What This River Keeps: A Novel

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO H ere was one more thing Ollie believed about life and how to live it: when it starts getting better, you don't dare back down. Quite the opposite-you pour gas on the fire. Add a cup of water to the flood. Salt to a wound. Basically, anything you can do to make something more potent. Say it however you want. So when he got home from work that afternoon he was thinking about his truck. He'd been driving the red girl around all over the country with a busted front end, and now that things were so good with Summer, it just didn't make sense to drive a dented pickup. He had a shiny new outlook on life and wanted his truck to reflect that. So he stood at the bar in his trailer, pawing through the contents of a seldom-used drawer looking for the yellow pages. He wanted to call Terry Barry's body shop. Instead ofthe directory he found an old Chinese throwing star he'd picked up at a flea market. It was metal and looked like a little saw blade. He laughed, fitting it into his hand. Once he made this call he'd go out back and throw the star at the stump at the edge of the field. See if it still stuck. He was going to Summer's later but a ninja had to make time for himself. Damn he felt good. She'd liked his mom a lot and now she believed him when he called his dad an asshole. She thought his mom was a sweet old lady, and offered to have them over to her house for dinner. He couldn't picture his dad moving around her place, but he was just happy Summer had gotten over how unplanned the whole thing had been. On the drive home, Spring slept and Summer kept saying they needed to go back to the farm more often. He didn't really care how many times that happened in the next month, but he was relieved no punches had been thrown. And then, best ofall, after she put Spring to bed, she allowed him into her bedroom and propped a chair against the door. "I think she's too tired tonight to hear anything," she said. Like always, he'd driven home before work, but last night she hadn't slid under the covers with all her clothes on. Rifling through the drawer with that happy buzz in his head he didn't hear the car pull up. He didn't detect anything until the soft knocking touched the door, a little bird asking to come inside. He jerked it open and there stood his mother. He looked down the path behind her, expecting to see his dad limping along. Not there. The silver Buick she drove was parked by his truck. "Mom! What are you doing here?" She'd been to his trailer before, but not for a long time and never alone. "I hated to come out here by myself this late-" 289 290 Greg Schwipps "It's not late, Mom. It's like five or six. Come on in here. I just got home from work not too long ago." "But I still should've called first. You probably got supper on the stove. Is Summer here?" She climbed up into the trailer and looked around. "Nah, she ain't here. I might run over to her place a little later on. I's just checking on some body shops when you walked up." She stood there, uncertain. He started to offer her a bar stool but that seemed too high and unwieldy. Instead he directed her to a chair in the living room. "This place is kind of disheveled at the moment," he said. She nodded. "Does Summer mind it? What about her daughter?" "They don't really hang out here all that much. It's usually a lot easier for me to go to her place." She nodded again and looked down at her lap. "You feeling good, Ma? You want something to drink or something?" She didn't say anything and he was frightened to see the sudden wash of tears coming down her face. He knelt on the dirty carpet beside her. "Hey! What is it now?" She shook her head, like she meant to say no, it's nothing, but still the tears came. He put his hand...