pose of death as the crucified man Aggie had used for so many years to feed his wild and insatiable appetite.

Cohen lowered the rifle. Off in the night something howled, long and draining, as though it might have been a final one.

He raised the rifle and looked again through the scope and this time someone was with Aggie, kneeling and swiping at his arms and wrists and it could only be Ava, cutting at the ropes with a knife. “Son of a bitch,” Cohen said and he steadied himself. One arm came free and she
moved to the other side and Cohen didn’t have time to think about it anymore. He fired and Ava reared and arched her back and then she fell across Aggie’s legs. Aggie reached and took the knife from her limp hand, but he didn’t go for the rope wrapping his other arm and hand. He simply held the knife, and he looked out toward Cohen, and it was difficult to tell, but Cohen thought he was smiling.

Cohen fired again and Aggie leaped as if receiving a severe shock. Cohen shot him once more, and seconds later, Aggie was still.

The others were out of the trailers and milling around when Cohen came walking in from the dark. With disgust he tossed the rifle on the ground. It didn’t take them long to figure out what had happened. The rain fell against their faces and they shielded their eyes and stared at Cohen. Then Nadine told them to come on, let’s go see.

“You stay here,” Evan told Brisco.

“Why?”

“Just go sit over there a minute.”

Evan, Nadine, and Kris went out toward Aggie. Mariposa picked up the rifle and she walked over to Cohen’s trailer and set it inside.

“I’m getting wet,” Brisco said and he ran back inside the trailer.

Mariposa moved over to Cohen. His head hung down.

“Don’t you wanna see?” he said without looking at her.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

“Him and her. She was trying to untie him.”

“Ava?”

He nodded.

Then they heard Nadine and Kris screaming at Aggie’s dead body. And then at Ava’s dead body. You fucking liar, Nadine yelled at the dead woman, her voice savage and vehement. Cohen got up and went over to them and Kris and Nadine were kicking the limp bodies and screaming son of a bitch and go to hell. The bodies absorbed the kicks like old mattresses and lay heavy on the wet ground. The women’s voices were filled with hate and celebration and seemed to carry out across the land on the wind. Evan only stood there. Kris kicked little kicks with her round belly and short legs but Nadine reared back and
crushed ribs and cheekbones with her heavy boots and winding, skinny legs. Cohen stood back from them in the dark with his arms folded. Mariposa sneaked up behind Cohen and she wrapped her arm around his and when he turned to her she pulled closer to him and kissed him on the mouth. She held her hand against his wet beard and he let himself go and leaned in to her and felt her wet mouth and wet nose against his own. The women kicked and danced and screamed and cussed and Cohen let himself fall.

Only for a moment. He pulled back from her as quickly as he had gone to her. He stared at her but it was too dark for expressions and she let go of his arm. Wiped at her face. Then she turned around and walked over to the bodies and started kicking with Kris and Nadine.

“Come on, Evan. What you waiting on?” Nadine said. She was bent over with her hands on her knees, getting her second wind.

“He’s already dead,” Evan said.

“And he deserves a lot worse,” Nadine answered. Then she went back to it.

Cohen said, “She was working to get him loose if anybody wants to know.”

Kris held her hands on her sides and was out of breath. She backed away and let Nadine and Mariposa have it and Evan took her by the arm and said, “You better calm down before you pop.”

She raised up and said, “Ain’t nothing wrong with me.”

“Hell yeah,” Nadine yelled at her. “Get back on it.”

Kris moved back to the body and kicked and kicked. Nadine stomped on Aggie’s head with the heel of her boot and Mariposa had run out of steam and stood back.

Evan walked quietly to the fire.

Something cracked under Nadine’s heel and she screamed I fucking hate you and she stomped and stomped and there was another crack and now Mariposa and Kris kicked at Ava, her body so layered in clothes that it sounded like they were kicking a mattress.

Cohen watched with his arms crossed. He wondered what it would feel like to join them, to let it out, whatever he would be letting out. But
he wasn’t going to invade and knew he couldn’t understand what they had been through or what they owed the two dead bodies.

Kris paused again and bent over. “I can’t do no more,” she said, huffing.

Nadine and Mariposa stopped and looked at her.

“You all right?” Cohen asked.

“She’s all right,” Nadine said. “Why don’t you let us be for a bit? Go sit down.”

“You sure you’re okay?” Cohen asked Kris again.

“Cohen,” Mariposa said.

Kris dropped down on a knee and Nadine and Mariposa moved to her.

“If you need me I’m over there,” Cohen said, but they didn’t hear him, and he left them and went and sat down with Evan. A few minutes later, they were at it again.

EVAN HAD GONE INSIDE WITH
Brisco and Cohen was alone when the women walked back into the compound, hands on hips. The rain had lightened and they all sat down. Cohen found bottles of water and passed them out and he stood next to the dying fire.

“I knew it,” Kris said. “I knew she was gonna do some shit no matter what she said.”

“Yep,” Nadine said. “I damn well knew it, too. And we ain’t burying nobody just so you know.”

Cohen lit a cigarette and blew warm air on his hands. He looked at Mariposa and she was looking at him. When their eyes caught, he stared at her a moment. Then he blew on his hands again. Nadine turned up her bottle and finished it and tossed it onto the red coals. The bottle twisted and melted.

“I been thinking I’m gonna give it away,” Kris said. “That’s the first thing I thought today when I realized we were getting out of here. Don’t even wanna see it. Just take, I’m gonna tell them. Don’t show it to me only take it on. But when it started hurting before I started changing
my mind. Right in the middle of them cramps, I started wanting it to be all right and wanting to see it. Even when I was hollering it hurt so bad I was wanting to be able to hold on to it and hoping I get to. Now I’m hoping I get to.”

Cohen said, “You’ll get to.”

“If we make it,” Nadine said.

Now he was tired of smoking and he wanted to drink again. He went over to his trailer and came back with a whiskey pint. He handed it to Kris and she shook her head.

“One sip ain’t gonna hurt,” Nadine said.

She took the bottle and a sip and her shoulders raised and fell. “I never did like that shit,” she said as she passed it to Nadine.

Cohen said, “You’ll be fine.”

“Maybe.”

Nadine drank and then she said she was sick of being wet and Aggie was dead and gone and no offense but there was nothing else worth sitting out there for. She took another drink and passed the bottle to Mariposa and went inside.

Mariposa held the bottle to her nose and sniffed. Then she took a little drink and winced. Cohen shook his head and took the bottle from her.

“What’d she look like?” Kris asked.

Cohen switched the bottle from hand to hand. He thought of the picture in his back pocket and started to pull it out. But instead he said, “She looked like a runner ’cause that’s what she was. Kinda tall. Ate whatever cause she burnt it all up. Ran cross-country in high school. Ran whatever after that. Used to run on the beach. I’d lay there and drink beer and she’d run up and back a few miles. Then she’d go out into the water and cool off and call me names for being so damn lazy.”

“You shoulda got up,” Kris said.

“Nah. I shouldn’t have. That was her thing. I liked it being her thing. Said it kept her sane and I woulda screwed that up huffing and puffing trying to keep up.”

“That was probably smart.”

“Yeah. One of the smart things I’ve done, I guess.”

Cohen drank some more. Knelt next to the ashen fire. “Not that long until light,” he said. “You know it’s gonna rain hard again soon. You should probably go lay back down.”

“Probably,” Kris said. “Lemme have one more sip.”

“It ain’t no good, you said.”

She held out her hand. “I know it ain’t. But it’s a sleeping pill.”

He handed her the bottle. She took a sip, shook her head, then took another. She gave it back and said ugh. Then Mariposa helped her out of the chair and walked with her as Kris moved gingerly toward the trailer. Cohen asked if they needed any help but Kris said no. “Save all your help for getting me to the Line, ’cause I told you I decided I want to hold on to it. If God’ll let me.”

Mariposa closed the door behind Kris and she walked back. Cohen drank again. She wiped at her face and said, “I don’t wanna sit in the rain. Do you?”

He looked up at the night sky. “It’s not raining much.”

“It will be. You said.”

He nodded.

She stepped over to him and held out her hand. He looked at it. It was wet and frail-looking. She seemed the same way. He looked around the compound, out into the dark acreage, out toward the place where Aggie and Ava lay. Then he looked back to her and down at her extended hand and it seemed to shake from cold or fear or something.

He reached out and took it and she led them to her trailer.

IT SEEMED AS THOUGH HER
entire life had been driven by her imagination. From an early age, her head filled with ghost stories and listening from behind the curtain to the spiritual confessions of those who paid for her grandmother’s otherworld connections and the French Quarter spirits that gathered in the glow of the lampposts and her own childlike manifestations of the space between the imagined and the real. The tarot card readers in Jackson Square who let her sit and listen and the friendly vampire who stood outside Lafitte’s in the winter and led the cemetery tours and the Mardi Gras masks and the fabulous costumes of the parades. The stories she created for the Quarter regulars who came in and out of her father’s store and the stories she spun while she looked into the windows of empty buildings as she and her mother walked back and forth from home to school and the boats up and down the river and the beautiful women and handsome men she imagined sitting on the decks and drifting in and out of her city.