The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) (3 page)

She smiled, and I smiled back, because I could certainly relate. I was the second of two kids. Our bookshelves were stacked with photo albums of Keri diaper-clad in the garden, on the hammock, with her face in a bowl of ice cream. There were far fewer pictures of me, a mere year and a half younger.

“My first memory is from when I was two years old,” Fiona continued. “I was playing in our sandbox. Cody, our German shepherd, tried to steal my sand bucket, and I went to grab it back and Cody bit me on the arm and dragged me across the yard until my face hit the pole of a bird feeder and my nose broke and there was blood on my arm and my face. I remember the blood tasted dirty and hot. They put Cody down after that. I have this nose and this scar to show for it.”

As she rolled her sleeve up, the purple ghost of the attack revealed itself. It was like a centipede crawling toward her bicep. My reaction must have been swift and obvious.

“I know,” she said, and then launched into her best Valley girl impression. “Grody to the max.”

I had never seen the scar before, but I had often wondered why Fiona always wore long sleeves, even in the summer. I stumbled through my response. “I just … I…”

“Make a note,” she said. “‘A gnarly scar eats at her girly arm.’ Something like that. That’s what a writer would do.”

“Good idea.” I scooted the beanbag chair over to my desk, reached up, and grabbed a pencil and the mostly empty notebook I had reserved for Social Studies. Below a doodle of Abe Lincoln riding a skateboard, I wrote:
Big scar. Purple. Somewhat gross.

She gave the scar a kiss and rolled her sleeve back down. “I remember other things from that time. Images and stuff. My mom in the driveway shoveling snow while wearing a yellow dress and a paisley coat. Me and my dad sharing a strawberry milk shake. Derek and Maria making a house of baseball cards. I’ve been told anecdotes from that time too, about how we used to do stuff as a family, but I think it’s best to stick with my memories.”

“Probably best,” I said, but what did I know? My creative endeavors amounted to a handful of stories, only a couple of which I had actually put to paper. I didn’t have the first clue about what it took to “pen” someone’s biography. Fiona’s faith in my abilities was flattering, but as the warmth of flattery dissipated, a spiny chill was all that remained. This girl actually expected something from me. It finally struck me how strange that was.

“My second memory is from a bit later,” she said. “I was four and I was in bed and I was listening to the radiators clicking. You know how they click? Well, the clicks were different this time. It was as if the radiators were talking to me, as if—”

“Fiona?” I stood up, though not as quickly as I would have liked.
Beanbag chairs.

“Yes?”

I set the notebook on the desk. “Why are we doing this?”

Fiona pulled a pillow out from behind her back and hugged it. Tilting her head, she replied, “Because we’re weirdos, Alistair. We’re the aliens.”

“I don’t know what that … I am not a weirdo,” I said. “And that’s not what I’m asking.”

“What are you asking, then?”

“I’m asking … I hardly know you anymore. Why not write this yourself?”

Fiona looked at me straight and serious. “To say the things I’m going to say, I need someone who hardly knows me. I need a witness with an imagination.”

Sometimes I wondered if that was my problem, an abundance of cluttered rooms in my mind. She had me pegged, though, and she had me worried. “You’re only twelve,” I said. “Why do you need a biography?”

She shook her head and put it simply. “As I already told you, I’m
thirteen
. And tomorrow my soul could be gone.”

I didn’t know until later how literal that statement was. Or else I wouldn’t have said what I said. “I’m not sure I want to do this.”

Fiona considered those words for a moment, and then sighed and whispered her reply: “And we can’t do this if you have doubts.”

The recorder at her feet, the tape and its spinning reels. That’s where this all started. I reached down and pressed
Stop
. “You should take this back.”

She spread her feet and let the recorder fall. “No,” she said, getting up and brushing past me. “It’s yours. I don’t take things back.”

T
UESDAY
, O
CTOBER
17

School again. It was only six hours a day, but those hours were whirlpools. Fight against them and I’d lose—swept up, sucked down, smothered by nausea. My best bet was to stand and endure.

Enduring usually meant daydreaming. I suppose everyone is a daydreamer, but I was better at it than most. I could appear attentive, eyes at the board instead of the window. I could even answer the occasional algebra question if called upon. But for most of the day, I was lost, exploring phantasmal worlds where I was starring in a movie or living on some tropical island with a beautiful girl.

Not this time, though. Fiona invaded every daydream, her face appearing from behind trees, her voice—metallic and pleading—crackling out from clouds and television screens.

By sixth period Social Studies, I gave in and opened my notebook to the scribble of words from the previous evening.

Big scar. Purple. Somewhat gross.

I wrote a few more.

Ten missing months? Soul … gone? Talking radiators?

Images of radiators with toothy mouths, chattering like auctioneers, brought a smile to my face, but it was an uncomfortable smile. I had opened myself up to someone who was obviously a bit … sick. That was the best word for it, sick.

*   *   *

“Fiona is nutzo, you know?” my sister said as we walked home from school that afternoon.

“She’s not my—”

“Girlfriend? She was in your room.”

“A school project. A—”

“I don’t care.” Keri tightened the straps and hiked up her backpack so that she could more easily handle her load of books. “Mom was asking about her.”

“Gawd…”

“You could have the wedding reception at the Skylark. Salt potatoes and helium balloons!”

“Shut up.” I reached for Keri’s ponytail. She knew what would come next.

Wriggling away, she teased, “I got a secret about your fiancée.”

I pushed her backpack and she stumbled forward but didn’t fall. “I
said
shut up!”

“I’m serious. One night I saw her bury something in the swamp.”

I stopped. “You’re kidding me.”

“It was, like, a few weeks ago,” Keri said with a shrug. “I couldn’t sleep, and it was surprisingly hot so I had my window wide open. I heard a banging sound and I looked out and I saw Fiona with a shovel by Frog Rock.”

Our backyard bordered a swamp, along the edge of which sat a giant boulder shaped like a bullfrog. If the moon was out, we could see it from our windows at night, standing guard in front of a wall of cattails.

“She wasn’t just out for a walk or something?” I asked. My suspicions were well-founded. Once, Keri told me there was a mouse in our attic playing a tiny violin. It turned out to be an old sock and a creaky hinge.

“I’m serious. She dug a hole. Dropped something in. Covered it up.”

“Which was?”

“Beats me.” Keri threw her hands in the air. “I’m not messin’ with Heavy Metal Fifi.”

“Who?”

“Something me and Mandy call her.”

Mandy was a fourteen-year-old with the haircut of a newscaster and a fondness for old movies. She was a frequent sleepover guest at our house, always arriving with a tin of chocolate chip cookies and something black-and-white she’d taped off of TV.

“And you never told anyone?” I asked.

“I told Mandy. I’m telling you. Thought you should know before you invited her back.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not inviting her back. Who knows? Maybe she’ll move away sometime soon and we’ll never see her again.”

*   *   *

There is another afternoon I remember, another barbecue. Our parents were busy with the hamburgers and sangria, while Fiona and I—maybe six years old, probably seven—had ventured into the swamp, to the edge of the cattails on a mission to capture things that squirmed.

“How ’bout the big daddy?” Fiona joked, pointing to the boulder.

“You mean Frog Rock?” I asked. “Keri says he keeps us safe. Keeps coyotes away.”

“Really?”

“Keri says so.”

“What else does the frog keep?” Fiona asked. “Does he keep secrets?”

“What do you mean?”

Instead of answering, Fiona pushed through the cattails and grabbed the notch in the rock that doubled as the frog’s right knee. Bouncing three times for confidence, counting it off, then pulling, shooting a foot skyward, trying to land a sneaker—rubber on granite—missing, slipping, trying again, and again, and then getting it right, she scrambled up the surface until she was face-to-face with the frog. She cupped her hands against the side of its head. She whispered to the stone.

“What are you whispering?” I asked.

“A secret,” she said. “Between me and Mr. Hopper.”

“I can keep secrets,” I told her, and I reached for the notch so I could pull myself up too. I wasn’t tall enough. Even jumping, I couldn’t grab it. Watching me struggle, Fiona smirked. I think she liked knowing that she could do something that I couldn’t.

“Prove it,” she said. “Prove you can keep secrets.”

“How?” I panted and wiped my palms on my shirt and leaned, defeated, against the stone.

“Tell me one,” she said. “A secret of your own.”

I’m sure that I had secrets, but I couldn’t think of any that quickly. So I looked down at my feet and said the first thing that came to mind. “If we ever move away, to another house, I mean, then I’m gonna bury something, right here next to this rock.”

It was instinct more than an answer. The soft ground was gumming my Velcro sneakers, my mind was on mud and secrets, and secrets were buried treasure.

“What would you bury?” Fiona asked.

“I don’t know. Money?”

“That’s stupid,” she said, and she wrapped her arms around the frog’s neck. “Isn’t that stupid, Mr. Hopper?”

“Okay, fine.” I looked to the yard for inspiration. In our weedy sandbox were action figures, strewn about like all casualties of play. On the stump of a willow tree was a deflated rubber ball that Keri and I used to throw at each other while yelling “Bombs over Tokyo!”

“How ’bout … something to tell some new kid that I was here first,” I said.

Fiona put a finger up—
Eureka!
“I once saw spray paint on a bridge that said
Kilroy Was Here
.”

“Who’s Kilroy?” I asked.

“Beats me. But he was once there. And now I know about it.”

Writing
Alistair Was Here
on something and burying it in the ground seemed weird, but I had no idea what else might symbolize me, what object might communicate that I was a kid who lived in this house his whole entire life, and that it was my house before it was some other kid’s house.

“How ’bout…”

“How about you don’t tell me right now?” Fiona said. “But if you move away, then you can bury something here for
me
to find. And
I’ll
dig it up!”

“Okay,” I said, warming to her variation on my theme. “But what if you move away first?”

“Then I’ll bury something for
you
to find. And
you’ll
dig it up! One catch, though. Whatever we bury, it has to tell a secret.”

I actually liked this scenario better. It felt like we were forming our own super-exclusive club. Membership: two. “It’s a deal,” I told her.

“More than a deal,” she replied. “It’s a pact. Do you know what a pact is?”

“I think so.”

“Good.” She slid down the rock.

“Should we prick our fingers?” I asked. “Like blood brothers … or sisters?”

She grimaced and shook her head. “A handshake oughta do.”

*   *   *

I dug. How could I not?

It had been at least five years since we’d made that pact, five years in which we had hardly spoken to each other. It might seem strange, but once our parents stopped being friends, so did we. A lot of it was the
she’s a girl and I’m a boy
divide that happens in elementary school. Part of it was convenience. She didn’t come around anymore, and even though she lived up the street, it was like she’d moved away.

Now she had buried something for me. It could only mean that she was actually moving away. Maybe over the last few weeks her family had been packing up the house and the moving truck would be showing up at any moment. Or maybe it was only Fiona who was leaving. After all, I hadn’t seen a For Sale sign anywhere. Whatever was happening, I wasn’t going to wait to find out. You’d better believe I was going to dig.

That night, after my family went to sleep, I set a flashlight on the knee of Frog Rock and I went to work with a camping shovel. The ground was soft, but not soaked. Every autumn the swamp dried up and chilled to the point where it was more a frosty and muddy glade than it was a wetland. It felt like hours, but it probably wasn’t even twenty minutes before I struck something that wasn’t a stone or a root. I clawed the dirt away and unearthed a handle.

Moments later I was sitting at our picnic table with a long metal box in my lap. It was a relic, a green rectangular thing with a hinged top and rusty latches and a few fading, peeling baseball stickers on the outside. And on the inside? A soupy mess of dirty water and worms, but also a Ziploc, sealed and wrapped in rubber bands to keep its lumpy contents safe. I wiped the bag against damp grass to remove most of the muck and I rolled off the rubber bands.

I’m not sure what I was expecting to find in there. A diary? Maybe a key? Certainly not what I found.

It was a white handkerchief. Fiona had used Magic Markers to draw a rough grid of forty to fifty squares on it. In most squares, there was a name written.
Chua Ling
,
Boaz Odhiambo
,
Rodrigo Hermanez
,
Jenny Colvin
, and others. Some names were written in red ink. Some in green. Some were full names. Some only first names or initials. Next to a few, there were also the names of places.
Kenya
,
Argentina
,
Milwaukee
. In a square near the edge,
Fiona Loomis Was Here
.