River Hills--a story (end)

Strangers, somehow brought together in their mutual anxiety by what's there for all to see on the river.

"I came down to have a look at the river," Carol told her. "It's something I do a lot."

"You too?" she said.

Carol shrugged her shoulders. "You mean you weren't worried?"

"I'm always worried," the woman said. "It comes with the territory." She stopped, ten feet away, just far enough that Carol couldn't quite read the name on the plate on her chest. "Sometimes--middle of the shift--I come down and take a little hike," she said. "It's my region anyway--it's not like I'm slacking."

"There's something about water," Carol said.

The woman nodded, coming closer. "You're not scared?"

"Scared?" she said.

"I figure you don't know," she told her. "Stockbridge--you're not scared of the kid who shot his girlfriend?"

"Don't know what?" Carol said.

"He turned himself in," the woman told her, smiling. "We pretty much knew he would. Might have been his mother on the TV though," she told her. "I thought you might have heard the story--"

"I didn’t know," Carol said. “I was worried, you know—about him just ending it all.”

“Me too,” the cop said. “Didn’t happen. Dodged a bullet on that one—sheesh!" She took a big breath. "I guess that’s a bad joke.”

Carol could have kissed her. Her name was Tanya, the badge said.

“Hope you don’t mind me saying it,” Tanya said, “but sometimes it’s an awful job—this one.” 

Carol let that one go for the time being, didn't want to pry. She looked away at the river. "Sometimes when I'm down here alone, there's beaver running around on the banks across the river, wreaking havoc." She pointed to the other side. "You think that all those uprooted trees come from the spring floods, but you're wrong. Beavers massacre 'em over there--here too." She pointed at trees not more than twenty feet away, already half-gnawed. "People think they're smart, but they aren't--that's what I'm told. They just do it for the heck of it--maybe to keep their teeth sharp, who knows?"

"'Nature's engineers'," Carol said. "I always thought of them as nature's engineers, dam builders."

"Ask the guy up the hill." She nodded toward the park ranger's office. "He wishes he could get rid of the whole lot of them. All they do is make a mess. But nobody buys beaver hats anymore." And then, for the first time, the woman looked directly at her in a way that dropped any bit of profession and pretense. She smiled. "I'm glad you're all right. I've already had a huge day."

"At least the kid's alive," Carol said.

"He's not really a boy--he's as old as I am." She shook her head, looked around aimlessly. "I was with his mother last night for a while," she said, a begrudging smile. "Woman officers, you know--we're supposed to be better at that sort of thing." She shook her head. "That woman--her heart is gone. It's like it's not even there. That kid may have shot his girl, but he killed his mother."

"I saw her," Carol said.

"She was worse off camera," the cop said. "No kidding."

She felt as if the woman had said enough. "So, this is your beat?" Carol said.

She smiled. "There's a place down the river--the other way," she said. She was Paige's age, little more. "If you'd have walked the opposite direction, you would have seen it." She half turned. "You want to see? It's a place I go when--" she shrugged her shoulders, "--when I just like, have to, you know?" Once again, she looked at Carol in a way that seemed child-like in its pleading. "I suppose it's unprofessional, but this job--it isn't what I thought it was going to be. It's not glamorous and it's not at all easy." She stopped, mid-sentence, then continued, "--on a woman."

"Never thought of it, I guess," Carol said. "I'm sorry."

Tanya smiled. "I don't want pity," she said. "And it's not that I don't like what I do. There's just some times I got to stop down here and go see this upturned tree--in the river." She pulled her hands out of her pockets and drew a circle in the air. "It's huge. Some beaver probably dumped it a dozen years ago and the branches are all bleached like old bones--like that." She pointed at flattened cottonwood just fifty yards away in the river. "It's like that, but it's bigger, much bigger." Again, her hands drew out the branches. "But this spring, you know, when the water was high?--the river grabbed this whole other tree and laid it in those branches so that the whole thing looks almost like a big--" she bit her lip, searching for words, "--well, like a big cross, I guess." 

She seemed embarrassed. "I used to believe in God," Tanya said. "Sometimes I look at that tree, you know--at the way it makes a huge cross in the middle of the river, right in the middle of all that mud, and it just gets me--I mean, something weird like that. It's huge." Her face fell. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's been a tough one the last couple days--that mother and the girl--"

"It's okay," Carol said. "Show me. I'd love to see."

"Maybe it won't mean anything to you--I don't know," she said. "But it's huge, and it sits right out there like something God stuck in the middle of everything, you know? It's just not something you'd expect to find--you know what I mean? It's like a shock or something, and it fills up something I guess is empty in me. I'm sorry--"

"What do you mean 'you used to be a believer'?" Carol said, laughing. "You sound like you still are."

"If I am, it's because of that tree." And she laughed, hard, in big heaves of breath that could have, in a moment, evolved into tears. "That's stupid, isn't it?" she said. "And I'm sorry--here I am an officer of the law and all of that, and I'm spilling my guts over this river bank. I should be better than that."

"We all should be better than we are," Carol told her, and she walked up to her, then waited for the offer a shoulder. When it came, she put an arm around her. "Show me," she said. "I want to see this huge tree. I don't believe it. I need it too."

"Somebody your age got problems?" the woman said.

"You know better than to ask that," Carol said. "You're a cop."

"You know," the woman said. "You got your life, and you got your job, but that's not everything really." She pulled away. "Let me show you. That's why I came."

*

When she got home, Lloyd was standing outside the back door, waiting, his jacket on. "You must have done some serious shopping," he said. 

"I didn't go," she told him.

When she came up the walk, he grabbed her in his arms. "Carol, that kid--the guy who shot his girl?--he came home. He's not dead. It was on TV. He came back."

"I know," she said. "I heard." She put an arm around him, tucked her hand in the pocket of his jacket. "I went down to the river--"

"You did?" he said.

"I went down to the river, and you can't believe what I saw," she told him. "Lloyd--I'll show you. It's incredible."

"We haven't been there for a long time," he said. "Just down the road, you mean?"

She pinched his side. "I'll take you, Lloyd. Let's just go. I got to show you."