Into This River I Drown

part i: grief

A man came to a river at the end of his life,

and there he met the River Crosser, who helped others to the far shore. The man asked the River Crosser why he had to leave so soon. The River Crosser told him it was because there was a design to all things. “Where is the design in grief?” cried the man at the end of his life. “What does it have to do with me? I still have family to care for! My son!” The River Crosser looked at him with a melancholic smile that did not reach his eyes. “You will see,” he said. “Soon, you will see all things clearly.”

you and i

To meet my father, you’d have to go for a bit of a drive.

The town I live in is not exactly the epicenter of the known universe. I can’t even say it’s on the outskirts. You know that type of place that you drive through on a road trip to more exciting places, the kind that you have to scour the map for just to find out where you’re at? You pass a worn sign on a highway (that you don’t know how you ended up on and you can’t seem to find a way off)—Roseland, Oregon Pop. 876. Established 1851. Elevation 2345 ft. Gateway to the Cascades!

Exit 235A will be up on your right, almost buried behind pine trees. If you don’t know it’s there, chances are you might just drive right on by, never the wiser of the town that lies a mile to the north.

From 235A, you’ll hit the only road into Roseland—Poplar Street. You’ll probably notice that the road feels a bit bumpy under the tires of your car. It hasn’t been repaved in God knows how long. The city council has said year after year that it’s just not in the town’s budget to have Poplar Street resurfaced. It’s more important that we keep the town afloat in these trying times. It’s hard to argue against covering pot holes as opposed to closing the library. In that, the council is always right.

“Council” makes it sound a lot more important than it actually is; really, it’s just Mayor Walken and Sheriff Griggs making the decisions. And by that, I mean it’s Sheriff Griggs; Walken hasn’t had an original thought since 1994, when it was said he decided to quit chewing tobacco and take up smoking instead, because it was a healthier choice, especially if you smoked the ultralights. Now, the cigarette companies can’t call cigarettes lights or ultralights anymore, as it seems they all still cause your lungs to turn black.

I tried a cigarette once, after asking my Aunt Christie for one when I was

seventeen. She told me to take it around the back of the house so I wouldn’t get caught. She slipped her bejeweled lighter into my hand with a smile and a wink. I hightailed it around to the back, put that cigarette between my lips filter first, and lit up, taking in the deepest drag I could. I swallowed the smoke with the intention of making it come back up and out my nose (because it would look so cool). But it only took a moment where my throat worked to push it down into my lungs, where the smoke hit my lungs, that I realized I was not destined to be addicted to nicotine. I started coughing painfully, smoke pouring out of my mouth in gray bursts. My eyes watered as I started to gag. I dropped the cigarette onto the grass with the intention of grinding it out with my heel, but my body had other plans, retribution for the poison I had put in me.

I threw up all over my shoes. The cigarette went out with a hiss.

Great gales of laughter poured down from above me.

I spit onto the ground, trying to rid my mouth of the excess saliva flooding my

teeth. I wiped my face with my sleeve and turned to look at the cackling loons above me. In the window, staring down, were four faces, all so very similar, lit up with delight. What was different was the way they laughed. Aunt Christie shook her head as she snorted, her curly blond hair hanging down in her face. Hers was a low, throaty chuckle. On her left were two of her sisters, the youngest of the group, my other aunts Nina and Mary. Theirs was a high-pitched giggle, a sound that should grate the ears and cause the skin to prickle. But it never did, instead reminding me of bells. They shook their heads as tears sprang from their eyes.

They are the Trio, and they are mine.

But it was the last woman who was laughing at me that meant the most. The last woman, who I had not heard laugh in what felt like ages. Hers was a loud thing, a big thing. She laughed big for a woman her size. It was almost hard to believe that such a great noise could come from someone so small. It was wondrous to behold, like finding a treasure once thought lost.

Her name is Lola Green and she is my mother.

So I rolled my eyes up at them as they hooted down at me, asking me if I felt like such a big man now standing in a pool of my own cooling vomit. They asked if I had learned my lesson. They asked if I would ever do something like that again.

I didn’t tell them but I told myself: yes. I would do it again. If it meant they would laugh, then yes. If it meant I could hear my mother laugh like nothing in the world mattered but that moment, then yes. Of course, yes. I would do anything just to hear her laugh like that.

My aunts—Nina, Mary, and Christie—moved in the day after my father left.

I was sixteen when they pulled up in Christie’s big, loud SUV. They descended on our home, buried in grief at the sudden loss of Big Eddie, scooping up the pieces of me and my mother that had shattered to the floor. They tried to put us back together, holding the pieces in place until the glue they had placed upon us had hardened. But we were fragile still. My mother’s sisters knew once something is shattered, it can never be put back together in its original shape. Undoubtedly some pieces are lost or fit into incorrect places. The whole will never be as strong as it was once before.

So they never left.

The road is bumpy on Poplar, as I said. You’ll see storefronts, lit up in the

gathering dusk, and see a few people walking on the sidewalk, some glancing at your unfamiliar car as it bounces down the road. You’ll think that Roseland looks like a place that time has forgotten, and you won’t be wrong. I wouldn’t call us stuck per se; I just think the rest of the world tends to move a bit faster. We’re not forgotten. We’re just behind.

I don’t think I want it any other way.

As you enter the main drag, you’ll see a banner across the road announcing the “Jump into Summer Festival” and think how quaint it looks, how fitting for a little place such as this. You might feel like going for a drive. You want to ignore how a passenger in your car snorts with laughter, joking about how creepy the sign is, that it’s probably just a way for the town to get unsuspecting outsiders in to sacrifice them to the local god. You want to ignore it, but it is kind of funny, so you don’t. You chuckle and continue on, the banner disappearing overhead.

Driving down Poplar Street will eventually take you past a gas station with a single gas pump at the front. In Oregon, you’re not allowed to pump your own gas, so a thin black cord stretches out next to the pump, causing a bell to ring every time it’s driven over. Inside the store, there are a couple aisles of chips and Twinkies. Suntan lotion, hot dogs rotating on a silver cooker. Coolers with beer and soda. Ice cream, if the mood should strike. There is a garage next door that can handle small repairs like oil changes and windshield-wiper replacement. And there is a sign that spins above the station slowly, one that lights up when darkness falls—Big Eddie’s Gas And Convenience.

My father. Big Eddie.

But he’s not here at the station. Not this spring eve. Not anymore.

If you continue up Poplar Street, past the old mill that sits crumbling like a giant who left behind its playthings, past the empty fields that used to belong to the Abel family before the bank foreclosed on their house, over the Tennyson Bridge, the Umpqua River roaring underneath, and hang a left onto Memorial Lane, you’ll find my father.

You’ll pass under an old stone arch emblazoned with the legend LOST HILL MEMORIAL. No one can tell me how this name came to be. There are no hills here; it could be said that they are lost, although no one can say where they went.

You’ll travel past the Old Yard section of the cemetery, where the stones are crumbling, their markings faded and illegible. Some dates stick out still, reminders of impossible times—1852, 1864, 1876, 1902. But if you continue past those, you’ll see a form that sticks out above other stones. If you stop your car, get out, and walk toward the west end of the cemetery, the form comes into sharper focus. It’s as tall as a normal man, but much smaller than the man it’s supposed to represent. Nothing in this world could be as tall as him.

Stone wings surround a form that always causes me to ache. Gray hands reaching out. Head slightly bowed, the eyes cast down. Gray hair, falling in waves onto smooth shoulders, forever frozen. An angel, you see. An angel watching the ground beneath her. She’s beautiful, even if she is made of stone. If you lean down, you’ll see words below her perfect feet, carved in fine, clear writing. Here, finally, in this place, is where you will find my father:

EDWARD BENJAMIN GREEN

“BIG EDDIE”

BELOVED HUSBAND AND FATHER

MAY 27 1960—MAY 31 2007

Fifteen words. Fifteen words is all there is to describe the man who was my father. Fifteen words are all that is left of him. Fifteen words that do nothing. They do nothing to show what kind of man he was. They do nothing to show how when he was happy, his green eyes lit up like fireworks. They do nothing to show how heavy his arm felt when he’d drop it on my shoulder as we walked. They do nothing to show the lines that would form on his forehead when he concentrated. They do nothing to show the immensity of his heart. The vastness that was his soul. Those fifteen words say nothing.

The only time my mother and I ever really quarreled in our lives, with any heat behind it, was deciding what his marker would say. She wanted it to be simple, to the point, like the man himself. He wouldn’t want the superfluous, she told me. He didn’t need more.

I railed against her for this, anger consuming me like fire. How dare you! I shouted. How dare she keep it so short? How could she not make it go on and on and on until those who made such markers would have to harvest an entire mountain for there to be enough room to say what he was, what my father had stood for in his life, all that he had accomplished? How could anyone understand the measure of a man when those fifteen words said nothing about him?

She watched me with an angry hurt that I tried to ignore. My throat felt raw, my heart pounding in my chest. My blood roared in my ears. My eyes were wet. My hands clenched at my sides. Never before had I felt such anger. Such betrayal.

The measure of a man, she said finally, is not the words that mark his end, but everything he’s done since his beginning.

She walked out of the room and we never discussed it again.

But she knows. Those fifteen words?

They do nothing.

The angel who watches over him must feel this is enough, though, because she never has anything to add. She just stands there over him. Watching. Waiting.

Sometimes I wonder what she is waiting for.

Most out-of-towners who pull into Big Eddie’s Gas And Convenience will

probably expect a man with a name such as Big Eddie to walk out, larger than life, a massive presence that cannot be ignored.

They can’t know that Big Eddie died when his truck ran off the road and flipped into the Umpqua. What they’ll find instead is a short man, just recently twenty-one years of age. Most people in Roseland have a problem believing I came from Big Eddie’s loins, given my size. I was small for my age as a kid, and I’m small for my age now. But any words to the contrary about who I came from were always put to rest when people saw my eyes. Big Eddie’s eyes, they always said. Emeralds. Bright, like fireworks. There is no question I am my father’s son, even if physically the rest of me takes after my mother. I’m small, like her. Our coloring is the same—light skin, brown hair that curls when it gets too long. And my hair was always long before Big Eddie became trapped in his truck, most likely knocked unconscious when his head hit the window as the cab of his truck began to fill with water. It was always long before he died, and he died not because of the impact caused by someone who then fled the scene and has never been found, but because of the water that rose, filling up the cab where my father lay, still strapped in by his seat belt. My hair was always long before my father drowned.

Big Eddie liked to shave his hair short, until there was just scratchy stubble covering his scalp. I can still remember how it felt under my fingers when I was a child, how it prickled against my fingers, how it felt when I rubbed it against my cheek.

Four days after he died, and one day before I fought with my mother over fifteen words, I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, Big Eddie’s clippers in my hand, his towel around my shoulders. I didn’t flinch when I turned on the clippers. My hands did not shake. My lips did not tremble. I did not shy away from the sight of myself— shadowed, hollowed-out eyes, skin devoid of color. I didn’t flinch as I brought the clippers up to the left side of my head and pressed them against my skin. It only took minutes before I was shorn and there could be no doubt that I was my father’s son.

Green eyes like fireworks. Hair that prickled against my fingertips. Sometimes, I let it grow back until it starts to curl. Then I shave it down again.

My mother and my aunts didn’t say a thing when they saw what I’d done that first time.

I love my mother. I love the Trio.

But I am my father’s son.

So if some spring evening you were to pull into the station, this is what you

would see:

Perhaps you’re lost, and needing to fill your tank before finding your way back to I-10. Perhaps you’re visiting relatives in town, or in the next county over and just driving through. Perhaps you know me, though I doubt it.

You pull up to the pump, causing the bell to ring from somewhere inside the store. The door to the convenience store opens. You see me, young, and you laugh quietly to yourself. Is this supposed to be Big Eddie? you wonder. Talk about misrepresentation!

You roll down the window. “Fill it up?” I ask, my voice low. Quiet. It’s not rude, you think. Just reserved. I look shy. I look tired. I look distant.

“Yeah,” you say. “Unleaded. Regular. Thank you.”

I nod as you lean forward and hit the latch, releasing the cover to the gas tank. “He’s cute,” one of your passengers might say as soon as I am out of earshot.

“He’s creepy,” another one says, shuddering. “This is so going to be one of those horror movies in the direct-to-DVD bin. He’ll ask us if you want him to look under the hood and he’ll break something and we’ll be stuck in this town. Ninety minutes later, all of us will be dead except for one, and that person will be chased into an abandoned meat-packing plant while the gas jockey chases you with a chainsaw and a hook hand.”

The people in your car try to muffle their laughter. You don’t say anything. But if you did, there are only a few words you think of when you look at me. There’s only a few things that you could possibly think. So, while your friends laugh, you think sad. You think depressed. You think blue.

But, most of all, you think lonely.

And you’d be right.

The tank fills. “That’ll be $32.11,” I tell you when I come back to the window. You hand me your card and I take it inside to run it. It’s almost full-on dark now. Bugs are buzzing near the neon sign. You hear birds off in the trees. A breeze ruffles your hair. Somewhere, a dog barks. Another joins in, and another. Suddenly, they stop.

And then….

Do you feel it?

There’s something else. Something, just out of reach.

Gooseflesh tickles its way up your arms. The hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Lightning flashes down your spine in low arcs. There’s something else, isn’t there? Something else in the air. Something else carried on the wind. Something… unexpected. Something… different. Something is coming, you know, though how you know is a question you cannot answer.

I don’t feel it. Not really. Not yet enough to name it. I’m still buried in grief. Lost in myself.

But soon.

I walk back to you and hand you your card. Our fingers touch for a moment, and you feel like you should say something, anything. I smile quietly at you as I tell you to have a good night, and I’m about to turn and walk away when you stop me.

“What’s your name?” you ask, your voice coming out in a rush.

I appear startled at this. Hesitant. Something flashes behind my eyes and again you think lonely. You think blue, but it’s the color, not the emotion, and you don’t know why. Everything is blue.

I tell you my name. Slowly.

“Big Eddie?” you ask faintly, wondering why you are saying anything at all. Your passengers listen raptly, as they feel it too now, though later none of you will admit it to each other.

I glance up at the neon sign circling above us. And I smile. You see much in that smile, illuminated by the light. There seems to be a measure of peace there, if only for a moment. There is strength, you think. Hiding somewhere under all that sadness.

And expectation. Like I’m waiting for something. Something to finally happen. Something to come along and say you are still alive, you are still whole. There is no reason for you to be alone because I am here with you.

Then the moment passes. “That was my father,” I say. “Have a good night.”

You nod.

“Let’s get out of here,” one of your passengers whispers. “I found a way back with the GPS on my phone.”

You nod again and watch as I go back inside and sit down behind the counter on a stool. I’m watching my hands when you finally pull away.

Years from now on a very ordinary day, something you see triggers a memory

of a time you stopped in Roseland, Oregon. You’ll think of me for the first time in years. You remember my name, but only just. You’ll wonder, as your heart starts to thud in your chest, if something finally happened. If things changed for me. If that look of longing, of waiting, led to something more. You’ll think on this fiercely, a slight ringing in your ears that you won’t be able to ignore. But then you’ll be distracted by something mundane and I will slip from your mind. An hour later, you’ll have forgotten that racing of your heart, the sweat under your arms. You’ll have forgotten the little things you saw, that feeling of knowing, knowing something was about to occur.

But I have not forgotten.

My name is Benjamin Edward Green, after my father, our first and middle names transposed. People call me Benji. Big Eddie wanted me to carry his name, but felt I should have my own identity, hence the switch. I never minded, knowing it bound us further. It was a gift from him. Because of him, and everything that is about to follow, my time of waiting is almost over. Events have been set in motion, and once started, they will not stop until it is finished.

This is at once a beginning and an end.

This is the story of my love for two men.

One is my father.

The other is a man who fell from the sky.

in this town i live, in this house my father built

I watch your taillights fade as you leave. Part of me wonders where you are

going, but like all things, these thoughts come to an end. It’s dark now, and getting late. I’m tired and want this day to be over so the next one can begin.

I go back into the store and pull the till from the register and take it to the back office. The money is counted and logged and put into the safe, ready for pick up by the bank tomorrow morning. The receipts are separated and placed on top of the money. I close the door, and the electronic keypad flashes at me. I enter the code and it locks.

I leave the office and lock the door. I set the alarm. I turn off the spinning neon sign. I turn off the lights inside and it goes almost dark, the only light from a streetlamp. I stand in the dark and take a deep breath as I close my eyes. I wait, to see if it will happen.

It does.

A hand drops on my shoulder. I know I’m imagining things. I know it’s not real. It can’t be real. But then there’s a puff of air on the back of my neck, warm and soft, like a gentle caress. The hand on my shoulder squeezes gently, and as I open my eyes, wondering why I am not scared, standing in the dark with someone behind me, I see a flash of blue, like light, like lightning. But it’s gone before my eyes are opened all the way and the hand on my shoulder departs. I turn, already knowing there’s no one there. There never is.

The store is empty behind me, of course.

It’s not the first time this has happened.

It’s not uncommon, I’ve been told (over and over again), to feel a loved one nearby after they pass. They are not really there, of course, but a manifestation of what our mind begs us to feel. We hope for this to be true, that they aren’t actually gone. That they are some kind of guardian angel, with nothing better to do than watch over us. It’s a stage of grief to wish that those we loved never actually left us.

It’s the stage I’ve been stuck in for five years.

The first time I felt that presence, I figured I was losing my mind, having just returned home for the first time in over three months. The second time, I decided my sanity was long gone. But then it happened again. And again. And again. Eventually, I accepted it, even if it’s just my imagination playing tricks on me.

It is always the same. A hand on my shoulder. A breath on my neck. The gentle grip on my shoulder. A flash of blue. It doesn’t happen every day, or every other day. It’s not even once a week. But when I am at my darkest, when I am sure I can’t take another step, it happens. Every time I don’t think I can go on, it happens.

I lock the front door of the station and get into the 1965 Ford F-100 that my father and I restored painstakingly. Lovingly. Light blue with white trim. Whitewall tires. White interior. Original dash and radio that never gets any reception. My father’s old coat is always draped along the back of the seat. “It’s cherry,” Big Eddie used to say.

“So cherry,” I agreed.

“So cherry,” I say now to the empty air around me.

Except it doesn’t feel empty. It feels heavy, like anticipation. Like expectation.

I wait for it to depart, but it doesn’t leave.

Eventually, I fire the truck up and head for home.




Roseland is quiet this late at night. Granted, it’s always quiet, but when the

sun falls and the stars come out, the quiet becomes a palpable thing. A slumber that can only be erased by dawn.

I think a normal person would probably go insane living out here. There’s no excitement. There’s nothing to hold you here, unless your roots are entrenched deep into the earth like mine are. I feel lost in cities like Portland or Seattle. Buildings rise up out of the ground like metallic trees, impersonal and cold. People that you have never seen before and will never see again pass you by, ignoring you in favor of themselves. You bump into someone and get a scowl even as you fumble with an apology. I don’t handle that very well.

I drive past Rosie’s Diner on the corner of Poplar and Bellevue. Rosie herself moves around inside. An old guy in a tweed jacket and fedora who only goes by Mr. Wade sits in a corner booth, sipping his coffee and eating his pie as he does every night around this time. They both wave as I drive past. I wave back as I continue into the night.

The other shops are dark, closing before the sun goes down. The Safe Haven, a bookstore owned by a pair of old dykes. A hardware store owned by Mayor Walken. An Italian restaurant owned by Mayor Walken. A secondhand clothing store owned by an Armenian immigrant family. Doc Heward’s office. A real estate office, owned by no one, boarded up and empty. A gift shop where I’d gotten—

A blue light flashes behind me in the rearview mirror.

My breath catches.

But then the blue light is followed by a red one, spinning in a lazy circle. Dammit.

I pull over to the side of the road, the whitewall tires crunching the gravel near the ditch. The lights continue to swirl behind me as the car pulls up within kissing distance of the Ford’s back bumper. He’s doing this on purpose, I know.

The door on the car opens, and I can see the seal on the side, DOUGLAS COUNTY SHERIFF written in the middle. Boots hit the ground with a thud and he lifts himself out of the cop car with a grunt. He shuts the door and flicks on his highpowered MAG flashlight, sweeping it back and forth. He pauses to look in the bed of the Ford. There’s nothing there. It’s sparkling. It’s immaculate. He knew it would be.

“Sheriff,” I say as he reaches my rolled-down window.

“Benji,” Sheriff George Griggs says, his voice a deep bass, filled with undeserved authority. The definition of his face has been lost to fat, his cheeks soft jowls covered in black stubble. His balding head is hidden beneath the wide brim of his hat. “You’re out late.”

“You know I’m not. I just closed up the station, like I do every day at the same time.”

He narrows his eyes. “Is that so?”

I barely can contain the urge to laugh. “Yes. Why do you care?”

“Someone’s got to keep an eye on you, boy.”

“I’m not your boy.”

He ignores the harshness in my voice. “Been drinking tonight?”

Now I laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”

He’s not kidding. Or, he’s just trying to f*ck with me. “No,” he says.

I can play this game. “No, I haven’t been drinking.”

“Is that so?” he says again, the beam of the flashlight piercing my eyes. I squint and look away. “I thought you were swerving a bit back there. You high, Benji?”

“No,” I say, trying not to grit my teeth. “I’ve never been high. I’ve never been drunk. I’ve never done a damn thing wrong.”

He leans in, resting his arms on the door to the Ford. He smells like sweat and aftershave. His scent invades my space. “Everyone’s done something,” he says. I can feel his eyes on me as I look straight ahead.

“What have you done?” I ask before I can stop myself. I don’t miss how he flinches, a subtle intake of breath, the beam from the flashlight wobbling before it steadies.

“You know,” he says finally, “a smart mouth like that is apt to find its owner in trouble one day.”

“Oh?”

“Serious trouble, Benji.”

“Can I go, Sheriff, or is there something else you needed?”

He watches me for a moment more before he knocks the flashlight against the door: a sharp rap that I know will have chipped the paint. “You be careful, you hear me?”

Before he can move away, my mouth opens on its own again as I turn to look at him. “You find out who killed my father yet, Sheriff?”

His eyes are hard, his face reflecting red, then blue. Red. Blue. The skin under his eye twitches; he tightens his jaw. “It was an accident,” he says quietly. “Big Eddie lost control of his vehicle and flipped into the river. Simple as that.”

“That simple?”

“Yes.”

“Have a good night, Sheriff.”

He’s been dismissed and he knows it. His mouth opens as he grunts. I think maybe he’ll say more, but he spins on his heel and walks back to the cruiser, opens the door and spills back inside. We sit there for a moment, me watching him in the rearview mirror, the lights twirling.

Eventually, he spins out behind me and leaves me in the dark, the ticking of the Ford’s engine the only sound I can hear.

I stay still for a moment. I breathe in and out.

A hand falls on my shoulder again, there in the cab of the Ford. Another flash of blue.

“I know,” I say to what does not exist. “I know.”





I tried to leave for college after I graduated high school, but it didn’t take.

I hadn’t even wanted to go to begin with, but Mom somehow wrangled a promise out of me that I would at least try. Lola Green is not above guilt and manipulation in order to get what she wants, especially if she feels it will benefit those around her. On the167th day before I graduated high school, I told her no way was I leaving her alone with the store—I was the man of the house now, I meant to take care of her, and this discussion was over.

Many things ran across her face before she spoke: fear, laughter, horror. Love. So much love through it all. But then her eyes hardened, her mouth narrowed into a thin white line. Little lines appeared around her eyes and on her forehead. I knew that face. That face said that I had overstepped my bounds. That face said fifteen words were enough. That face said I had no choice and I would be going to college in the fall.

“Now you listen here,” my mother said with a snarl. She is a little thing, just coming up to my chin, and I’m only five foot nine. But when she needs to be, she’s all spit and fire and teeth and claws. Big Eddie always said if he ever had to brawl, he’d only need her at his side. “Your father and I worked our asses off to make sure you would never want for anything. You are not going to sit there and tell me that you’re not going to school. You’re going, end of discussion.”

I glared down at her as she tried to get up in my face, poking me in the chest with a lacquered nail. “I’m doing nothing of the sort,” I growled at her. “You can’t watch the store all the time. You’ve got other things going on.” And she did. She had run a small bakery out of our house for years before Big Eddie died. He always pushed her to go bigger, to think beyond Roseland. Word of her talent had spread to other towns around us and she seemed poised to break wide open. But then, of course, her husband drowned in six feet of water and put a hold on her future. It wasn’t until the Trio had arrived and put us back together as best they could that she started up again. At the time of our… discussion about my future, she and the Trio had just launched a website for the bakery. Lola’s Goods. It was getting more popular by the day, which meant less and less time for anything else. She knew this. But even better, I knew this.

Her eyes flashed. “Oh, no,” she said. “There’s no way in hell you’re using the station as an excuse. I don’t care if I have to send one of the Trio down there, or hire a townie back on. I don’t get why we just don’t sell it. The bakery is doing—” She stopped herself. She’d gone too far, said too much. This was a thing never discussed, and never was to be discussed. A sort of unspoken truth had come after Big Eddie died: she would handle her end and I would take over for my father. Big Eddie had always planned on me taking over for him one day. I’d been there with him at the station since I could walk: in the garage, the store. I helped him with the pump. He lifted me up to wash the windows with the scrubber. The first time he’d left me at the store to handle things by myself, I’d been fourteen. After a stern lecture of no goofing around and no giving my friends any pop for free, he’d rubbed a rough hand over my hair and told me how proud he was.

“Starting today,” my father had said in that deep voice of his, “you’re officially my partner here, okay? It’s you and me from here on out, Benji. Think you can handle it?” He held out his hand toward me, waiting.

I was thrilled. Elated. Moved to the point I thought that if I opened my mouth, tears would fall and my voice would break. But Big Eddie was telling me I was a man. Real men didn’t do any of that. So I grunted, snapping my head up and down once, twice. I reached out and shook his hand. His grip was tight, his hand warm.

The next day, he had old Mr. Perkins (the only attorney within fifty miles), draft up the paperwork. I didn’t know then he also made a change in the event anything should happen to him. If it did, the store would pass to me.

Which, of course, it did. And my mother knew this.

“It’s my store,” I reminded her.

“I’m your mother,” she snapped, and the argument was over.

I was in Eugene at the University of Oregon for three months before I came

home. I didn’t speak to her the entire time I was there. I studied. I went out. I got laid. I took tests, read books, stayed out until the sun was coming up. When I figured enough time had passed and my point had been made, I packed up my things, said good-bye to the few friends I’d made, and drove back to Roseland. She didn’t look surprised when I showed up at the door, my arms crossed. The Trio ran over, squealing, covering me with fluttery kisses, their mingled perfume so much like home I had to blink the burn away.

My mother watched me for a moment from her spot by the sink in the kitchen while the Trio backed away, waiting to see what would happen. “You tried?” she said finally. “And?”

“It didn’t take.”

“No?”

“No.”

She pursed her lips. “I suppose you’ll be wanting Little House, then?” No. I don’t know if I could handle that.

Little House had been built by my father. He had thought it would be a place for

a workshop, a garage where he could have his own space to do with what he wished. But the moment he started building, he knew it was going to be bigger than that. Set further down the road than Big House, it had become my father’s life work. And since life doesn’t stop because he had something that he loved doing, it took us six years to finish. The hardwood was placed and varnished, the white paint with blue trim completed. Electricity and plumbing done. When finished, it was two bedrooms, one bathroom. An office. It was small. But then it too became mine. After.

“It’s like a littler version of our house,” I’d said once he’d finished. “Oh, is it?” he’d said, grinning at me. He reached over and grabbed me, putting me into a headlock while he rubbed my head with his knuckles. “A little house, huh?”

“Size doesn’t matter,” I managed to choke out in laughter.

He’d lost it then, and by the time he was able to wipe the tears from his eyes, Little House it had been named.

I gestured toward the Trio, unsure of what they’d want. Unsure of what to say. Mary and Christie had been staying there since they arrived. I couldn’t find the words to say no, no I don’t want Little House. I can’t stay there. I can’t live there. I don’t want to live there.

She shook her head. “They can stay here with me.”

I balked. “There’s not room here for all of you. It’d make more sense to just let me go back to my old room. They can keep using Little House.”

“Benji, it’s okay to—” Christie started, but she stopped when Mom raised her hand toward her, causing her to fall silent.

“It’s yours,” my mother said, her voice hard. “Big Eddie built it for you. You’re obviously grown up enough to gamble with your future, so you will take the house and you will live in it. You will clean it, you will handle the upkeep. You will pay for the utilities. You want to grow up so fast, fine. You’ll act like an adult. That’s what you want? Fine. Have at it. Do what you want.”

The Trio tried to leave the room quietly, but Nina, ever the klutz, ran into the door, causing it to fly open, smashing into a kitchen chair that fell over and skittered across the tile. My eyes never left my mother’s and hers stayed on mine. “Sorry,” Nina said hastily.

“Good God, Nina!” Mary huffed. “So much for a smooth exit. We’re trying to not make this any more awkward than it already is!”

“Really,” Christina said. “Do you have to run into everything?”

“I didn’t see it!”

“You never do,” Mary said, their voices fading as they left the kitchen.

I waited.

Lola Green broke eye contact first and moved to the center island and pulled open her knickknack drawer. She dug through it for a moment, her brow furrowed. She sighed when she found what she was looking for and placed it on the counter in front of her and stepped back again.

She waited.

The silver key reflected a beam of sunlight pouring in from a window and flashed over my vision, and it was like my father was standing next to me. I could hear him chuckling on his way to breaking into full laughter. Everything about him reflected back at me from that key, that tiny key that was meant to be mine.

A little house, huh?

Yes.

I sighed and closed the distance to slide it into my hand. For a moment, I felt as if there was a warmth there, a flash of heat. I shook my head. Just from sitting in the sun, I told myself.

I didn’t know what else to say, if there was anything left that would make things right again. I had turned and started to walk away when she grabbed me by the wrist, her touch gentle but firm. Insistent.

I said nothing.

Finally, she said, “It’s good to see you.”

I breathed my relief. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I missed you,” I admitted. “I missed everything about this place.”

She stroked the back of my hand. “I love you. You know that, right?”

“I know.”

“I wish you hadn’t come back.”

“I know.”

“You’re too good for this place.”

I shook my head. “This is my home. You’re my home. That will always be enough.”

“You should never have just enough.”

“I don’t want anything more.”

“Look at me,” she whispered.

I did. I had to. I couldn’t say no.

Her grip on my hand tightened as my gaze again found hers, and, as she searched my face, I could see that even in those three months, even in that short amount of time, she’d aged. There was no flash behind her eyes. The lines around her mouth looked deep. Her hair was dull as it fell onto her shoulders. She had been grieving, the same as me. And I knew then that while she had hoped I could make something of myself away from this place, and she’d spoken true that she had wanted me to become something my parents had never been, the real reason she had sent me away was so she could grieve. So I wouldn’t have to see her when she was lost. She had been thinking of me, yes, but for her own selfish reasons.

A shadow crossed her eyes for a moment, but then it was gone. Her breath caught in her throat as she choked out a watery laugh.

“What?” I asked her quietly.

“I see him in you,” she said, her voice atremble. “God, those eyes….”

I didn’t stop myself then as I gathered her up in my arms, this tiny woman who was a shell of her former self. She was stiff against me, startled at my brazenness. It was awkward at first, but then I felt pieces of her that had come loose start to break away, and she collapsed against me and shook, clutching at my back with her hands. Pulling, clawing.

I held her, for a time.





I pulled up in front of Little House, switching off the truck. I sat there, staring

up at the house, for an unknown length of time, willing myself to go in, telling myself that enough time had passed, that Big Eddie would no longer be a part of Little House, that he’d no longer be infused into every corner, every nook and cranny of the house he’d built. I told myself that I’d moved on. Those three months in Eugene where I’d let myself go, where I’d drank to the point of blacking out as much as my body could stand it, where I’d wandered rather than attending class.

I didn’t have the heart to tell my mother that I’d already been flunking out of the U of O, even only after three months. I couldn’t tell her about the rathole of an apartment I’d moved into off campus. I wouldn’t tell her about the nameless men that I’d brought to my bed almost nightly, more for the touch of something human than the sex. I wouldn’t tell her how feeling skin against mine was the only way I maintained my sanity—the soft trail of a tongue at the base my spine, a quickened breath in my ear as someone thrust above me.

I couldn’t tell her how I had obsessed over the accident. I couldn’t tell her that I’d called Shirley who worked as dispatch for the sheriff’s department. She and I had gone to school together, and she was sympathetic. I’d gotten a copy of the police report on my own, its contents telling me nothing more than I already knew. Shirley was able to get me scene photographs, showing my father’s truck upside down in the river at mile marker seventy-seven, showing his tire marks on the road and gravel, the scarred boulder down at the river’s edge that had struck the left front tire of the truck, breaking the axle and causing the truck to flip. It also showed a second set of tire tracks on the road, but noted no other debris was found. The river would have washed away any paint transfer as the truck stayed upside down underwater, the tail end sticking in the air at an angle.

I read my own statement that had been provided, and my mother’s, both of us saying Big Eddie had no enemies, that everyone worshipped the ground the man had walked on. I don’t remember speaking with the police, but I could see the anger in my words, could feel the heartbreak I’d felt, the denial.

But it was the coroner’s report I was most interested in. The coroner’s report that showed my father had suffered a broken clavicle from the impact and broken ribs, one of which had punctured his right lung. He had a splenic abrasion, a tencentimeter laceration on his right forearm. Another, smaller laceration on his forehead. A broken bone in his left ankle. None of which were life-threatening. No drugs or alcohol were found in my father’s system. His heart, the coroner said, was slightly enlarged, but otherwise he was a healthy forty-seven-year-old man when he died.

Cause of death: asphyxia due to suffocation caused by water entering the lungs and preventing the absorption of oxygen to cerebral hypoxia.

Which is a fancy way of saying that my father was alive when his truck came to rest upside down in the Umpqua. We were told that most likely he was unconscious as the water levels began to rise in the cab of the truck. It would have been fast, they said. He wouldn’t have felt a thing, they said. That the accident didn’t kill him, but that the river had. My father had drowned.

The longer I looked, the more I was sure my father was awake when the cold water filled his nose and mouth. His lungs. This thought became an obsession.

The police investigation had concluded it was a single-vehicle accident. There was no evidence of another vehicle involved. The black skid marks on the roadway had been partially washed away by rain that had begun to fall shortly after the accident would have occurred. Given the amount of water in my father’s lungs, the coroner thought he’d been in the water anywhere from four to six hours before he’d been discovered by a motorist who just happened to look down at the river as he passed by.

Possibly he’d fallen asleep, they’d said. After all, he’d gotten up at four that morning to head up to Portland to meet up with some friends.

Possibly he’d gotten distracted, they said.

Possibly he’d swerved to avoid a deer.

Possibly it was weather-related, given how great the storm was that day. Everyone was surprised it hadn’t flooded. They were sure it would. The town’s contingency plan had been put on notice. Sandbags were made ready. The Shriner’s Grange had been made available in case people needed to escape the rising waters. None of that had happened, of course. The river did not flood anyone or anything. Except my father.

So many possibilities, they said. We may never know, they said. But it didn’t appear to be foul play, they said. There was no evidence to suggest that. Everyone loved Big Eddie.

I didn’t tell my mother I thought that was a lie.

I gripped the steering wheel and stared up at Little House.

He’s gone, I told myself. He’s gone. He’s not here anymore. There’s no reason for him to be here anymore. He’s gone.

I opened the door, grabbing my bag off the seat next to me. I closed the door to the Ford and clutched the silver key in my hand as I forced one foot in front of the other. I ignored the way my hand shook as I slid the key into the lock. And for the first time since Big Eddie had died, I opened the door to Little House and stepped inside.

I didn’t know I was holding my breath until I realized I wasn’t breathing. I let it out slowly and reached over to flick the light switch. The lights flashed on overhead. The entryway lit up in front of me. Living room off to my left. Kitchen, off to my right. Hallway ahead led to bedrooms. I waited. I listened.

Nothing except the normal settling of Little House.

It hurt to be in there, yes. It hurt because I could look at the walls and tell you the exact day they’d gone up. It hurt because I could look up and see the exposed beams overhead and tell you how I’d held the ladder for him while he hammered away. I could tell you about everything having to do with Little House, the house my father built.

My heart thundered in my chest.

I hung the key on a key rack. I closed the door behind me. I set my bag down. I took a step forward.

And a hand that wasn’t there touched my shoulder.

I closed my eyes as I trembled. No, I thought. He’s gone. He’s not real. This isn’t real. Big Eddie died and this is my house now. Little House is mine, and oh my God, someone is breathing on me—

I spun around.

For a moment, I could have sworn I saw a flash of blue, deep and dark. But I blinked and it was gone and I couldn’t be sure it’d been there in the first place. I blinked again, my breath ragged in my throat. No one was behind me. The door was still closed. I thought about opening it and running up to Big House and cowering in my old bed, the covers pulled up and over my head, waiting for daylight, waiting for everything to make sense, for the world to brighten again, to lose the haze it had fallen under. But somehow, I stayed.

“I felt…,” I said out loud, not knowing who I was speaking to. My face grew hot and I shook my head. “Forget it,” I muttered. “I’m—”

haunted

“—home. That’s all that matters. I’m home.”

Little House shifted, the creaking of the wood its only reply.





Sheriff Griggs’s taillights have faded into the dark behind me.

An accident. That’s all it was.

Sure, I think. Why not? Everyone else thinks it was an accident. The cops. The staties. The town. The Trio. Even….

Even Mom.

It’s easier, I think, for her to believe it was an accident, that there was nothing more behind Big Eddie’s death. Maybe that’s what she needed to move on. Maybe that’s what she needed to be able to fall asleep at night. Maybe that’s the only way she could stay sane.

I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t make me wonder if I loved him more than she did.

Sheriff Griggs isn’t coming back, so I start up the blue Ford and pull back out onto the road, headed for home. The truck feels empty now, like whatever is (or isn’t) with me has gone.

I think about stopping at mile marker seventy-seven. But I was there yesterday, and I need to try and stay away. It’s getting to be too much again, seeing that place. It’s starting to follow me into my dreams again as well: a flash of a river, then brake lights pointing toward a grayed-out sky as rain pours down, lightning flashing blue and bright. A flutter of massive wings from some bird I can’t see somewhere in the distance. A hand always rests on my shoulder. The scene and sounds before me fill me with horror and I open my mouth in a silent scream, but the hand grips me tight. There is comfort there, near the river. Even so, I wake up sweating, a strangled noise dying on my lips as the roar of the river fades from my ears.

No. I need to stay away from seventy-seven tonight. It’s getting late as it is, what with Officer Friendly pulling me over. Even after all these years, I can’t pinpoint what it is about Griggs that bothers me. He and Big Eddie went to school together, were friends of a sort, along with my mom and the Trio, only four years age difference separating all of them. But they went their separate ways after high school, and when they all returned to Roseland after college, things had just been different. Dad had married Mom. The Trio lived in Seafare, on the coast. “People grow up and grow apart,” Big Eddie had said once when I asked.

Which is true, I guess. None of my friends, what few there were, stayed in Roseland after we graduated from Umpqua High over in Wilbur. They’d all talked about getting out of here and going to far off mythical places, like California or New York. I pretended to ignore the looks I received when I mumbled that I was perfectly happy right where I was. The world is too big for someone like me. I worry about getting lost. At least here, in Roseland, I know where I am. People know who I am. It’s enough.

If you were to ask me if there was something else buried in the anger, in the depths of my grief, I’d look at you funny, not understanding what you meant. There’s nothing else besides grief. Besides anger. But it’s a shelter, a haven that I have amassed around myself to protect me, to focus my thoughts and energy away from the inevitable truth.

I have no qualms admitting that Big Eddie was my best friend. Most sons and daughters would probably shudder at the idea of admitting it out loud, and maybe they’re right. But I’m not normal. I never have been. I was the nerd. The geek. The weirdo. I had friends, sure, but no one close. No one like my father. No one I felt like I could tell everything to, even the greatest secret I carried with me for months before I finally broke down and told him one day toward the end of building Little House. Toward the end of his life. Even that I could not keep from him.





“Spit it out,” he growled at me when I handed him the wrong-sized nail.

“What?” I asked, my eyes wide.

“Something’s been on your mind for weeks, Benji,” Big Eddie said, pulling himself to his full height. It might have been intimidating to most, and usually it wasn’t for me (he was my dad), but I couldn’t look up into his eyes.

“Oh,” I said, shuffling my feet. “That.”

He dropped a big hand on my head and ruffled my hair before sliding his hand to my chin and gripping it gently, pulling up until my gaze was locked onto his. “What do men do when they have important business to discuss?”





“They look each other in the eye,” I whisper out loud, pulling into the driveway,

almost home and lost in memory. “They look each other in the eye because it shows respect.” I barely acknowledge the blue flash that skates off somewhere to my right in the dark.





“That’s right,” my father said, dropping his grip from my chin, then putting his

hand on my shoulder and squeezing gently. “And I respect you, and you respect me, right?”

“Right,” I said, never turning my gaze away.

“Now, what’s going on, son? It isn’t like you to keep things from me. Not for this long.”

“I’m scared.”

His eyes widened. “Of me?”

I shook my head. Then shrugged. I didn’t know which was true.

“Benji, what on earth would make you scared of me?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice cracking. Still, I couldn’t look away. “Did you break the law?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you hurt someone?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you hurt yourself?”

“No, sir.”

“Then why are you shaking?”

He blurred as my eyes burned. “Because I’m afraid you won’t look me in the eye anymore. That you won’t respect me.”

Big Eddie leaned over, so that our faces were only inches from each other. He studied me and I let him. “I will always look you in the eye,” he finally said. “I’ve raised you to be honest and kind. I’ve raised you to be brave and strong. If you can become the man I think you’ll be, then you and me will always be eye to eye. You get me?”

I nodded, because I did. “Deep breath,” he said, his hand still on my shoulder. I took in air. “Let it out,” he said. I did. “Now, tell me.”

“I think I might… be… you know. Gay. Or whatever.”

He cocked his head at me and squinted his eyes, which would have been funny under normal circumstances. But this was not normal. I couldn’t breathe. He tightened his grip on me. His nostrils flared. He dropped his hand and stood up straight, still looking me in the eye. I followed him as he went up. “You think?” he said, crossing his arms across his chest.

I shook my head. I knew what he was after. “I know,” I told him.

He nodded. And then, unbelievably, he laughed. “Jesus Christ, boy! Where the hell do you get off scaring me like that!”

My heart sunk. He doesn’t believe me, I thought. That hurt worse than any kind of fury from him could have.

“I thought you were going to tell me something really bad!” He laughed harder, slapping his hand against his thigh. He caught my eye again and something passed then between us, and he must have felt my fear, my pain. His laughter bled to chuckles and he wiped his eyes and leaned down before me again, putting his hand back on my shoulder.

“You sure?” he asked, a small smile on his face.

I nodded, tears on my cheeks.

“Benji, do you know me?”

“Sir?”

“Do you know who I am?”

“You’re Big Eddie,” I said.

“And?”