Leaves in the River

Leaves in the River

Inspired by the Sea Wolf song of the same name.

(Video linked at the end of the story.)

It was one of those rare seasons where Halloween landed on a Saturday, so big plans were made by all. All the bars and clubs had drink specials and everyone with half a mind was having a party, including us. Zack, Teddy, and I had been planning this party for weeks, as it would be the first major event in our new place off campus. And as things turned out, we had a pretty good crowd that night.

The house was near to full and there were kids milling about in both the front and back yards. I wandered around talking with people and drinking beer most of the night, with the occasional Jell-O shot thrown in for good measure. Most everyone had at least some kind of costume, so there was plenty of vinyl and latex scattered about accentuated by the orange and green party bulbs we’d installed in all the fixtures. Zack had made several mix CDs of Halloween classics to play through the night so the three of us stood back and admired our handiwork while “Monster Mash” played in the background.

“Dude, we nailed it,” Teddy said, his voiced muffled by the latex Freddy Krueger mask he wore.

“Hell yeah, we did,” Zack agreed, looking sinister in his white jumpsuit and fake eyelash as Alex from A Clockwork Orange, “Party of the century!”

I nodded and raised my bottle in agreement, but I was no longer listening. For there, near the kitchen, looking a bit confused, was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was dressed as a witch or a vampire or something. Medium-length blonde hair with black streaks framed a pretty, almost pale face with large eyes that were accentuated by dark makeup. She wore a black shirt with fishnet sleeves, and a black skirt that ended just above her knees revealing a few inches of fishnet that plunged into tall black boots. Over her shoulders, a simple vinyl cape hung to her waist. She held an unlit cigarette in one hand and a beer bottle in the other as she looked around.

“I’ll be back,” I said in my best Terminator impression, my own cape flowing around my black-clad form as the Grim Reaper moved to meet this lovely newcomer before someone else did.

“Welcome, welcome,” I said, can I offer you a drink? Get you an ashtray, maybe?”

She seemed a bit startled when I spoke but then smiled shyly. “I, uh… I think I might be at the wrong party? I was meeting my friends, but I think I came to the wrong house.”

“Well, it’s a costume party and you’re in costume, so you can’t be too far off.”

She looked around uncertainly again and shrugged. “I don’t know. It seems like the place, but I don’t know anyone here. Is that weird?”

“Maybe they’re just not here yet. It is still early.” I held out my gloved hand, “I’m Brandon.”

“Caroline.”

I forced every bit of confidence from my half-drunk self. “Well, Caroline, you’re welcome to wait or use the phone if you like. Beer’s in the fridge and there’s a keg in back; bathroom’s down the hall. I do hope they show up though. This place was pretty lame till you got here.” I hoped it came off as cool or charming rather than cheesy. I looked at the floor and then back up and to my surprise and delight, she was smiling.

“Thank you, Brandon,” she said. Was she blushing? “I’ll hang out for a little while, anyway.”

My stomach was assailed by butterflies.

“Great!” I said, maybe a bit too enthusiastically. She was still smiling, but she was moving toward bemusement. I looked about, trying to think of something else to say but my mind had gone blank.

“Hey Brandon!” I heard my name called from the back, “Little help!”

“That’s me,” I shrugged, “Be right back.” And with that I hurried outside.

I passed the sliding glass door to the patio. Zack and a bunch of other guys held red solo cups with some noxious concoction poured into them and were chanting, “Shots! Shots! Shots!”  Someone passed me one and then another. “Here’s to the Three Amigos!” said a voice. We all tapped cups and then downed our drinks. Whatever it was, it was sweet and strong. I nodded at my friends and carried the other cup inside to offer to Caroline, but she had disappeared. I looked around the front and back yards, assuming she had just gone to smoke, but she was nowhere to be found.

My heart sank. Where had she gone? And why did she leave? Crestfallen, I swallowed the other shot, then went to the fridge. I shoved a beer into each pocket, then popped the top on a third before bumming a cigarette and going out front to sulk. I stomped down to the street and sat on the retaining wall over the sidewalk. I rolled the cigarette between my fingers after realizing I didn’t have a lighter.

“Everything okay?” Caroline asked as she sat down beside me. Her voice was pure velvet and the butterflies began anew.

“Me? Yeah, I’m just a little… I thought you left.”

“I really should get going. This is definitely the wrong party.”

“You get in touch with your friends?”

“No, but I figured out what happened,” she said, “It’s… It’s nothing. Really. It’s okay, anyway. I stay closer to here than there.”

“Where is that?”

“Where is what?”

“Where do you live?”

She looked at me strangely.

“I mean, do you, like, live in the dorms or something?”

She smiled. “You want to go for a walk? I’m not really into parties.”

I got to my feet and followed Caroline as she wandered down the sidewalk to the intersection a few houses down. We turned into a brisk wind and drops of cold rain began to fall on us as we trudged into the night. I trotted to keep up with her as she crossed her arms and put her head down against the wind. I was chilly, but my cape and gloves were at least a little bit of help. I reached back and pulled my hood over my head to stave off the cold. Caroline, for her part, seemed unbothered as she walked up the windy street. Her hair blew in all directions as we were pelted with large drops of freezing rain. I could see my breath as I panted up to her at the next stop sign. “Where… Where to next?”

She pointed, and we turned back into the neighborhood, just a few blocks down from where we’d started, but into an older part of the subdivision with larger trees and bigger yards. The wind had blown leaves all over the place. Every yard was covered in them and they danced through the street on small whirlwinds. As the ground got wetter, they got softer and our footfalls became mute against the damp carpet of leaves.

A few lonely porchlights still burned in the night although the trick-or-treaters had long since gone home. I wondered for a moment if there was still candy to be had behind any of the doors, then thought better of it. I pulled one of the beers from my pocket and cracked the top. Nope, somewhere along the line, different activities had replaced knocking on doors and asking for treats. Besides, nobody wants a wet, drunken grim reaper knocking on their door at 11:30 at night, Halloween or not. Best to let them alone with their dreams.

A sudden strong gust of wind rushed through the neighborhood, scattering the leaves, knocking the dry ones out from underneath the wet ones. Caroline and I stopped and watched as some of them flew so high they got lost in the darkness above the street lamps. “Wow,” I said, “I’ve never seen that before.”

“Me either,” she replied before starting to walk again.

We strolled next to each other down the middle of the street, slower now, watching the leaves spinning in their strange waltz. “How far do you think a single leaf can travel on its own?” I asked, trying to make conversation.

“Huh?”

“So,” I bent down and picked up a leaf, spinning its stem between my thumb and forefinger, “You’re this leaf and this wind comes, right? So, like, you may get blown against a house and just end up across the street in a pile, not a hundred feet from where you started. Or, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who gets blown down the street to the intersection. Then you could go north or south, right? Maybe blow into the back of a truck and end up in the city somewhere?” I tossed the leaf into the air and watched it flutter to the ground. “You could even end up in the river and float all the way out to sea. Thousands of miles, even. Just one little leaf.”

She looked lost in thought for a second before answering, “Why is the leaf that travels the lucky one?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if landing in a cozy pile in some suburban yard is where a leaf wants to be? Isn’t that just as lucky as the one that makes it to the river?”

“I suppose. I was just thinking of, like, randomness and stuff. Like, two leaves start off in the same place and one ends up here and another ends up there. That’s all.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just… I always wanted to travel. Always thought home was lame and that somewhere else was where I’d find myself. I learned that you have to be happy where you are, you know? It took me a long time to figure that out.”

I glanced over at her. My attempt at a light-hearted chat had gone serious. She kept her eyes on the sidewalk as we strolled, and I hadn’t realized that our pace had slowed to a crawl. She looked sad.

“Look, I didn’t mean anything by it. I love piles of leaves. Just… Just never jump into a pile of leaves holding a wet sucker.” I quoted Linus from Great Pumpkin. She looked over at me. Her sad eyes narrowed and then she smiled again. “I got a rock,” she quoted back. The tension fell away as suddenly as it had come, and we were back on our adventure.

We walked down several more streets, taking in the decorations. Jack ‘o lanterns sat on nearly every porch. Most had long since been blown out, but some still had tenacious candles that glowed orange in the night. I was mildly surprised that no teenagers had come through smashing them yet, but I guessed it was still a little early.

“This is it,” she said, pointing at a small brick house.

“This is what?”

“Where I grew up.”

I looked at the place. It was really rundown, with a falling fence and a yard full of weeds that hadn’t been mowed in ages. An ancient For Sale sign leaned against the dented garage door. All the lights were out and standing in contrast to the street lights and the houses on either side, it somehow seemed even darker. This place had been vacant for a long time. Caroline sat on the wall at the edge of the yard. “You mind if we stop for a while?” She still held her cigarette and her bottle. My bummed smoke had gotten soaked and fallen apart long ago. I wondered how hers had remained dry but didn’t dwell on it long. I fished the last can of beer from my pocket and sat down beside her.

“When did your family move?” I asked.

“Nobody moved. He…” She put the bottle to her lips and took a drink, “There was a death. He… He couldn’t go on after… Um, he… He thought I’d left him after the, uh, car… But I didn’t. Not that it mattered because he didn’t know. Couldn’t know. It was all my fault.” She took another drink and then looked at me sadly and shrugged. “He never knew.”

I didn’t know what to say. Someone had done something terrible and she blamed herself. In that moment, all I wanted in the world was to see her smile again; to see the mischievous, bemused, playful spirit I’d been enchanted by less than an hour before. I racked my brain for something to say but all that came out was, “Hey, come on now. That’s no way to feel. Do you always talk like that?”

She blushed a little and put the bottle to her lips again. “It really only happens when I drink.”

We sat there in silence for a little while, sipping our beers in front of this empty old house. I watched the leaves dance in the wind and thought of burn piles and candied apples. I’d always loved Halloween. And this was one for the books for sure. Caroline reached over and took my hand in hers and through my glove I could feel that she was freezing. For the first time I realized that my feet were numb in my boots and that perhaps walking for so long through freezing rain was not the best idea in the world, but I was warmed by the booze and by the feeling that there was nowhere I would rather be than right here, right now, in this perfect, peaceful moment.

She turned and looked at me and I noticed that her hair was only just a little wet for having been walking in the rain for so long. The water dripped down her neck and off her boots but didn’t seem to stick to her. I shook my head and the alcohol threatened to make me spin so I ignored the thought and stared at the house across the street instead. Something began to come into focus then, something that had been creeping at the edges but that I’d not been able to understand until now.

I looked at the ground again. There in the cement beneath her feet was a child’s handprint where the water that dripped off her boots had collected. It was old, but still discernable in the light from the sodium lamp. From the shadow of the retaining wall, I could make out a few letters and numbers: oline-81

I thought on this for a while. It didn’t quite make sense, so I asked her. “Is that your handprint?”

She looked down and smiled broadly, the happiest I’d seen her since we’d left the party. “Oh yes! When they poured the new sidewalk! My dad let me do my handprint and write my name! It was on my eighth birthday!” She hopped off the wall and put her hand to the print, seeing if it would fit. I did a bit of sloppy math in my head. That couldn’t be right. If she was eight in ’81, she would be in her thirties or something. Forties, maybe. The girl I was with couldn’t be a day over nineteen. Twenty at most.

I studied her crouching form. The fishnets on her left side were torn in places and the skin underneath was darker, as if bruised. Had it been like that the whole time? I didn’t think so. She looked up at me joyfully, the memory of her dad and her birthday still dancing in her head. That’s when I noticed the left side of her face had the same discoloration and now even her cape was torn, the left side shredded in spots. She looked at me quizzically. “What’s wrong?”

No matter how hard it rained, Caroline didn’t get wet. Her cigarette was always dry, and her bottle was always full. It hit me like a punch in the gut. I stared into her bright, curious, and kind eyes and I knew. I just shook my head and tried to fight back the tears that were already starting to flow.

She stood up and stepped back into the street. “Well, when we get home, I promise to give you a kiss but not here, okay?”

I just nodded and watched her twirl and laugh, dancing with the leaves as they blew through the empty streets on their way to land in someone’s yard.  Or perhaps the city. Or maybe even all the way into the river to just float farther and farther away forever.

I sat there for a long time before I wrapped my soaked cape around myself and walked home alone.