Read The Same River Twice for Free Online Page B

library books say it’s an embryo until the eighth week, when all the organs are formed. At that point it’s a fetus the size of a thumb. Photographs make me think of a tiny whale, its heart directly behind the mouth, an eating machine. There is no peephole to Rita’s belly but I have to accept that a baby’s in there. As with God or black holes, one goes by the surrounding evidence.
    Yesterday the county Civil Defense warned us of impending flood. They offered free sand, but we’d have to fill the bags ourselves. I drank coffee all night, crossing the yard with a flashlight every half hour. The water rose faster than Rita’s belly. I held tightly to a post, as if the river might suck me into its current. I imagined Rita and me in the boat, the typewriter and child between us, hunting a knoll. Trees crashed into the river, the soil of their roots eaten away by the swiftly rising water. The storm continued through the night.
    At dawn today the river’s dark surface runs thick as milk. It has crested two feet from our bank. A single goose sits fifty yards away, black-necked with a white patch on his throat like a chin strap to a lost helmet. It hasn’t moved in two hours. Lightning has sheared a branch from a tree, and the trunk is scarred by the burn. Siberian shamans made sacred drums from such trees, but this one isn’t fresh enough. After twelve hours, the electricity’s power has faded. Beneath its overhang a great blue heron breaks from shore, long neck tucked in a curl, wings lifting slowly like a prehistoric bird. A bloated cow floats by, eyeholes pecked to vacancy by crows.
    The anchor for my boat is a coffee can filled with cement. The rope is too short for the sudden rise of water. It holds the bow below the surface, the anchor line a false umbilicus. The motor rides high in the back while the gas tank drifts between seats. The boat is filled with river. All the life jackets have floated away.
    A line of geese flies downriver, shifting direction as a group, following the telepathy of flight. Ravens can be taught to copy human speech, and I suppose if my tongue were split, I could talk with birds. They would impart the secrets of their hollow bones, and I could tell them how lucky they were to limit reproduction to eggs. An outbuilding is drifting by, a wooden shed built too near the bank for safety. A squirrel crouches on the ridgepole. A coil of wire still hangs from a nail.
    Rita is at work. She dropped me off at home after our monthly checkup. We feel lucky to have our doctor; she is honest and forthright. It is like visiting a favorite sister. She allows me to peek over her shoulder when shining a flashlight deep into Rita’s innards. Everything’s red in there. I don’t know what I’m seeing and don’t want to ask. After the exam, the doctor says Rita has an “easy uterus.” If a man had said that, I might have been offended.
    She smeared grease on Rita’s belly and pressed a microphone left of her navel. A cord ran to a small speaker. We listened to the fetal heartbeat miked in the tiny room. The baby had a quick rhythm that harmonized with Rita’s slower pulse. I asked if we could turn off the lights and listen. Rita nodded to the doctor; they allow me little moments, slight involvements. The twining sounds of heartbeat reminded me of the night of the storm. The baby is rain. Rita is the steady gush of river. I am alone in the dark on the bank.
    In the aftermath of flood, the river hurts like a man’s blood when his brother dies. Plastic trash hangs in tree limbs to mark the water’s crest. Beavers are chewing high on the trees, and after the waters recede, there will be evidence to suggest giant beavers—the tapered marks of their teeth far above my head. I have a need to believe in giants because the real ones are gone: three-toed sloths, the buffalo, soon the elephant. During flood, young beavers can drown in their hutch,