Plus, you know how one of the cabinet secretaries always sits out the State of the Union, and the guys who know the recipe for Coke are never all in the same room together, and some parents fly home from vacation on separate airplanes just in case? If two of us are plunging heedless into this night, one of us should stay behind. Someone has to take care of Nora.
I don’t have to lay out these arguments. Mab knows them as well as I do. But I don’t have to refute them either. I will not let my eyes leave hers to find my Voice, but if I did I would refuse, come what may, to wait here all alone. I don’t need to, though. She knows that too. And mad though it is, she does not protest—not with words, not with her eyes, not even in her heart of hearts (for I can see there too). She holds my gaze and nods. They will not leave me behind.
It is an insane risk and an unnecessary one and a shattering act of faith and loyalty and stupidity and love.
But my chair has to stay. My Voice too. And without them, I am stood down, immobilized, silenced, at once firmly anchored and frantically unmoored. It is, simply and terribly, leaving a part of myself behind.
But we have no other option. I drive right up to the beast. I grasp upward with my hand and pull. Monday pulls. Mab pushes. There’s a good bit of grunting, wrestling, and elbows in places elbows should not go. It is good that we are sisters. But finally, I am in the driver’s seat, the only seat. Mab straps me in. And it is time.
In front of me, I’m relieved to find a steering wheel. A steering wheel, pedals on the floor, buttons with icons of lights and windshield wiper fluid, a radio, cup holders. Just like a car. Not that any of us have ever driven one of those either, but I think we could. Well, I think they could. That most of the controls and indeed the tools are behind me rather than out front is a problem we’ll have to address soon. But not immediately.
By raising the armrests, by being a teenage girl rather than the person for whom this cab was designed, by pressing her leg and side against mine, however unwillingly, Monday wedges in alongside me so she can drive, her butt half in the seat, half in thin air. Mab opens the side window and straddles it, one foot inside, one on the wheel cover, hands reaching in and gripping my shoulders to keep us both upright. She blinks at me, and I can feel her shaking. I can feel Monday shaking. I can feel them both feeling me shaking. I know if we flip this thing, if we drive off the riverbank, if we crash into a tree, we’ll be dead before Mab even has a chance to scream at Monday.
But in fact, this is a brand-new, state-of-the-art vehicle. Monday turns the ignition switch, and the backhoe purrs to life like a Maserati. She turns the headlights on and illuminates the night before us, black streaked through with her yellow, the river aglow in our light, bright white and alive, the only thing moving in the dark silence. She releases the parking brake, puts the backhoe in gear, presses the gas pedal, and slips out of the garage and into the night. The cab shudders a bit, jagged as our breath, as she gives it too much gas then panics and pulls her foot away, too much, then not enough, too much, then not enough, but she’s going so slowly she hasn’t needed to use the brake at all. And as I am always saying, slow is good. At the moment, if not for very many more, we have time.
We crawl away from the plant, our pristine tires biting into the earth, steady, not slipping, down to the bridge over the diverted river, and then up over its sleeping crest. Below, the water is rushing beneath us, the clearest note in a quiet night, rushing on, rushing away, loud from over top and fast and cold, the spray spitting in fits to reach us, calling to us, shouting, a threat and a welcome. It has been flowing as long as we’ve been alive, which is not forever, but which feels like forever. It prattles away, and it is somehow surprising to hear its babble so late as if they should have turned it off after dark, as if it wouldn’t speak were there no one to listen. Day or night, light or dark, witnessed or alone, polluted or clean, this river runs on. And we, we three, we’re going to stop its song. If it knew, would this river be angry or grateful to return to its path, its rightful way forward, free from diversion, unencumbered by the violent service into which it has been pressed all these lonely years? It got its share of the vitriol, but the river was never to blame. Now it gets to return to the place where it is natural and appreciated and belongs. Now it gets to go back home.
But homecomings are often fraught, sometimes violent even. Things get broken along the way. Nothing’s ever quite as you left it. They say you can’t go home again, but it’s not true. You can. But only if you’re the river.
On the other side of the bridge, we leave the river behind and make our bumpy way toward the lake, over the frozen field, over the brambles and weeds, over the old orchard land, over the nothing between the river and the park, knowing what’s behind was the easy part, knowing that bridge was built to bear us but the dam was not. As the lights in Bluebell Park come into view, Monday brakes hard and cuts the engine, and the backhoe comes to a shuddering stop. We sit there, breathing hard, like we’ve run here. If only. The water in Bluebell Lake is so black and still it seems made of different stuff entirely than the river, but it is just as breathtaking. Both have been here all our lives, seem as part of our town as Bourne High or the Do Not Shop, seem as part of the land as the trees and the fields, seem as movable as mountains, but we know—well, hope—that very soon they will be gone.
“Now what?” Mab asks Monday.
“We drive out onto the dam,” she says. “The hammer must be positioned at a ninety-degree angle to the material you want to break through.”
“Can we do that?” says Mab. “Drive out onto the dam?”
“Small to medium backhoes such as this one are the ideal machines for maneuvering in tight spaces,” Monday says.
“What if the dam’s already too weak to support us?”
No one speaks the answer to this out loud, but we all hear it just the same. If the dam collapses under our weight, we’ll go into the lake and we will not come out.
Monday starts the machine again, and we drive forward at a pace that makes our ride so far feel fast in comparison. At the lip of the lake, the edge of the dam, we pause to try for calm, for deep breaths, for a small prayer, to say goodbye to the solid world, just in case, ready to all go down together if it comes to that, though, truthfully, it also feels like life might be about to get better, and we’d just as soon stick around for it if we could. We move forward, an inch an hour it seems like, a slow creep over grass and onto the cement top of the dam which feels like solid ground—not as much give beneath us—but of course is less so, the concrete holding but the timbers beneath shrieking as they bow, but holding too, making our slow way as we leave the part built over ground and cross onto the part holding back water. The spine of the dam is wider than we are. But it is not a lot wider than we are.
To our right, upstream, the lake is still, quiet but deep. Mab and Monday can swim, but I cannot, and unstrapping me from a sinking backhoe and pulling me to shore through frigid waters is probably more than any of us would survive. To our left, below us, is the ravine, what we’ve always thought of as the ravine, which is actually a ghost river, a once and future river, a dry gully ready to be filled again. It is not so far down. It is not so full of thorns. But it is far and full enough if we should fall.
Out over the middle of the dam, as much behind us as ahead, water above and brambles below, Monday shifts into neutral and puts on the parking brake. She lowers the stabilizer legs down on either side, though I don’t know how much stability they’ll provide since they’re only just wider than we are. And only just fit. We all try very hard not to breathe.