Orphaned Story from Book Magazine » “The New Leader”
randomly:
Then we crossed the bridge. Our mother was going to show us the river, how it had risen almost up to the path where we walked single file, the water nearly up to our feet, first my little brother Derek, then our mother, then me. As we walked we knew something would happen to one of us, but not this.
It didn't seem so much that Derek fell. He just stepped off the path, as if it took a turn—into the river—that only he could see. And of course the water couldn't hold him up. He sank instantly, making the slightest sound as he disappeared, the slightest wake in the moving water, the river deep and green and fast and powerful, more powerful than we could imagine, and our mother seemed to swallow the sound of Derek's fall, reaching out into the air with her hand and whispering sharply, "Derek," saying it but not saying it because there was no time to say it. Instead she dropped to her knees, then flattened herself on the path, and thrust her hand into the water, reaching as far as her arm would reach.
You know, of course, that a story like this does not always have a happy ending. In a story like this there are almost always search parties. There are parents shouting and crying and losing their minds with the thought of their drowned son. There is blame, leading to divorce and lawsuits. The surviving brother spends the rest of his life wondering why it wasn't him, wondering what would have happened if he had been first in line, the leader, if he would have taken the same step, if he would have been able to swim up to the surface, to find the shore. The surviving brother becomes depressed, alienated, drug addicted. The surviving brother nearly becomes a spelling bee champion, but loses in the final round. He becomes a mediocre chess player. He becomes a toll booth operator. He spends his days at the Museum of Natural History. The surviving brother remains the survivor, always and forever secondary to the other because he is alive, unable to outperform the memory of his drowned brother.
But this is not that story. This is a very different story.
A reminder: Our mother was lying on the path, her arm beyond the edge, plunged into the water where it seemed to disappear, flailing below the surface as if the world were turned inside out and she was the one drowning, waving for help, thrashing and drifting in the current of the fast-moving river, saying a kind of desperate prayer and knowing that she has breathed her last breath of air, and that all breath now will be wet, terrifying and eventually unnecessary.
Perhaps, having been submerged as long as he was submerged—fifteen, thirty, forty-five, sixty seconds—he was caught in an eddy, circling there in that spot, circling back and under, forward and up, backward and under. Perhaps he simply went beneath the water and stayed there near the bank. Perhaps Mother's prayer—"Please, Derek, Jesus, God, please, Derek"—pulled him back toward us, put his collar into her hand.
I waited. I kept a secret. As the water swallowed my brother, I felt alive. There wasn't time for the reality of what was happening to make sense to me, but I wonder if I would have eventually recovered from my initial thrill. As my mother caught Derek by the collar, pulling him up from the water and setting him on the bank, drenched and coughing, I cannot deny my disappointment. When he finished coughing, he let out what sounded like an abrupt laugh—a single "whoop!"
"Jesus," said Mother. "Jesus, God, thank you."
My memory of this event is as vivid as it is abstract, and I worry at the details, sometimes, as if not getting it right will cause the fabric of my life to unravel. But the one thing I know, the one verifiable thing that I want to share with you is this: What my mother did on that day was absolutely impossible. You could perform this same act a million times and never save Derek's life. He would drown. There would be a search. There would be danger signs posted near the water. My parents would divorce (though they divorced anyway). And the surviving brother would tell the story again and again, and the story would never change, as if it were the one story that could explain his life, why nothing significant had ever happened in his life, why he was a tour guide at the Museum of Natural History and nothing else, no hobbies, no motivation, no sex life.
Instead, both boys survived. My mother lifted Derek from the bank and carried him, turned us all around to get back up the path, away from the water, the single-file line reversed toward the bridge. I was now at the front, the new leader. The closer I came to safety, the harder it seemed to keep my balance, and my mother whispered at my heels, "Hurry up, now, we have to get Derek dry." I could feel them at my back, my brother so completely filling our mother's arms that I knew, should I fall, there was no one left to save me.
// posted by terry@bainbooks.com //
// permalink // linking blogs
// Read the comments (there are 1) / Post a Comment
Recently
By Its Cover / Chipp Kidd Poetry Month Poster / Another Reason to Hate Canada (it's all jealousy, of course) / The Jon Katz Page / By its Cover: The Family Tree by Carole Cadwalldr / By its Cover: In Other Words by Christopher J. Moore / By its Cover: The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs by Alexander McCall Smith / By its Cover: The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe / By its Cover: Fairy Tales by Burlie Doherty, illustrated by Jane Ray / By its Cover: Thinking With Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students / By its Cover: Everyday Matters by Danny Gregory /
Memory
May 2004 / August 2004 / September 2004 / October 2004 / November 2004 / December 2004 / January 2005 / March 2005 / April 2005 /
PS: IC.XC.NIKA
Everything on this and all Terry Bain websites (unless otherwise noted), including all text and images, is licensed for your use via Creative Commons License.
Because Blogger makes sense. Because Google owns blogger and Google makes sense. Because life is short and why would I spend more time than necessary worrying about what blogging system I was using. Blog on.
Didn't you hear? Geeks are cool. And Geekhosting is not just cool, it's cheap, and I've had very few problems with those folks. So there I stay.
