Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [41]
We climbed out of the basement and stepped out of the liquor store underneath a single streetlight. Returning home, she talked more about the homes we passed, their history and those who owned them. I listened, walked off the buzz and felt something strange. I had spent my life swimming between the islands inside myself but had never seen one from another. That night, I stared across the ocean in me and saw, for the first time, a distant shore.
12
JUNE 2, MORNING
We passed the night on the beach beneath a crape myrtle.
Abbie laid her head on my lap and slept in fits while I listened, thought back through the last four years and grew angrier. Watching three idiots rifle through our life was, in football terms, piling on. I was downright pissed. She mumbled, talked in garbled sentences and her arms and legs twitched in short violent strokes. Given the pain, she’d not known deep sleep in months. Maybe a year. She floated in and out of consciousness—resting just beneath the surface. It was like watching someone who slept with one eye open.
I ran my fingers down her temple, ear, neck and along her shoulder. The shadows around her eyes were dark and sockets sunk deep. Her fingers trembled. I cupped them inside mine and tucked them beneath her chin.
She’d hoped for so much, so many times and for so long but each scan, each new devastating report had chipped away at her. Doctors told me that the restlessness was a function of the illness—the deterioration of her central nervous system, the medicines that poisoned her. I think there was more to it. Deep down, Abbie knew that if she let her guard down she’d never wake up.
I’m a sucker for the Rocky movies. I’ve watched each some twenty times. I can’t explain that other than there’s just something about a man who refuses to go down. Who stands toe to toe, time and time again and says, I am. Don’t take that the wrong way. I’m no Rock. Hardly. But my Abbie is. Look at her. Here lies the most beautiful, most precious, most magnificent woman on the planet who, despite the baggy skin and that little voice sitting on her shoulder telling her she’s not even a shadow of her former self, is still swinging. Still throwing blows. Still reaching deep.
In the weeks and months to come, people will look at what I’ve done and ask me why. Why’d I do it? I’m not sure I can put that into words. If they have to ask, then they really won’t understand the answer. At least, an answer they can accept or will understand.
Nobody fights forever, so I prepared myself for two battles. The first was fighting alongside her. We’ve done that. As well as two can. But as the years have ticked by, I’ve seen a second front coming—and it’s the tougher of the two. Abbie might still be swinging but she was beat. To be honest, I think she was still in the ring fighting, simply for me. Lately, the thing that had been keeping me up nights was wondering what would happen if I told her that she could let her guard down—that she could stop fighting. What if she was just waiting on me?
WHEN SUNRISE FINALLY BROKE through the treetops, I was ready to shoot somebody. She woke, lifted her head off my lap, rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and said, “How you doing?” I turned downriver, thumbed away the tears, my right index finger tapping the trigger guard of the shotgun. She raised an eyebrow. “That well, huh?”
She sat up. “Don’t let them rob us of this. Got it?” See what I mean?
“Wait here while I go see what’s left.” I slipped down into the river and headed back to the campsite.
My reconnaissance didn’t take long. They’d thrown everything into the fire. The fire must have been hot because only ashes littered the riverbank. The second canoe was empty but it would float. In short, we had no food, no shelter, and no GPS. Abbie had her sleeping bag and the T-shirt she was wearing but nothing else. I had the long-sleeved shirt I was wearing, the shorts I had on, a pair of Tevas, a shotgun, a revolver and the Pelican case. None of which we could eat or drink.
We had to get going.
I pulled the mango-colored