“I know you do,” and there was such pity in her, but a ruthless kind. “I do too, but maybe it’s not enough.”
Had she ended it with a pinprick, he’d have bled to death in bed.
The night ahead, having slept so long and hard during the day, was as wretched and restless as the last. He looked through the wooden box, and thought back to the morning porch:
The milk jumping the rail.
The jugular in my neck.
He saw Achilles and Tommy, Henry and Rory.
And Carey.
Of course he thought of Carey, and Saturday, and if she might go to The Surrounds anyway. He’d die to know, but would never ask her, and then he stopped and fully realized—a final forceful acknowledgment.
He got up and leaned forward on the desk.
You’re gone, he thought.
You left.
* * *
—
Soon after dawn the Murderer was up, too, and they walked the river like a road; they hiked up from the house.
At first there was a general slant, as the riverbed rose in altitude.
After a few hours, though, they were climbing giant, crestfallen boulders, and holding on to willows and river gums. Whether steep or gradual, one thing never changed; they could always see the power. The banks had a sort of girth. There was an obvious history of debris.
“Look at this,” the Murderer said. They were in a heavily wooded section; there were ladders of sunlight, hung up high in the shade, all in varied directions. His foot on an uprooted tree. A jacket of moss, and foliage.
And this, thought Clay.
He was next to an enormous rock, which appeared to have been dislodged.
They climbed more than half the day like that, and ate lunch on a long, granite overhang. They looked across the ranges.
The Murderer unpacked his bag.
Water. Bread and oranges. Cheese and dark chocolate. All of it passed from hand to hand, but nothing much more was said. Clay was sure there were similar thoughts, though—of the river, its showing of force:
So this is what we’re up against.
* * *
—
Through afternoon, they walked back down. Now and then a hand would reach up, to help the other, and when they returned, in darkness, in the riverbed, nothing more yet was spoken.
But surely it was now.
If ever there was a time to begin, it was this.
It wasn’t.
Not really: