blue i shall call you blue because all i have is blue
—and I think about how nice it seems, how soft and wonderful and muted. I
don’t know why I never thought of it this way before. It’s safer down here, floating
in the deep blue dark, and I think how wonderful it feels just to float. I could float
here for the rest of my—
A sharp sound, metal moving against rock.
It grates against my ears and I grit my teeth. But it dislodges something inside
me as well, and I no longer want to float in the blue. The river is trying to hold me
here, trying to make me forget. Breathe, it whispers in my ear. Open up your mouth
and take a deep breath and you will be fine. It’s all blue, you know. Everything down
here is blue.
The sound is louder. I see a faint shape outlined ahead.
The truck.
I push forward, twisting through the river. The red truck comes into sharper
focus, the cab upside down and pressed against the bed of the river. Its tail end is at
an angle and breaches the surface.
I move closer and see the driver’s window is busted out. It must have happened
in the impact. It must have been—
A flash of white.
It’s an arm, I think wildly in the river. It’s an arm. It’s Big Eddie. It’s my father.
The last time I saw my father was in the morgue when he was dead and white and not
my father. He was so fucking white and the man in scrubs said it was because he had been underwater for a long time, that it was the river’s fault he looked the way he
did. This is the river. This is my father. This is—
I’m closer now. My father holds something in his hand that drifts gently up and
down. It’s too hazy for me to see it, so I move closer. I don’t want to see my father’s
face, I don’t want to see any more of his body trapped here underneath the river, but I
must get closer. My chest is starting to burn, and all I really want to do is take a great
gasping breath, so all the blue fills my lungs and all the river is within me. It’s so
fucking dangerous, this thinking, and part of me is screaming to stop, just screaming
for me to kick to the surface, to pray and pray and pray for the angel to pull me
away. But I can’t. I won’t. Not when I am so close and can see—
An arm wraps around my chest and pulls me away.
But not before I see the great blue feather in my father’s hand.
Rising up.
Rising down.
This was the last time I saw my father’s face.
“Are you sure, Benji?” my mother asked, her voice hollow. “I don’t know if you should do this.”
“Let one of us handle it,” my Aunt Mary said, tears leaking from her eyes. She’d been this way since she, Nina, and Christie arrived hours before. “You shouldn’t have to see this. It’s not fair. I don’t want you to hurt anymore.”
“It’s morbid is what it is,” my Aunt Christie said, glancing around, narrowing her eyes. “Why does anyone even have to do it?”
“Benji, Benji, Benji,” my Aunt Nina said, petting my hair and kissing my cheek. “You are strong and brave. Big Eddie always thought so. You know that? He always thought so. All the time he did.”
I must stand, I thought. I must stand and be true.
“I just don’t get it,” Christie said, sounding upset. “Why do you have to go in there?” She wrung her hands, cracking the knuckles.
“His wallet was lost in the river,” I said, my voice rough. “His wallet is gone, and even though it’s his truck, they still need a family member to identify him.”
“Griggs knows him,” Mary muttered. “He should have been able to do it just fine. Don’t know why he needs to involve us.”
“Benji,” my mother said, biting her bottom lip. More tears welled in her eyes. “Maybe they’re right. Maybe you shouldn’t see—”
I shook my head and said, “No. No, I will do this. This is my father. He would do the same for me, so I will do what needs to be done.”
A knock on the conference room door. We fell silent as the door opened. Doc Heward, on call because the county coroner was out of the state at the moment, stuck his head in, eyes somber and gentle. “Everything okay