Asleep in the River

James Braziel

 

What I did was try to put the river in a box. But the cardboard wouldn’t hold, the water bust through, and I had to run alongside to fish it out. My river’s not Big River, mind you, but once the drought letup, the rain cut down the sky and the water wouldn’t trough. That’s why I went in the rain to box the river—had to protect my valley home—but the current had a separate mind, didn’t care what I wanted, and neither did Honey.

“Ras, let’s go,” she said from inside the car.

My valley home is Honey’s garage. She took me after I escaped my kin, a long time back running. What I have now is the river and Honey and the fields around us and where I sleep and my government check for food, though it’s hard dealing with Tugbail, moving through the line at his store. Once, when I got a T-bone, Tugbail put it back in the cooler instead of my checkout bag, upset, like the bone was something of his I was taking, like I had shucked money straight from his gut.

“Like you get to choose,” Honey said, stomping to the cooler. She got the bone back out and put it on the line. “You going to let him make the purchase,” she said.

Tugbail chewed his lip cause he’s all rubber. “Ain’t right,” he said. “He ain’t right, and you, well—”

“Don’t look at me unless you want to get slapped.” She leaned them fists of hers on the line. Them eyes of her made the fire, and he looked to the buggies outside the doorway—empty. Beyond them, one tree, above it the blue.

This kind of thing had me twitching, but Tugbail took it branch to root and withered.

“Ain’t right,” he said softer, shaking his rubber head. Then he rung up the bone. I cooked that one special. I tell you, Tugbail wouldn’t care if the river took me to somewhere else. Just Honey.

“Ras,” she called again. The car door was open and the rain beat to a hop off the dirty roof just like it was beating into my shirt and jeans. I almost slipped into the river’s sweeping faster than I could run. My box was far, far—

“Now!” Honey hit the horn.

I mudded uphill and took my place. I closed the door hard.

Honey sighed. “Don’t you understand the river’s in a fury? You fall in, I ain’t getting you out.”

“You’d come for me,” I said.

“Ain’t got the strength,” she said.

“You would,” I said and shook in my shirt, but there was no flicking off the wet.

“Wouldn’t,” she made the word crystal, then pushed the gearshift with the heel of her hand. The transmission scratched until it caught right.

Then up we went to the high ground place. I was so busy with the box, I didn’t pack a thing. If they was gone, my things, they’s gone, and I told Honey that, laughing like I was full of snow.

“You’ll regret such a wish,” she said.

▱

At the high ground place, there was water but no food. A woman said, “None till morning. We’re in a crisis. Just find you a spot to sleep on the floor.” She gave me a blanket, a full bottle, and Honey and I stepped over bodies till we got a clearing to lay on. We stared at the ceiling. No water dripped from it like in Honey’s kitchen, but you could hear the rain hit its own beat to the flickering light. You could hear someone cough. Someone hooted the owl, but no one else was willing. Except Honey. She gave everyone the long weep.

“Wipe them tears,” I said, which is what she tells me whenever I start to swell—Buck up, you’re a full man now, Ras. Weeping ain’t done anyone good. People only do it after the fact of things and much too late.

She couldn’t hear them words.

“I don’t want to lose my home,” is what she said. “Only thing of mine and no insurance.”

“It’s rundown.” The tin garage I slept in was newer, come out of a kit.

“But it’s mine. I grew up there. What I got all of.”

“I’m hungry,” I said.

“You’re breathing.”

“Not enough to breathe. I want food.”

“Shhh.” She rubbed the wet off her fingers into my arm. “You get too loud, they won’t let you stay.”

So I shut eyes and thought of the box, not what happened—it busting in the current. I thought of what I intended—to get all the water. Plan was, push box to bottom, hold it there until every curl of river spilled inside. Big River, too, if it took that. Then hoist the water up and keep it next to me on high ground until the river grew so still the rain above stopped. Then carry the water down—no matter how heavy—open the lid and pour the river back onto its bed.

▱

Next morning the church people bust in with armloads of food, every Christian giving the heaven smile, so glad to see us. God bless, people will feed you in a crisis, especially the ones from the community Smoke Rise, our saviors.

We got an allotment and I gulped my chicken, coleslaw, roll—Honey let me gulp some of hers. Then we went back to our blanket. I put my hand on Honey’s leg.

“Wish we could do some things.”

She shook her head. “Can’t, and I don’t want to.” Her body moved until I was touching the sweat-freeze of the cement and not her.

I started to put my hand back, just to rub, but she didn’t want that either. There were people around. The stares they made kept prying me. On the blanket, Honey’s leg doing the twitch, and everything in me dropped subzero what the food had made warm.

▱

Blanket or no blanket that floor’s hard. On the fifth day, I said, “I want to see my valley home.”

“Calm down,” the woman in charge said. She was from Birch Springs and thought she was the boss of all. Her name tag was a list. “I’m sorry you’re uncomfortable. Here, take a second pillow.”

“Don’t want your pillow.”

“Ras,” Honey called me. She was rolling the bottom of her shirt in her hands like she does when she’s about to take it off and let me in.

The high ground place was the community center and crowded. I dreamed in the night that bodies spun like threads off a spindle with me at the center putting my arms and legs out pressed to the floor to anchor. Woke up dizzy, couldn’t sleep. Could hear the rain make the dark darker. Knew the river was spilling out of its trough. The room swam but without floating bodies like I was afraid. Had to breathe in and out until I was sure the river hadn’t come this far up. Eventually, I evened myself with sleep.

Now it was morning, the rain in a lull. Honey said, “Ras.” This second time was a low sweet call, Ras, and I followed it to where she was and sat down.

“I need you.” She got in close and put my hand up her shirt so my arm rested between the bluffs of her breathing and no one could tell what was going on.

“Why?” I said.

“You shouldn’t ask for what good things you get. I don’t ask why I get to have you.”

“That’s easy,” I said. “You found me walking the road. Now there’s you and me and the river and nothing else.” Which is what she tells when she lets me in and we’re holding each other after and she starts to sing, Once lost but now found, like we might fall off the tick if she doesn’t.

She sighed. “The river’s taking this world, Ras.”

“You don’t know,” I said. I did not tell her what I dreamed of.

“I know,” she said.

▱

She was right on half—the river took some. My work boots were tangled in a chinaberry with sumac and ribbons of tin swept downstream. I used those boots for mowing and kicking Idahos out of the field and squatting off the bank to sway mussels. The tin was my valley home, what Honey let me keep when she picked me for her—how long ago was it when she did that? And who the people I left behind I keep forgetting? Honey wasn’t using the garage except storage, so I pushed her boxes into a bird’s nest.

The river didn’t sweep away her home, which was given when her mother passed. Her mother’s father had owned the valley and the river, too. He made tomatoes, cotton, cattle. He plowed light into dirt. When he passed, Honey’s mother sold everything except the house and the acres to the river. Had to sell. Now the house was thicked with mud on the white walls already in need of paint for some time.

Could not be lived in until fixed, the agent said. He thudded shut the front door and came to where we stood on the steps. Handed Honey papers. Eventually the churches or the government would drive down and help us clean.

“Where do I live right now?” Honey said.

“That you’ll have to figure. Neighbors?”

“Them?” She scuffed her boot. “Don’t you see what I’ve been dealt here?”

“You got me,” I said.

“Can’t turn to you.”

But I swelled up big enough to lift us off this world.

“You’ll get sick you go in that home now. Wind up in a hospital.” The agent nodded his good day, satisfied, and walked to his car. Once he got in, he cranked up, and was gone.

The sun was out good. The river was running calm in its trough. I said, “Everything’ll be all right,” echoing the sun and the river. But Honey walked in, let the door close. She turned the lock.

I struck the wood. “You need to come out.”

Her feet went padding, then her sound switched to quiet.

I struck harder—“Let me in. Let me—” slung my shoulder until I busted through.

Downstairs, silt stuck to the walls, chairs, the floor. I put my hand on the purple sofa and water gushed. I went up stomping and calling, but she wasn’t upstairs either. So I went further into the attic, where the smell of insulation was and not the mud. By the window was Honey sitting in a curl. When I touched her, she kicked me.
“Ouch,” I said.

“Ouch is right. We can’t stay here.”

“But someone’s coming to fix it.”

“You think they coming, Ras? Really?”

“The agent promised.”

“People like him promise a lot they don’t mean.”

“Where we going then?”

“Where would you go and where would I? They separate questions. I wasn’t made to be your savior when I’ve got to be mine. And none of them will let us live with them together.”

“I can live in a garage,” is all I said, though I meant to tell how I didn’t need saving.

“They won’t let you,” she said.

“But you let me in yours.”

“That was.” She didn’t finish.

“Someone’s coming to fix it,” I said. “I don’t know how to make you believe me.”

“You can’t. If I thought there was a way, I’d let you in, Ras, I promise. But I don’t and that’s what matters here.”

We were in the corner of things—me in one and her in the far other, the sunlight through the middle of the glass and outside the river sweeping. She kept drawing away, taking tinier breaths, and I was afraid she’d quit taking them at all, afraid the light would slip back on itself until there was none. I was already full of dark I didn’t want, so I got up, walked the ladder down, then the stairs past the tulips and briars that were whipped. I got to the mud on the river shore and looked back at the attic glass—the sun hit it so bright the glass turned to tin. The sun so warm, I waded out to the big stone that had always been there. Didn’t matter what the current wanted, I cut through and lay down.

I listened to the river sweep fast over the rocks. “Sweep, sweep,” I whispered and put one hand in like a fishtail rudder and closed my eyes, and the river didn’t make me move, didn’t pry me. And I didn’t feel Honey when she put her arm round, except the shivering I was doing calmed into nothing. The stone underneath became as warm as the sun then. Until later when I turned cold and looked around for her. When I looked up, the stars swimming the sky wouldn’t stop.

 

James Braziel writes to give voice to the people of the rural South. He grew up in a peanut farming community in Georgia and now lives on a ridge that is part of the Cumberland Plateau in Alabama. Together, he and his wife, poet Tina Mozelle Braziel, are building a glass cabin by hand while living in it.