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away.

    Every summer, Vin, Mandy, and me would try to build a raft. One of us, must have been Vin, read about Tom Sawyer in school. When we were little, we didn’t have any idea what we were doing. We’d work on a raft for weeks, weaving charms as we built and making up stories that grew increasingly bizarre about the raft and where it would take us.
    Vin was always adding little time-saving devices like the automatic fishing pole. He’d nail on some contorted-looking arm with a string and hook hanging off it. Mandy and me added stuff willy-nilly. Who knows why.
    By the time we were done, our rafts looked like fantastic multi-limbed creatures in an agony of protuberances. No wonder they all sank. I figured that if we lost enough rafts at the same point on the river, sooner or later, at least we’d have a dock.
    We mined our materials from the wreck of an old barn, long ago fallen in, that lay a ways upriver. Each year, we practiced our craft, learning through trial and error how you keep something afloat. It wasn’t until Mandy’s last summer that we got one to work. I’m still not sure why it floated when all the others sank. Maybe because of Mandy. Maybe she got lighter and lighter that last year.
    I think of us gliding. Damselflies skirt the brown water. The heat makes us sleepy, and Vin lets the river carry us, using the pole to keep us off the banks.
    It was like a dream you’d make up, because you knew it would never be true. But there it was, the three of us floating. The willows draped above. The cottonwoods flicked. We saw two herons on stalk legs and a doe with a fawn.
    The raft floated past the rise and the cemetery where the stones caught the light.
    This is the river then. It is passing by slow, leaving even Rivertown behind.
    I’ll never forget that feeling of watching it all go by, not guiding, not pushing. And listening to the lapping of the doe.

    After Ben leaves with his clients, I wait for the boys to come and let me loose. I wait a long time, getting a bad feeling about the whole thing. I kick the side of the cage. I scream into the gag. All in all, I’m pretty ineffectual. I start thinking about what the guy said about me being a newborn again.
    That’s when it comes clear. Ben has decided to make me the star in his own personal play. Sure, there are the other plays, this weirdo couple for one. But Ben’s getting his rocks off big. He’s probably watching me on video right now. I kick the cage again for his benefit.
    And what occurs to me next, which should have occurred to me sooner before I got myself into this mess, is that Ben might be playing for keeps again. This weekend could stretch out into God knows how many years.
    But I’m old, I think. He doesn’t use players this old.
    I lie quiet, pissed off at myself for being such an imbecile.
    We had an imbecile in our school. Well, I like to say we had a lot of imbeciles, but only one that we actually called an imbecile. He tended to drool and he liked to rock with one arm bent over his head. I felt sorry for him because he didn’t look comfortable the way he sat in the back of the room with his legs clutched up under the chair. He preferred to do his rocking on the floor, but Miss Summers always made him get back into the chair. Maybe she thought he would learn better that way.
    He never made any bother. He just rocked, sometimes drooling, with his other hand tight in a fist and jammed in his mouth.
    Mandy didn’t like him. She said he gave her the shivers. I sat close to him and just watched, not saying a thing, chin on my hand. I studied him like he was an African bird or something.
    We’d read about Africa and its borderlines that week. Rwanda. Zaire. Funny-sounding names. I raised my hand.
    “What about the birds, Miss Summers, ma’am?”
    Miss Summers in her pretty cotton print dress looked stumped. “The birds?”
    “They have good birds there, don’t they, ma’am?”
    Now she was getting that twitchy way like I’d said