Free Just Beneath My Skin by Darren Greer Page B

falls. If it was summer and the river was low I could have made it all the way across on the rocks at practically any point above or below without getting so much as a wet sneaker. But in August the water starts to rise, and by late September, after the fall rains, the river runs fast and wide and unbroken from Memragouche Lake to the ocean twenty miles away in Oldsport. The water is colder and the current swifter than she looks. I need to be careful where I step in. I think if I can get across the river here I can get out to the Highway #7 and hitch or walk to Carla’s. I don’t give thought to what will happen when I get there, or how I’m supposed to get back to the city without the Pinto.
    Below the second eddy is a place they call the salmon pool, where the salmon spawned before the acid rain killed them off, where the out-of-town fisherman would line the banks with their fly rods every May and June hoping to catch a salmon griltz. Below that is the narrows, where the river pinches off to no more than a stone’s throw across, and runs shallow over rocks and sand for a quarter mile before she deepens and broadens and ambles on her way again. I decide to cross here. By the looks of it, the water isn’t deep and I can get across no problem. I step in with my Nikes on. The water is freezing, and the current, even in these shallows, is strong, tugging at my legs and threatening to carry me off my feet and down the river if I’m not careful. For a moment when I first wade into the river, it feels like I’m above myself again, staring down, and suddenly I feel the fool. Why don’t I face Johnny Lang anyway, instead of running off like a scared cat and ending up here, knee-deep and half-froze to death in the river? But Johnny has a gun, I tell myself, and I don’t. Maybe in a fair fight I could take him. And even if I couldn’t I would have the satisfaction of trying. But with Johnny there’s no such thing as a fair fight. If I try, and get killed, what will happen to Nathan?
    There’s no such thing as heroes. Anyone who stands up to Johnny Lang has to be stupid. Most would end up dragging their chicken ass across the river in September ’cause they don’t want to wind up dead. I wade further into the river, thinking this and that, and trying not to think about the water as it rises around me. I stop and gently place each foot ahead before I step, arms lifted to keep them dry, and so I won’t lose my balance and go under. Then the bed of the river dips and the water reaches my nuts and the world turns blue for a minute. I gasp at the shock of it. The current pulls and pushes and is getting harder to fight. The river gurgles and murmurs and tugs seductively as it breaks around my waist, but I keep pushing on.
    â€œHey McNeil.”
    I don’t bother to turn. There I am, standing in the middle of the river, my arms raised and water now up to my chest, and there’s Johnny standing on the shore behind me. Maybe he had me in his sights all along and was waiting for me to wade into the river where I wouldn’t be able to get away.
    â€œTurn around,” he says.
    Slowly, a few steps at a time, I shuffle around against the current ’til I am facing Johnny, arms still raised like I am being held up in a cheesy Western. Johnny stands there on the bank, holding the gun loosely at his waist but pointing at me. He’s smiling. “You’re fucked, McNeil,” he says. “I wasn’t going to shoot you. Just scare you a little. But now I am.”
    â€œI know,” I say, as Johnny slowly lifts the gun to his shoulder and aims it at my face. I close my eyes and wait for it. For whatever comes next. Let it be quick, I pray, though I don’t believe in my father’s God, or in any God at all. The shot comes. The explosion echoes up and down the river and suddenly I am under water and being carried away by the current and, for a while, in my