STEPHEN GIBSON
Noir What is a river? A river is water that flows and carries things away, including the river itself; its “there-ness” is never the same “there.” This Zen moment was brought to you by the Green River Killer in the northwest, a man who drove its highways in his truck. Gary Ridgway kept a hammer in his truck under the driver’s seat—it made blood flow on roads all along the American northwest. If you were a runaway, he thought of the river. It was so cool when he offered weed to you. The woods are full of weed, he’d say. Let’s go there— and he’d turn at a logging road with you there staring into the headlights with him in the truck. You suspected what was going to happen to you, though not the details. Until body fluids flowed he kept your corpse, then dumped it into the river. Mortuary sites all along the American northwest were as common as truck stops. In the Northwest, hikers out with their dogs would find bodies there under thin piles of dirt and leaves, or the river would give up another secret begun in his truck. On the news, detectives gathered, the river flowed behind them, and it seemed like a rerun to you— it was. He watched the same TV reports as you. Someone was killing girls in America’s northwest, temporarily buried them, then just let the flow of the river carry them downstream—until there you found them—like so much junk a pickup truck illegally deposited, like an old mattress, into the river.
Raleigh Review | 5
