is on the river
that was the highway
for the logs,
the place to dump
the sludge,
the hydropower
for the paper machines
my father used to fix.
I can walk to the river
from the house.
The river is the same
as it always was,
wide, shining, moving
in spring, summer, and fall,
frozen in winter.
I ask Mom
why we don’t sell
Number 23
and move off DEAD END.
She says that since the mill closed,
no one is looking to buy a house
in Maddigan.
I don’t know if that’s the real reason
or if it’s a game of chicken.
We don’t move
and neither does Clay’s family.
It’s like moving
would be saying
we take the blame.
Coffee
Hunter is back.
I guess it fit
into your music schedule,
I say.
I’m not doing this for college,
if that’s what you think,
he says.
Sometimes I’d rather be here
than home.
It’s quieter here,
and I can think better.
Got it,
I answer,
and I do.
I haven’t yet seen
soup in the soup kitchen.
Tuna noodle casserole,
mac and cheese,
beef stew
are all popular.
And coffee.
The coffee urn
is like a statue in a church,
not that I go to church.
People gather around it
and worship.
I never drank coffee before,
but I try my first cup
and I’m hooked.
The Eddy
Sometimes a word gets through
to me in school.
Like watching a show in Swedish
and an actress says okay.
It was like that in world history today.
Demilitarized zone.
It makes me think of the eddy—
the bend in the river
where Jonah, Clay, Rainie, Piper,
Justine, and I used to meet
on Saturday nights.
Mom always said,
Don’t go down to the river
in the dark.
It’s not dark, we’d say.
It’s half dark.
It was always half dark,
once our eyes adjusted.
When it’s half dark
on Saturday,
I go down to the river,
and it’s all still there.
The cement boat ramp,
the aluminum dock,
the roiled river,
full with the winter’s
ice melt,
running fast and muddy
the way it does every March.
“Demilitarized zone.”
How could I have forgotten?
It’s cold at the ramp,
the wind rough off the river.
There’s still patches of snow
along the banks.
Clay is there.
Even in the half dark,
he looks skinnier,
his hair longer
like he’s trying to hide himself.
I can’t guess how I look
to him.
I came down here
every Saturday
the last five months,
Clay tells me,
I wanted to know
how you were doing.
Sorry, I say, I was busy.
Clay looks out at the river.
I texted you about
a thousand times,
I say.
I got rid of my phone
five months ago,
he says.
The bend in the river
has places where the current
reverses itself.
Maybe it is a place where time could go backward
and forward at the same moment.
Here at the eddy with Clay,
like the old days,
it feels possible.
I speak,
playing our old game—
Tell Me Three Things.
There is only one rule.
You have to tell the truth.
I think about Clay’s father’s
Bugz Away van.
Tell me three things
about bedbugs,
I say.
Clay holds up
one finger.
Bedbugs do not fly.
Second finger.
They can survive for a year
without a blood meal.
Third finger.
Adult bedbugs
are about the size
of an apple seed.
I forgot how good Clay is
in science—
in middle school,
he did an experiment
measuring pollution
in the river
downstream from the paper mill.
My father
was alive then,
and he still had his job
at the mill.
Millwright
on the night shift,
keeping the big machines running.
When Clay asked,
my father told him all about
the chemicals
they used.
Methanol
Ammonia
Hydrogen sulfide
Hydrochloric acid
The hydrogen sulfide
gave our town
its smell.
When the smell
went away,
so did the jobs.
The paper mill
sponsored the school science fair.
You can guess that
Clay didn’t win a prize.
How is your mother?
Clay asks me.
(That’s what I mean
about Clay being nicer.)
Scary, I say,
and he looks away.
I don’t ask about Gwen.
My hand reaches out to his
and holds it
for the first time,
like I hold Jonah’s now.
This is my science experiment.
Do all boys’ hands feel the same?
His is cold
yet a little sweaty
in a nice way.
It squeezes back.
That never happens
with Jonah.
Since Jonah came home
from the hospital,
I’ve gotten to know every inch
of a boy’s body.
I thought there were
no mysteries.
But holding Clay’s hand
is like hearing
a foreign language—
I can only guess
what is being said.
Hippies
I peel carrots away from me.
Hunter peels them toward himself.
It’s not supposed to be
a contest,
but I know I’m right.
Peeling away goes faster.
Why are you here?
Hunter asks.
Tray art.
I don’t elaborate.
It’s good to leave something
to the imagination.
Maybe we can get together
sometime,
Hunter says,
you could come to my house,
if you don’t mind a crowd
of kids.
How many is a crowd?
I ask.
Oldest of six.
First they created the
babysitter,
Hunter taps his chest,
then the rest of the babies.
Like a blended family,
his kids, her kids,
their kids together?
I ask him.
No, my mom
really loves babies.
My parents are kinda
back-to-the-land
hippies.
My father used to say
there were two kinds of
hippies
in Maine.
The trust-fund hippies
and the don’t-know-what-they’re-getting-into
hippies,
I say.
I guess then we’re the
don’t-know-what-we’re-getting-into ones.