In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [77]
Then the line snapped, spitting back against my hands and face. Luke stood steady. I could feel the warmth of his stomach and thighs and knew he watched the river as I did, as though we might see the fish jump once, stitching the night down with its moonlit thread.
Brother Lang eased the rod from me and gave it to Terry. My fingers stayed curled like the hands of a hag.
“You were great, kiddo.” They were all smiling, and then Brother Lang broke into a full laugh. “That old fish is going to remember you for a long time.”
They walked with me slowly, matching their steps to my stiff shuffle. Already they were polishing the story—my story—of the battle. I heard told for me the length of my endurance, how the night came on and I stayed, never complaining, rock-solid against the fish. I crawled into the backseat, the soreness dulling to a kind of comfort, soothed by the warmth of their praise.
Pain is nothing that cannot be reinvented. Like so many things, it’s a matter of perspective. The fish was a log or it wasn’t. The rawness of my hands and the bruise in my side were wounds, or they were badges of courage. So many things depend on the stories we tell ourselves, or on the stories that others tell of us. The story itself can change, be enlarged, be diminished. I had already begun the story I would tell my friends of how I tolerated that summer with the Langs and came back unchanged: it was a map I intended to follow. But now my story had been interrupted. How did this fit in? It would sound foolish in the telling. I tried to revise what had happened to fit my narrative, but no matter how many ways I recited it, it came out the same: something had changed. I listened, and although it was all about me, it had nothing to do with the untidiness of my hair and clothes or how polite I was. What mattered was that I had stayed tough, fought it out. They were proud of me for doing this thing that I could never not do: dig in, hold on, fight the pull toward home.
That night, the air came in cool and silent through my window. I held the last of the tattered Marlboros, closing my fist harder and harder, then dropped them to the ground outside. Such a small and pathetic gesture, as though every sin could be rolled tight as tobacco and dropped a few feet into another world.
I lay back in my bed and allowed my bitterness its exit, with a breath let out the hate, let it drift from the window and into the dark. Believe that it is this easy. Believe that a young girl felt her new self descend like a cloak, a smooth and unblemished skin—cool, like a dampened sheet against fever. This is God, I thought. I whispered, “I am done. Forgive me.”
The next morning I woke as I knew I would: joyful, radiant, washed in the blood of the Lamb. Surrender is no less sweet than the fight: absolution, pure submission, bliss in having no will that cannot be consumed, floating like Ophelia in the lovely waters.
I announced my conversion at breakfast and welcomed without self-consciousness their prayers. They laid their hands on my head and shoulders and gave thanks, and I felt the last of my old self spill out. I cried, great, gulping sobs that wrenched my guts, and they said this too was as it should be.
That day was no different in some ways. The men worked, the women cleaned, shopped and cooked. But I felt the prayers coming back to me and the songs filled my head. I tied my hair back and hummed. When I looked at Sarah, she smiled and I flushed with pleasure. I became once again reflective of the wishes and expectations of my elders, a steady moon of a girl.
I don’t remember speaking of my parents then, though it would seem natural to assume we would have called them. What better news could they imagine? Their daughter had been reborn, had come back into the fold. Perhaps I could have gone home. But I did not call, nor do I know if the Langs did. I did not want to leave. I wanted to stay in this new life with these people who had made a place for the prodigal at their own table.
The church in Spokane sat directly across the alley from the