The Gate 2 Part 13

Tab works a drill in Walt Emory's machine shop three miles upriver. He's worked there since arriving just shy of a year ago, drilling holes in chunks of die-cast metal. But as often as he works, his mind is back there, back on the Mekong, drifting along the current. The sweat on his brow becomes river water splashed up onto him from the force of bullets.

The memories make Tab close his eyes. He tries to force the memories back so they can't overwhelm him, but sometimes they are impossible to ignore.

So long ago.

Bullets. Muddy water. Pain.

In the Mekong, thrown off the raft they had paid river pirates so much to take them on.

Mother screaming. A bullet ripping through her chest, her neck, spraying blood on the boy she carries. Tab grabs the boy, his baby brother, as his mother sinks beneath the murky water. His father is gone too, the only trace of him a brief patch of rust on the river's surface. The brother squirms in Tab's arms, screaming, crying. Bullets slap the water around them. Tab holds his breath. Holds his brother close against his chest. A bullet catches Tab in the back of the shoulder. Another in the back. Another below that. Intense pain, like spears of ice. More bullets zip past his ear, kiss the water like hot drops of rain. He smells cooked flesh-his own-where the bullets entered. Water bites into his eyes.

His brother's forehead is warm against his chin, his brother's breath is wet against his neck.

I'm sorry, brother. I'm sorry.

Tab sinks below the surface. Holds his brother with one hand, swims with the other as his brother struggles, tries to break free of Tab's weakening grip.

Underwater, the bullets sound like grease splattering on a flame. Tab swims deeper. Swims back, to the right, forward, to the right. Impossible to see past the blood rising off his wounds in the dark water. He surfaces. Takes a breath. Plunges back in.

His brother stops squirming.

I am so sorry.

How many times has Tab woken at night, crying, panicking, the memory so fresh and urgent? How many times has he gotten out of bed to check on Carl, to make sure he was okay, make sure he was breathing? How many times?

Night. Dark. The sounds of flowing water and chirruping frogs. Carl snores heavily in his room. Tab rises from bed and creeps barefoot through the cabin out onto the pine needle strewn ground. He feels his way over the short path that leads to the river, finds the rope that holds the canoe, and unties it from the tree. He tosses the loose end into the canoe and pushes until the current grabs hold. Moonlight glimmers on the water, the canoe a black void traveling slowly down the middle.

Tab walks back to the cabin, feeling guilty. Relieved.

But-morning- Carl is gone. Tab steps into the daylight, his eyes turning to the tree where the canoe was tied, and his muscles tense at the sight of the rope secure around the tree.

How can that be? He didn't release the canoe from the rope, he released the rope from the tree. And now there it is again, tight around tree. Had he only dreamed it last night? But there on the ground are the impressions of his feet in the soft pine needles.

Did the canoe come back?

And did Carl take the canoe out again?

Tab hurries back inside and goes straight to Carl's room. He digs through the drawers, rifling through the clothes and books and videotapes. What am I looking for? Drugs? No. Maybe, yes, but...

Nothing. He finds nothing. He opens Carl's closet. Pushes the clothes aside. Freezes. Scrawled on the back of the closet wall is the word Farbanti. And curled up in the corner of the closet is a heap of black cloth. Tab picks it up and shakes it out. A black, hooded robe. And beneath that lies a bundle of black candles, bound together with the same kind of rope that held (did it really hold?) the canoe in place.

Carl comes home late. He isn't sweating.

"Where have you been?"

Carl eyes him suspiciously. "What do you mean? I was on the river."

"Where does the river take you? What do you do on the river all day? Who do you go see?" Tab holds up the robe and candles. "What are these?"

"You went in my closet?"

"Answer me!"

"Nothing. Just stuff."

"What kind of stuff?"

Carl's eyes harden. "You wouldn't understand."

And Carl's neck. A red scratch disappears beneath his shirt...

"Take off your shirt," Tab says.

"Father-"

"Now!"

Carl takes off his shirt. Tab gasps. His chest is covered with long, deep gouges.

"They're just scratches." Carl puts his shirt back on. "It's nothing."

"Who's doing this to you?"

"Friends."

"What friends? Who?"

"I'm going to my room. I want to be alone."

"No," Tab says. "What kind of friends do this? What would your mother say?"

"I don't care what Mom would say. She's not-"

Tab grabs Carl tightly by the throat.

Carl's eyes widen. "Stop it. You're choking me."

Tab shakes. "Don't ever talk about your mother like that again." His anger is intense but brief. He drops his arm. Swallows. "I'm sorry."

Carl sucks in his breath, chokes back tears. He turns and flees to his room, slamming the door behind him.

Soon Tab hears the sound of Carl's television, the volume shaking the small cabin's walls.

Is it gangs all over again? Even up here? In the north woods?

What can I do? Lock him in his room? Forbid him to go out?

Move again?

No...

We'll survive this, Tab thinks, not really believing the words even as he thinks them. We'll survive.

The roadhouse. Packed. Loud. Full of cigarette smoke. The reek of beer.

"Who's this?" Tab scribbles Farbanti on a napkin and pa.s.ses it to Jim.

Jim squints. "h.e.l.l if I know. Why?"

Tab looks up at the bartender, the only man in the area with whom he's ever had a decent conversation. His voice cracks. "I think I'm losing my son. I don't know what to do."

"He's what? Sixteen? You gotta let *em go sometime." Jim places a shot gla.s.s in front of Tab and fills it to the rim with Jack Daniels. Tab drinks. Sets the gla.s.s down. Nods at Jim, his face blank. Jim fills it and says, "It's a b.i.t.c.h. Don't I know it."

Gone. When Tab gets back to the cabin that night, Carl and the canoe are gone. Tab sits at the edge of the river, throwing handfuls of sticks, pine needles, and dirt into the water. The moon is a bright pearl through the trees. A female moose splashes clumsily through the water thirty yards upstream.

Tab stands and brushes debris from his pants. When he looks downriver, he sees the black silhouette of a familiar shape. The canoe. Floating upstream against the steady current. Tab squints, shields his eyes from the glare of the moon. The canoe is empty. Tab steps back, away from the sh.o.r.e, as the canoe glides to a stop where he'd sat. It rocks gently from side to side as tiny ripples of water slap against its hull.

Is this a trick? Tab looks down the sh.o.r.e as far as he can. Is Carl just out of sight, laughing? But Tab sees no one, hears no movement.

"Carl!" he yells. He cups his hands around his mouth. "Carl!" His voice echoes through the forest, the cry of a wounded bird.

The canoe slowly turns in the water, its bow pointing downriver, yet maintains its place despite the pull of the current.

"Carl!"

Tab steps toward the canoe. He cautiously leans over it. There is only the paddle, yet its blade rests in a pool of dark liquid. Blood? It is hard to tell in only the moonlight, but if it's blood- "Carl!" Desperate now. "Carl! Please answer!"

Nothing.

He steps warily into the canoe's stern. It wobbles, but Tab holds out his arms and the canoe steadies. He sits carefully. Picks up the paddle. Holds it close to his face and smells the blade. Is it blood?

The canoe slips slowly from sh.o.r.e and the current grabs hold. Tab sits frozen in place, barely able to breath, remembering the bullets, the blood of his mother and father, remembering the moment his baby brother became still in his arms...

"No!" he cries.

He lifts the paddle. Sticks it hard in the water. If the canoe is to take him somewhere, than he'll be the one to guide it, to conform it to his own pace.

Sweat. Paddle. Propelling forward through the thin, rusty river.

How much loss can a man take?

He paddles on one side, then the other, determined to find his son.

Sweat. Muscles screaming.

We'll talk. About where I come from. What he means to me. We'll talk, father and son, and we'll fish and canoe together. I won't be afraid to share my pain with him. He'll understand. We'll be friends. We'll be together. We will survive.

I will not lose you.

A wooden flute. Voices through the trees. Tab feels eyes all around, piercing his skin. He sees torch-light in the distance.

Murmuring. Whispers. His paddling has no effect on the canoe. It slows. Drifts.

Altar. On the river. The cold, rusty river.

The canoe turns toward sh.o.r.e.

Chanting. The sound of the flute close by. Figures in black robes appear and pull the canoe onto gravel. The gravel sc.r.a.pes the aluminum hull like bony fingers.

"Where is my son?" Tab asks, his voice unable to conceal his fear.

Pale arms appear from beneath the black robes and lift him from the canoe. He struggles, but has little strength left. They carry him to an altar made from rough planks of knotted pine and lay him on his back.

"Stop this," Tab says. "I just want my son."

They secure his wrists and ankles to the altar with copper wire. Stuff a rag in his mouth.

The chanting intensifies. Tab grows dizzy. This can't be real.

A figure leans over Tab and pulls back a deep, black hood.

Carl.

He pulls the rag out of his father's mouth.

"Carl," Tab whispers. "You don't have to do this. Please. I have so much to tell you. So much you need to know." He'll tell him of Cambodia, of the Mekong, the family who died there. He'll show Tab the bullet wounds on his back and shoulder. Then he'll understand. He'll see how much his father loves him.

"We can survive this," Tab whispers. "You and me." He smiles encouragement at his son. Nods. "We'll survive."