Rivers: A Novel by Michael Farris Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

direction.

5
    IT WAS MIDDAY BEFORE THERE was a moment of relief. The wind finally gave, and the rocking stopped, and the rain slacked. Mariposa unwrapped herself from the sleeping bag, put on her jeans and sweatshirt, socks and boots, stood, and moved to the window. She wiped the fog from the glass with her shirtsleeve and looked around.
    It had the look of a makeshift military compound that you might find in the middle of some forgotten war on the edge of a faraway jungle. A corral of sorts of the trailers that the government had once provided for those who had lost their homes. Short rectangular white things on wheels that symbolized the inadequacy of the effort to provide for the suffering. There were a dozen of them in a loose circle on the high ground of an old plantation where only the chimneys remained from the three-story antebellum. Stretching across the top and down the sides of each trailer were the same wild webs of rope that held her trailer to the ground. All but two of the trailers locked from the outside with deadbolts.
    Around the trailers the grass was high but in the circle there was slick red clay and a square fire pit built from cinder blocks taken from the rubble of broken-down country stores. Scattered behind the trailers were old pickups, some that would crank and some that wouldn’t, a couple of cattle trailers, refrigerators and freezers, odd pieces of furniture and mattress frames.
    She saw Cohen’s Jeep behind the old man’s trailer. Then she took a step over to her trailer door to see if it was locked. It wasn’t. Whichshe figured was a reward for what she and Evan had done. She walked over and took the shoe box from the floor and set it on the mattress and laid the sleeping bag over it. She then opened the door and hurried next door to Evan’s trailer and it was also unlocked so she went in.
    Evan and Brisco both rose up, startled.
    “What the hell,” Evan said. His blond hair was wild and his young brother, Brisco, squeezed a deflated football.
    “Nothing. Just don’t want Aggie to see me out.”
    The boys sat up on the mattress. Clothes and empty water bottles strewn about. An overturned chair and a busted Styrofoam cooler across the floor. Brisco lay back down and Evan got up, rubbing at his head and face.
    “Where you think he put the keys?” Mariposa whispered.
    Evan moved past her. Picked up an empty cup and looked in it as if expecting something to be there. He tossed it aside. “Why you whispering?” he asked.
    “I don’t know,” she said.
    “Then stop.”
    Mariposa moved around the small space, her arms folded. “I wish we wouldn’t have told Aggie about that house,” she whispered again.
    “Me, too,” he answered. “Stop whispering. You’re making me nervous.”
    “The keys,” she said at a normal volume. “Where you think he put them?”
    “Keys to what?”
    “To the Jeep.”
    “I don’t know. Same place he keeps the rest of them, I guess.”
    Mariposa exhaled. She dropped her head in disgust. Brisco picked up two empty water bottles and started playing drums on the wall.
    Evan moved to the door, opened it, and sucked in the rainy, cool air, and closed it again.
    “I can’t take it anymore,” she said.
    “I know it.”
    “I ain’t joking around. I mean it.”
    “Just don’t do nothing dumb.”
    “I already did something dumb when we came back here with the Jeep. I told you we shoulda run on.”
    “Jesus, I can’t leave Brisco. What the hell are you talking about? Haul ass if you want to, but I’m with Brisco, don’t matter what shit I gotta put up with.”
    Brisco stopped the drumming and said, “Leave me where.”
    “Nowhere,” said Evan.
    She shook her head. “I know. I didn’t mean it like that.”
    “I hope like hell you didn’t.”
    He paused. Eased up. “You could if you want, though.”
    “I can’t do it by myself. Neither can you and him.”
    They squared off. One waited on the other with an answer. Like they did together