MITCHEL MONTAGNA -AGAINST THE FURIOUS FLOW

Mitchel Montagna is a corporate communications writer for a large professionals services firm. He has also worked as a special education teacher and a radio news reporter. His poetry has appeared in Naturewriting, The Penwood Review, Poetry Life and Times, and PEEKS and valleys. His fiction has appeared in Amarillo Bay. He is married and lives in New Jersey.   

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Against the Furious Flow

          The shimmering heat played tricks with O’Doul’s eyesight. The ravine off highway 17 looked like a sea boiling in the sun, with beds of treetops shrouded in mist along the bottom. Steam seemed to rise for miles and everything looked wavy. Mirage puddles appeared on the road and then dissolved, leaving behind a blistering blacktop.       
            “Of all the shit,” O’Doul said quietly, placing a hand near a dashboard vent and feeling only lukewarm air. Irritated, he floored the gas pedal and his Buick rattled further up the mountain.          
       A young man of O’Doul’s age sat beside him. “I’m sweating like a dog,” Hancock said. “When’s the last time you checked your cooling fans?”
             “Haven’t had time,” O’Doul said. “I work. Ever hear of that?”      
Both men had stubble on their faces but O’Doul’s wavy hair was glossy black whereas Hancock’s was light brown and receding. His thin nose protruded like a stick. O’Doul’s broad, even features promised a dashing smile that he seldom let show.                     
           Hancock made a display of fanning his face. He flapped his fingers then tugged the collar of his t-shirt. “Well I’m opening a window,” he said.
          O’Doul’s Buick leaked oil, and when he turned the wheel rightward the steering column groaned. A busted air conditioner would be just part of the same headache. “Go ahead,” O’Doul said. “But you know, the cold air could return. That happens sometimes.”
         Hancock assured O’Doul he looked forward to that occurrence, then he lowered the window. As he did so, humid air stormed in and both men’s hair blew wildly. A sheet of old newspaper lifted off of the back seat and flew outside. Distracted and tired, O’Doul let the Buick drift to the adjacent lane.  
            He shouted against the wind. “Not all the way, moron!”
          Hancock laughed and stomped his feet, delighted. O’Doul steered the car back into the correct lane as Hancock raised the window some.
           “Real funny,” O’Doul said. Soon, as he watched the broken highway lines sweep under his car, his eyes narrowed to slits and he became mesmerized. After a few dangerous moments some unconscious indicator switched on, and O’Doul managed to regain a semblance of alertness. Hancock rubbed his own bleary eyes, then he pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
               The sun had started its afternoon descent, and soon they would be heading directly into its glare. Hours earlier, when they had set off from New Jersey, there was a thin sheen of clouds but it had burned off as they made their way north. The highway leveled off as it cut through Monticello, and they could see to their left just beyond the roadside a single chair lift. During winters, it was one of two dozen that deposited skiers onto the top of Holiday Mountain. Beyond it, a hillside blanketed in dark green forests rippled into the summer haze. Near a spot where several outlying hills came together, one ridge jutted far above the rest, casting an epic shadow across acres of treetops to the south.
            The view was spectacular, but O’Doul was unmoved. He hated coming back up here.  His sense of loss was still palpable, his emptiness unrelieved.
       
            Next winter would be ten years since O’Doul and Hancock had last skied on this same Holiday Mountain. One memory of that afternoon, which O’Doul could never discard, seemed to reflect the carefree spirit of their lives before everything changed. The boys were sliding off of a T-bar atop one of the medium-grade hills when their skis accidentally crossed, and the more they tried to separate the more entangled they became. Finally, they fell into a knotted heap. They squirmed atop the icy snow, so fastened to each other it was as if they shared a set of clothes. They laughed their asses off, and O’Doul as he tried to catch his breath felt that he was filling with helium, so giddy and weightless that he was sure he would float away.  
           Later, the boys’ parents planned to go out to dinner together, so O’Doul and Hancock were dropped off at a friend’s house. Long after dark, as they watched a Knicks game on TV, a phone call interrupted their evening and effectively ended their childhoods. Now, O’Doul glanced at Hancock and he wondered, not for the first time, whether their friendship would have survived if Hancock’s mother hadn’t also died that night.  
 
           “What the hell are you doing,” O’Doul barked, because he didn’t care for the odor coming from whatever Hancock had pulled from his cigarette pack and lit, hands expertly shielding the flame from the wind.
            “You idiot,” said O’Doul. But his anger was sidetracked by an unsettling image in his mirror: a state trooper cruiser following about 100 feet behind. O’Doul wondered if he’d done something stupid. He couldn’t have gone too fast, his heap could barely reach the speed limit. O’Doul tapped his brake, hoping that the cop would pass. But the cruiser only came closer, as menacing as a Sherman tank. After a long few moments, as sweat trickled from all of O’Doul’s pores, the cop car flipped on its blinking lights.           
            “You fucking idiot,” O’Doul said, louder than before, as Hancock flicked the joint out the window. O’Doul slowed the Buick further and guided it onto the shoulder.
            They lurched to a halt. O’Doul watched the cruiser slip behind them. The cop car’s lights flashed with migraine intensity.   
            “What if he searches you?” O’Doul demanded. He removed his sunglasses and gnawed a side piece.
            “He needs probable cause,” Hancock said.
            O’Doul noticed a tremor along the bridge of Hancock’s nose. He’d seen it many times before, a harbinger of an anxious smirk Hancock would employ to show defiance. As Hancock was an unconvincing tough, the expression was usually good for a laugh. It might have amused O’Doul under different circumstances.
            “What are you, a lawyer?” O’Doul said. “He’s a cop, he can do what the fuck he wants.”
            O’Doul suppressed an urge to throw up as he lowered his window. Through his side mirror, he watched the strapping trooper climb out of his car and don a brimmed hat. The cop strode toward them. He wore mirrored sunglasses, a gray tie, and a tan shirt tucked into gray pants. All these bastards look alike, O’Doul was thinking. 
              The cruiser lights continued to flash, an action that struck O’Doul as overkill. He felt embarrassed, aware that passing motorists were slowing and gaping, relieved it wasn’t them. O’Doul turned away, and stared distractedly at tall maples and evergreens bunched behind the guardrail. Thick webs of glossy weeds and vines climbed the trunks, looking so ripe and strange that O’Doul imagined that they might lead to another world. He considered bolting – hurdling the rail and leaving his responsibilities behind.  
            “Look alive,” Hancock said.  
            “What?”
             “Afternoon,” the trooper said as he arrived at the window, lowering his square head.
            O’Doul nodded.   
            “Know why I stopped you?”
            “No sir.”
            The cop glanced southward. “Back there, you were all over the road.”
            His flat face was closely shaved and a few beads of sweat had gathered on his upper lip. O’Doul’s own perspiration burned his eyes, compelling him to squint.         
            “No we weren’t,” Hancock said.
            The corners of the trooper’s mouth twitched as if a nasty grin might emerge. It occurred to O’Doul that the cop might enjoy confrontation. But the man’s jaw held firm as he bent to get a better look at Hancock.
            “And you littered. I don’t remember talking to you.”
            “Sorry,” O’Doul said. “We’re having a tough day, and I may have been distracted back there.”
            “And the air don’t work,” Hancock chimed in.
            A sixteen-wheeler roared by, vibrating the earth and O’Doul’s bowels.        
            “You don’t look too good,” said the cop.
            “I’m fine,” O’Doul said.
            “Matter of fact, you both look kind of peaked.”
            “I admit I haven’t had anything to eat today,” O’Doul said, which was true.
“License and registration.”
            O’Doul rummaged though his glove box. He glowered at Hancock, who winked back. After O’Doul handed the documents over, the trooper scanned them. “Jersey?”
          O’Doul nodded. Like nobody from New Jersey ever came up here, like his license read Mars. A few seconds passed. The incessant sunlight flared in his peripheral vision.    
            “You had anything to drink?” The trooper inhaled audibly through his nose. “Or smoke?”
            O’Doul sniffed the air and wondered, with a sense of doom, how that goddamn smell lingered even with a window open.   
            The cop took a step back. “Out of the car,” he said. “Now.”
            “We got nothing to hide,” Hancock said. “But we don’t consent to a search.”
            “No choice, gentlemen,” the cop said. “Don’t make me drag you out.”
“Man, this blows,” Hancock said.
          The cop stood tall as sunlight filled his shades. “Life can be hard,” he said. “And you just made yours harder.”
--
 
            They entered New York Police Troop “C” Station near Liberty with wrists cuffed in front. It was brighter and roomier than O’Doul would have thought, with blond wood desks and chairs and upholstered benches. Banks of fluorescent lights shone from a high ceiling. As he, Hancock, and the trooper walked through, O’Doul was beset by the racket of buzzing phones and strident voices while his stomach lurched and his sphincter squeezed tightly. He also heard, like a current beneath the foreground noise, a cool vibrating thrum that suggested the barracks might soon launch into orbit.    
             They stopped at a large elevated desk. Sitting behind a nameplate – Sgt. Brown – was another young trooper who looked as buffed and threatening as the arresting officer.
“Possession of a controlled substance,” the first cop said. “Possible DUI.”
            Sgt. Brown looked impassively at the suspects then nodded toward a row of metal chairs bolted to the floor. “Siddown.”
            In searching Hancock back on the highway, the trooper had found two more joints in the cigarette pack and, more seriously, a zip-lock baggie with a pinch of what looked like cocaine. O’Doul was furious. Of course, the trooper found nothing on him. O’Doul didn’t touch drugs; he didn’t even drink.
            O’Doul’s sobriety was one result of the car accident ten years ago, when Hancock’s father, drunk as a lord, had killed O’Doul’s parents and Hancock’s mother. Hancock reacted another way, never wholly emerging from his shock and slipping into periods of idiocy and addiction. O’Doul would never forgive the old man. But he kept his increasingly nerve-wracked friend close, driven by an impulse near desperation. If shared grief could strengthen bonds, O’Doul knew that he and Hancock would be brothers forever.       
            Now as they sat, Hancock turned to O’Doul with a face full of tears. “We gotta call my pop. He’s expectin’ me. Mike, I’m sorry.”
             O’Doul looked stubbornly ahead without responding.  Hancock wiped his eyes and slouched down in wretched surrender.
 
              After a few minutes, O’Doul watched another trooper walk by. Like the others, this one was tall, broad-shouldered, and wore a crew cut. But O’Doul saw a blunt friendliness in the young cop’s face, which stood out around here like clown’s makeup. As the trooper stopped to speak to someone, his pleasant face evolved into a familiar one. O’Doul shuffled through his memory. But it was Hancock who made the connection.
            “Brooksie, you big galoot!” he cried.
            “Shut up,” said Sgt. Brown.
            But the trooper turned toward them. Hands on hips, he stepped closer.
            “Can I help you?”  
            “Monticello High,” Hancock said. “Lincoln Junior High. How far back you wanna go?”
             “That’s far enough,” Trooper Brooke said. He glanced at their cuffed wrists. “What’re you doing here?”
            O’Doul and Hancock looked at each other. “Well,” O’Doul said, “it seems they found…”
            “Allegedly found,” Hancock said.
            “Um, something on one of us that might be a problem,” O’Doul said.
            “Leave ‘em alone, Brooke,” Sgt. Brown said. “They ain’t seen a lawyer yet.”
            “Class of 2010?” Brooke said.
            “We would’ve been,” Hancock said. “But, ah…”
            “We moved away after 10th grade,” O’Doul said.
            Brooke ran a large hand along his buzz cut. “I remember.” His shoulders slumped a little. “Anything…”
            O’Doul and Hancock stared at him. Brooke had been a year ahead of them, a rowdy farm kid who excelled at sports.      
            “Anything I can do?” Brooke said.  
            O’Doul looked at the trooper’s firearm. “You could shoot me. That might help.”
            Brooke glanced upward, as if considering that. He nodded, looking thoughtful, and walked off. He put a card against an electronic reader; a door buzzed and he walked through.
            Hancock emitted a low whistle. “Well what the hell were the odds of that?” 
            O’Doul had to admit: not very large. But what did it matter? He shrugged, then watched Hancock’s eyes close and his head loll back. Freckles emerged under the bright light that softened Hancock’s face, made him appear younger. O’Doul shut his own eyes and focused on the subterranean thrumming sound of the place, pushing all other noise to the background. It was droningly hypnotic. O’Doul began to sink into a quagmire of dreams.
--
 
            “Hey guys.” O’Doul awoke to find that Trooper Brooke had returned. 
            The cop squatted before them, taller than O’Doul and Hancock sprawled in their chairs. “Hold out your wrists.”
            They hesitated, uncertain of what was going on. Sgt. Brown stared from his desk.  
            “C’mon,” Brooke said. He held a long slim key in his right hand.
            O’Doul offered his cuffed wrists. Brooke inserted the key and turned. One cuff opened and fell into Brooke’s hand. Brooke did the same with O’Doul’s other cuff and then freed Hancock’s wrists.
            “You taking over our case?” Hancock said.
            Brooke stood. “Something like that.”
            O’Doul looked around. Everybody seemed to be ignoring them, except Sgt. Brown.  
            “Get out,” Brooke said quietly. “Now.”   
            “What?” Hancock said.
            “Beat it,” Brooke said.
            O’Doul and Hancock stared up at him, waiting for the punch line.   
“Do we have to come back?” O’Doul said.
            “Only if you fuck up again.” 
            O’Doul and Hancock stood and looked at each other in astonishment.
            “And you goddamn well better not,” Brooke said. “The desk sergeant will return your possessions. Take ‘em and keep walking.”       
“Well we’ll be on our way,” Hancock said.  
            “You guys just passing through?” Brooke asked.
            O’Doul shrugged. “Not exactly,” he said.
            They hustled over to Sgt. Brown, who stared at them intensely. O’Doul thought he looked like a butcher watching the sheep get away.        
 
         Fifteen minutes later, O’Doul and Hancock rolled into their hometown, Roscoe, a small village at the foot of the Catskill Mountains. At Revonah Hill Road, bordering the Beaver Kill River, O’Doul turned the Buick right and navigated up a gradual incline, steering carefully around potholes and watching for deer. On their left, behind a line of birch and maple trees, the afternoon sun was bright off the water and shone hazily in their eyes. Their destination was Hancock’s old house, which looked onto the river from the opposite side of the road, and O’Doul recalled the two-story brick home as part of a rambling panorama of meadows and corn fields, with cattle feeding on adjacent hills.
          Today Hancock’s father, seriously ill and just released from prison, sat in that house awaiting a visit from his son – their first meeting in years. As O’Doul drove alongside the river, it all came back to him: the car rides along here with his parents, the joking conversations with Hancock, the energizing anticipation of activity. Like most boys O’Doul knew, his life had appeared to flow furiously against the very possibility of misfortune.  
          The Beaver Kill was known for its bountiful trout harvest, and the area attracted sportsmen from all over. In decades past, Hancock’s father had often rowed the boys out to try their luck. Carrying rods nearly as long as O’Doul and Hancock were tall, the boys would root around a pail of mud for a thick, juicy worm to hook as bait. Excitedly they would cast out, releasing their forefingers at one o’clock and hearing the line click through as it arced over the current. Hancock’s father would genially encourage them, a can of Bud in his hand.
         Now as they pulled up in front of the house, O’Doul felt a blast of cold air. The damned air conditioner had decided to work. 
        “See I told you,” he said half-heartedly.
       But Hancock wasn’t listening. He was absorbed in staring at his old home. To O’Doul, the house’s familiarity emerged only gradually. Time had weathered away much: the building looked bleached out and smaller, listing to one side. The fields were vacant except for yellow-ish patches of weeds and brush. The hills still soared but held no livestock.  
          “I can’t believe he’s in there,” Hancock said softly.
        Then he looked at O’Doul with that nose-twitching facsimile of a grin. “Sure you don’t wanna come in?”
        O’Doul shook his head. “Can’t do it.” He felt the sting of a tear. He tried to compose himself, and he clapped Hancock on the shoulder awkwardly. Hancock’s grin stiffened, and the expression around it crumbled like a mask.              
             O’Doul looked away. “Call me when you’re done,” he said.   
         Then he watched Hancock open the car door and step out. Soon Hancock walked toward the house with his frail body hunched forward, moving slowly like a man with nowhere to go.
--
 
             O’Doul pulled the Buick away, turned around and headed back toward town. The river now ran to his right, and through breaks in the trees he caught glimpses of dark water flowing away from the sun that hovered over the mountains behind him. Soon O’Doul passed a line of parked SUVs and pickups awaiting the end to the day’s fishing, and then he came to the spot where Revonah Hill Road met Foster Street. He continued along. If you went down Foster for about a mile and turned right, you would find his old house. He hadn’t seen it in eight years and had no intention of doing so again. 
            O’Doul reached the small center of Roscoe and saw that the drug store, with its vintage red and white Coke sign above the door, was still in operation. Across one street was a gas station, while a farming supply store took up the opposite corner. Maples lined the street and behind the store fronts, hills sloped toward the late afternoon sky. O’Doul figured he’d go inside the drug store, drink water, maybe finally eat if the acid ever took a break from ripping apart his stomach.  
            Hancock would be in some kind of awful shape when the visit was over. Well no matter, there wasn’t much else to do except point the Buick south and head back to Jersey. O’Doul pulled up curbside and for the sake of killing time fiddled with the radio. Tomorrow was supposed to be another hot one, they said.  
 
                                                              THE END