Vo l . 2 , N o . 1 Heart-shaped aspen and birch leaves, the color of pure gold, lay everywhere on the black Grace. Thin and sharp, like they were shaved off of something bigger. They even covered the toes of Monty’s boots. Every so often a shower of leaves would come over from the trees to the east of the building. Monty and Tom would stop and look. Then go back to work. This afternoon’s work was so pleasant, or at least pain-free, that Monty did not want to go back in his thoughts to last year. Did not want to let that happen again. Tried to stop his own thoughts when he felt the memories welling up. He missed a stroke and cursed. Tom looked over; Monty waved and shook his head. At the far end of Kim and Monty Feller’s yard, the rising slough made a pleasant rushing noise against the cutbank. Normally low and silent, like tea left in a cup, for a few weeks last fall it became deeper and audible. Monty and his son Jeremiah, from his first marriage, came up the slough from the Tanana River a week before the accident and saw that Kim and Monty’s three year old daughter Corinna was poised on the bank to greet them. “Get back, honey!” He called. Where was Kim? But then Kim was right there before he even finished the thought, her arm scooped around Corinna, hauling her back. They drew an imaginary line across the grass, three feet back from the slough. They talked and talked about it. “Stay behind that line, Honey.” “What color is the line, daddy?” “It’s orange. It’s International Orange-- no it’s red, and it says: STOP.” The weather was great last year. Kim and the kids were outside every minute. She even read the junk mail outside. She’d take out all those catalogs she got and the laundry and pin the laundry up and then she’d stick her head into those catalogs and do a little bit of daydreaming about things to buy for the new house, while Corinna and the neighborhood kids played. “Miz Feller, where’s Rinna?” Max, from down the road, was five years old. Kim smiled at him before answering, smiled happily at the excitement and urgency in his face. “Well, she’s here, Max. Where’d she go? Are you hiding from each other?” “No, I can’t find her. We’re riding the big wheels and she went behind the rope.”
101 “Then she’s behind those sheets is all,” Kim said, turning her head to look at the clothesline. “No, dother rope, the red rope there.” He pointed at the empty lawn that fronted the slough. Slow motion, and then the speed of light. Kim turned her head and looked, so slowly. Then she was over the lawn to the slough without even taking a step, she was just there, she was everywhere: no Corinna. She ran up and down the bank, she ran through the house, she kept wanting to stop and throw up, her stomach wanted to throw out this fact, fact of taking her eyes off Corinna, fact. Throw it out. Everywhere, calling. The state troopers arrived, the neighbors, Kim looked at her watch: two hours! Two hours with no Corinna! With every person who arrived, every phone call, Kim expected to see a grin of relief cover every face, a blond head pop up in a car window. Over and over, that failed to happen; over and over the same story from Max: “We were racing the big wheels down the ropes. Then I turn that way and she turn that way and then I can’t find her. I waited for her. I can’t find her. I went to ask Miz Feller where she is.” She had to describe what Corinna was wearing. What difference did it make, just rescue any kid you find in the slough, who cares what she’s wearing! But she had to tell them: black rubber breakup boots with a red line along the sole, blue jeans…a blue sweatshirt, rhinestone earrings. She has pierced ears, like Mom. Oh, but in the days that followed, the weeks, her arms became so hungry to be filled with that familiar body, the weight just right, the softness, the life. Give me that one moment, give me back that moment. Someone put a poem in her hands, about God loaning us a sweet child. Kim stared at it in disbelief. What is this all about? She looked over at Monty who was staring at her with some kind of hope in his face, like maybe he thought this poem would help. Why couldn’t he have been here that afternoon? How could Monty be thinking about anything else right now but Corinna gone? What the hell is there to have hope about? During the funeral mass she couldn’t hold her head up. She looked down at her own body. Empty arms, empty lap, flat and bereft. Every cell in her body held Corinna’s absence. Every cell in her body was used up, wrung out, abandoned. Three weeks later Jeremiah turned nine. She heard Monty and his grandmother planning the party and Kim said, “I’ll make the cake! I’ll make that tunnel of