The River Killings (2 page)

“Half-slide in two,” Susan called. “And stop splashing.”

Splashing? I wasn’t splashing, or I hadn’t thought I was. But I didn’t say anything. Coach Everett had been very clear about in boat behavior. The bow, and only the bow, was to speak. The bow was in command. Everybody else was to keep silent, backs straight and eyes focused forward. They were not even to turn their heads. “Watch your oars,” Susan ordered.

Watch them? What was wrong with them? And how could I watch them if I wasn’t supposed to turn my head?

“Why?” I called as I rowed, aware that, by speaking, I was breaking a cardinal rule. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re still splashing.”

I was? “With both oars?” I had to shout; the river was quiet but Susan was behind me, and I was faced away from her. And, along this stretch of the river, sounds of traffic on Kelly Drive and the nearby expressway muffled our voices.

“Sometimes,” she shouted back. “And watch your slide.”

My slide? The slide is the part of the stroke when the legs bend as the rower’s seat moves up from bow to stern. But what about the slide was I supposed to “watch”? Was it too fast? Too slow? Too early or late? Why couldn’t she be specific? Was she being deliberately obtuse? Never mind, I told myself. Let it go.

“And relax your shoulders.”

Oh, boy. We hadn’t rowed five hundred yards yet. Was Susan going to comment on my every move for six more miles?

“Watch the splashing,” she shouted, “and give me pressure on port. More port. Give me more port.”

I gave her port, thinking about what else I wanted to give her. After we passed under the Girard Avenue Bridge, though, Susan changed her approach. “We have to relax,” she said.

We?

“Our shoulders are tense.”

She’d begun referring to us as a single being.

I took a deep breath, trying to focus, to inhale the warmth and calm of the night. The clear sky. The glassy water. Anything but the cloying commands of the bow.

“We need to sit up tall,” she said.

I closed my eyes, centering myself. Coach Everett had told us to row with our eyes closed so we could sense the boat moving in the water. I closed mine to escape the squawking in the bow. No good. Susan kept it up. She began to narrate each stroke, start to finish, in an annoying singsong cadence.

“Hands away fast. Swing with our bodies. Now, slow slide. Roll our oars early. And catch.”

Okay. I’d had enough. “Susan,” I called, still rowing, “can we just row?”

“What?”

“Please. Just steer the boat and call the drills. Can you not talk so much?”

“I’m the bow. I’m supposed to tell you what to do.”

“But you’re talking nonstop. I can’t focus on rowing. All I can think about is you, talking.”

“Excuse me?” She was appalled at my insubordination. Stunned. “I can’t believe this. Let it run.” That means stop rowing.

Our oars slapped the water as we floated to a stop. I twisted around to face her.

“What’s your problem, Zoe?” Susan demanded. “You don’t like me being bow? I didn’t ask to be—Coach Everett made me bow.”

“I have no problem with you being bow—”

“Obviously, you do. You can’t stand not being in charge, even in a damned boat. This is about your control thing, isn’t it?”

Oh dear, she was making it personal. She knew me too well, knew what my issues were. “Susan, no. It’s not about me. I don’t need to be in control—”

“Really? Not about control? Then what? Your trust thing? You don’t trust me to be bow. Is that it? You don’t think you can rely on me?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Susan. This is not about trust or control. It’s not about me. I really don’t mind you being bow. I just mind you being the bow from hell.”

Oops. That was harsh. I felt her recoil, wounded and defensive.

“How am I the bow from hell?”

“You criticize my every move—”

“No way—I do not—” “Oh, please, Susan.”

“I’m just doing my job. I’m responsible for how the boat moves.”

“You want to move the boat? Focus on your own rowing instead of mine.”

“My rowing? What’s wrong with my rowing?”

The conversation wasn’t going well, but I couldn’t stop myself. “We’re both beginners, Susan. Neither of us is perfect.”

“I didn’t say I was—”

“But you blame me for every little wobble.” “That’s absurd. I do not.”

Alone in the middle of the river, we scrapped like an old married couple. Susan was my best friend, and I knew the fight wasn’t worth it, but I was tired and cranky. We kept it up, jabbing, bickering, getting nowhere and behaving badly.

“How about we both just shut up and row,” I finally said. I sat in the ready position, waiting for a command.

“Fine,” she answered. “You want to row? We’ll row.” Susan glowered at me. I knew because I could feel her glower burning my back. “Is it okay with you if I ask you to please sit ready?”

Uh-oh. Her tone was both sarcastic and ominous. I didn’t know how, but she was going to make me pay for complaining.

Sure enough, she began calling drills, steadily increasing our power and stroke rate, trying to exhaust me and prove who was in charge. I didn’t challenge her again, didn’t make a peep. I was going to prove I could perform at least as well as she could. So, when she called, “Take it up,” I cursed silently but took it up, pushing harder with my legs and swinging my body. Oddly, the harder I pushed, the more I enjoyed myself. My strokes became smoother as we gained momentum. The boat gurgled, leaving a bubbly, moonlit trail. Our oars clicked into place with each stroke, and we began to soar upriver, swinging together, pushing, feeling the burn of our muscles and the potential of our combined power.

Lungs searing, we sped under Columbia Bridge and reached the tip of the overgrown pile of rocks called Peters Island. Halfway up the island, I was about to die. Susan had proved her point. She’d won. I had to stop. I tried to say that I needed to stop, but I didn’t have enough wind to talk. Susan yelled, “Take it up. Full power for forty.”

I’d had no idea that Susan was that sadistic. But my pride or my temper kicked in, and I didn’t give up. From some remote sector of my being, I pulled out more energy and rowed faster, pushed harder than I’d imagined possible, using my body weight as leverage against my oars. The boat took off. It skimmed the water, speeding ahead. We passed the woods of Peters Island in a whoosh.

“Keep it up,” Susan huffed.

I kept the rate up, legs and thighs aching, blood surging, lungs bursting. Lost in rhythm and exertion, I rejoiced in the wind, the glide. I had the impression that we’d left the water, that we’d begun to fly.

Apparently, Susan was similarly absorbed; she didn’t call a warning. Maybe she hadn’t looked ahead. Or maybe, in the darkness, she simply hadn’t seen anything that low to the surface. But, when we made impact, our boat lurched so violently that I flew off my seat. I stopped rowing midstroke, but my oars crashed into Susan’s. The boat shuddered, and we dipped dangerously to port.

“Shit,” Susan shrieked. “Hold still; don’t move.”

I squatted, trying to balance, not able to get back onto my seat. We were tipping at an impossible angle. Slowly, I turned my head to look over my shoulder. Susan’s starboard oar stood erect in the water, definitely out of reach. She’d lost hold of it; its blade was entangled with mine, and both were caught in a mass of what looked like floating cloth. I couldn’t see what we’d hit, couldn’t turn far enough around.

“Zoe—stop. Don’t move.”

“I’m not moving.”

“Don’t turn around. Set the boat.”

“I can’t set the boat—my oar’s stuck with yours.”

“Oh, shit—hold still.” Cursing, Susan flailed at her starboard oar, trying to grab it, inadvertently knocking my oar deeper into the water, rocking the boat, tipping us even farther.

“Susan—stop—we’re flipping—”

Susan stopped. In fact, she held completely still. “Dear God,” she breathed. “A floater.” “What?”

“We hit a floater.”

Slowly, careful not to shift my weight, I turned to look. At first, all I saw was bloated cloth, lumpy yards of it, adrift on the water. Then, near the surface beside our oars, I made out a dim opalescent oval bobbing with the movement of the river. I stared, focusing, and the pale oval took on definition. It had features. Eyes, a nose. Lips. Hair that disappeared into the dark water and reemerged, washing against its skin.

“Oh, damn.” I don’t know who kept repeating that, Susan or I. Or maybe both of us. For a timeless second we sat, not moving, tilted at an unmanageable angle, staring at the body, balanced precariously at a forty-five-degree angle, our oars tangled up with a dead woman’s dress, our minds racing to figure out how to right the boat. Soon, though, we grasped the grim reality: It was too late. Any movement we made would disturb our delicate balance and flip the boat. In fact, even if we made no movement at all, we couldn’t maintain our balance much longer. We’d tilted too far. There was nothing we could do. We could reach for our oars or not; either way, we were going over.

For endless seconds, our boat hung tenuously as if holding its breath. Then, gently, teasingly, it rolled over, spilling us into the chilly black water of the Schuylkill.

I W
ENT
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SIDEWAYS,
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UMPING
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NTO
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AR
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EARING
Susan’s shouts muffle as I submerged, realizing only after I’d sunk that I was trapped in the boat—my feet were fastened into the shoes. I dangled upside down in cold water, realized that I was going to drown, and I panicked, thrashing blindly through long thin vines, river plants that curled around me, entwining my head, my arms. I began to choke. Then, as if from a great distance, I heard a man’s voice—Coach Everett’s? He was hollering commands, telling me what to do. I stopped thrashing and held still, listening. “Pull the shoe flaps,” he yelled. Of course. The shoe flaps. They’re Velcro. I reached up through the tangling vines to my feet, found the strings and yanked. The Velcro peeled open; my feet came free. And so did I. I dropped out of the boat. The water swallowed me, and I swallowed it. Murky river water flooded my nose, my mouth, my hair, my pores. I fell deeper into dark water, certain that I was going to die.

Somehow, it wasn’t as bad as I had imagined. In fact, the water felt cool, soothing. It moved gently, enclosing me, and I suddenly understood that the river was alive, seducing me as it tugged me down, welcoming me into itself. Drowning wasn’t so bad, I thought. It was soft. Hushed and womblike, the water caressed me, comforted me, tempting me to stay. I considered giving in to it, but the air left in my lungs must have lifted me and I surfaced, shocked at the sudden assault of air, the harshness of sound, the brightness of night.

Then I remembered. Susan—where was Susan?

“Susan!” I called, but all that came out was a gurgle and a cough. I treaded water, calling again, hearing no answer but the splashes of water around and under me. Dear God. Where was she? I called again. Still no answer. Maybe Susan had been stuck in the boat as I had. Maybe she’d been hurt and couldn’t get out of her shoes. Couldn’t surface. Oh, Lord, where was she?

I hung on to the inverted hull, dunked under it to feel for Susan, and, shoving away the oars, I bumped into someone. Susan? I surfaced, gasping for air, grabbing a limp, slippery arm, blinking water from my eyes. In the moonbeams, clutching the woman in my arms, I swept her hair off her face. It wasn’t Susan. I saw instead the bloated features and blank eyes of the floater. Shuddering, I shoved her away, but she was heavy, wouldn’t budge. I pushed her again and she floated back again, rocking beside me like a playful inflatable float.

“Susan!” I yelled again but heard no reply, just more splashes of moving water. I edged away from the corpse, still holding on to the hull, and reached out, feeling the water, waving my free arm back and forth, up and down, finding nothing. I let go of the boat and went back under the surface, reaching, rotating, sweeping with my arms until, a few yards away, I found her hand under the surface. I grabbed on to her and tugged, disturbingly aware that her hand didn’t grab or tug back. Susan’s hand merely sat in my grasp, passive and lifeless.

“Susan,” I breathed, tugging at her arm, pulling her toward me. I swam under and behind her, shoving her upward, boosting her face so she could breathe, encircling her head with one arm to keep her mouth and nose above water. Her hair floated against my face, into my mouth, as I kicked back toward the boat, awkwardly backstroking with my free arm. I was tugging at her, grunting, out of breath, amazed at how heavy she was. A few more strokes, I told myself, and I’d be able to reach the boat. To catch my breath and revive Susan. On my next stroke, though, my arm smacked something long and solid, too smooth to be a log. I spun around, came face-to-face with a foot, a leg, an entire woman. Oh, God.

Oh, God. Another one? I thrashed, still holding on to the person I’d thought was Susan, who still wasn’t moving. Who didn’t seem to be conscious, didn’t even seem to be breathing. Was she really Susan? She was built like Susan, had Susan’s chin-length dark hair. But, in the moonlight, kicking and struggling to stay afloat, I couldn’t be sure.

Treading water, I looked out at the dark surface, slowly focusing, taking in the shadowy lumps surrounding me. Oh my God. I was surrounded by them. Dead women, bobbing limply on the surface like so many dead fish. I looked behind me, saw more of them. Bodies were floating all around me, in every direction. I let out a howl, but my mouth was too low to the water, and all that came out was a bubbly gurgle. Oh, God, oh, God. This couldn’t be real. Couldn’t be happening. But a body floated by, catching an arm around my neck, trapping Susan and me in her armpit. I shoved her and kicked away, but the cool indifference of her flesh lingered on my fingertips. Get ahold of yourself, I thought. Don’t panic. But my eyes darted from one corpse to another, and my back bumped drifting shoulders and thighs. How many were there? Six? Eight?

I wanted to swim away, escape. But I couldn’t; I had Susan in my arms. If she actually was Susan. Was she? Oh, Lord. She still hadn’t moved. Was she dead, too? Shivering, I let her go; the night sky revealed her blue, waterlogged features, her empty gaze. Her unfamiliar, bloated face. A noise rose from my belly, something between a moan and a bellow.