68

Rufus hurt, but he was alive. He could move, but what was the point? His blindness had finally beaten him. He had no idea where he was. To walk was to fall. To rise again was to tumble into a void. Why shouldn’t he just stay put? Stay put and die.

But dying wasn’t as easy as it seemed, and after what seemed like hours of lying in the same spot, Rufus dragged himself up and began to move forward, away from the slope of the hill, away from the mountain. There were trees in every direction, pine mostly, but some that felt like maple and oak as well.

There was deep shade here, but periodically he stepped out of the cover of the trees and felt the sun on his face. The day was hot and he began to sweat. Wiping it away with one hand, he wondered where he’d find water, and if he didn’t find it soon, when he’d begin to feel the effects of dehydration.

If he just had some idea where he was. He needed a landmark, but there was nothing, just random trees, a pitched forest floor, occasional sun.

He sat to rest, listening closely to the woods. Birds sang in the trees. Wind blew branches like silent bells, ringing whispers all around him. Was there a sound beyond that, something faint, like silk pulling away from silk?

Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he rose again and began to walk toward the sound. It was barely there, beneath the wind, and occasionally when the wind stopped shaking the tree branches, he heard it more clearly. Smooth and soft. Eternal. It was a stream or maybe a river, water caressing rocks, grooving its way through the land. He kept going.

The sound got louder, more clear, more like a river, and he knew he was going the right way. Fifteen minutes later, his hands raw from stumbling into trees and over deadfall, he knelt and scooped the water into his mouth and drank. It tasted like life itself.

An image came to him then, the last one he’d ever seen before the world went dark. It was of the milky-white substance floating away in the stream not too far from the Duncans’ farm.

Mr. Duncan had given him a month to get out of the barn when he’d told him he was quitting. “Take your time. Randy says he hates to lose you. Maybe you’ll change your mind. I also want to thank you for trying to help Harriet. You didn’t have to do that, and I appreciate it.”

Rufus didn’t even attempt to tell him how he hadn’t helped Harriet at all, how he’d actually betrayed her.

It was funny how quickly things had changed after Rufus said what Harden wanted him to say in the newspaper. Not only was Mr. Duncan offering to basically let him stay for free, but Harden and Deloach acted as if there had never been any conflict with him, as if he was one of them again. He wasn’t fooled. He was done being fooled. And he was done caring about men like Deloach and Harden. Once, when he walked out of RJ Marcus’s church, he’d believed he had the world figured out. Now he knew he had nothing figured out, which was why he’d never trust a man selling something again, be it religion, a way of life, or just plain hatred.

He’d made a clean break from all that. Well, almost clean. He still had to live with the regret.

Savanna had moved away, and for that he was thankful. There were rumors she was pregnant, but Rufus didn’t imagine it could be his. He later learned she’d been having sex with multiple men, including Deloach. Maybe he would make it after all.

The shadow girl showed up again on the second night after he quit. He was terrified, but it was just a strange dream, he told himself, not the same thing that had happened to his mother. Just a dream.

Three nights later, he realized how wrong he was. It was no dream. It was Harriet, and she wasn’t going to stop coming for him. Each night, she drew a little closer, and each night he tried not to sleep, but eventually he succumbed anyway. He soon understood there was a pattern. Eventually she would get close enough to reveal her face. And once he saw her … he couldn’t properly explain what dread the thought of seeing her did to him. It broke him. It made him not want to live.

The idea came to him easily, the way a person might see a bowl of sugar on the table and decide it would be good in a cup of coffee. It was just a thought at first, but it grew inside him in a way that felt like a solution, a final answer to all his problems, a way to live in the face of his regret.

The drain cleaner was under the sink in the Duncans’ kitchen. The heavy-duty, industrial kind.

He left it alone for a week, while he looked for a new job and packed his things. He didn’t sleep much. Whenever he did drift off, the shadow girl was there to greet him, and then he was stuck, facing down the regret he’d created during his waking hours. He hadn’t killed her, but he hadn’t saved her. Worst of all, he’d smeared her legacy to save himself. It was an act, he came to understand, that had condemned him. The only way to save yourself was to live your life for others. Short of that, there was damnation. The hell of the mind was so much more brutal than that of the body.

The next time he saw the drain cleaner was during dinner with the Duncans. Lyda, the older sister, was home, and she’d invited him to eat with them. He liked Lyda, wished he’d met her before he’d become so broken, before the regret had infected him. He tried to be polite, to answer their questions about his future, but he didn’t feel polite. He didn’t feel like he had a future.

When Mr. Duncan stood and went to the sink, Rufus watched him. He opened the cabinet under the sink, and there was the drain cleaner just waiting for him.

After dinner, everyone moved into the den for coffee. He sat next to Lyda but couldn’t relax. She asked him about Harriet and seemed to be under the impression he had somehow been kind to her sister instead of betraying her. When it became too much, he excused himself to go to the bathroom.

The bathroom was off the foyer. He walked right past it, turned into the dining room, and slipped past the laundry room back into the empty kitchen. He was moving as in a dream. In fact, he wondered if it all hadn’t been a dream as he opened the cabinet and picked up the drain cleaner. He walked back the way he’d come and out the front door. He didn’t pause at the barn, not to get his things or for a moment to say goodbye. He knew he would never be coming back to the barn again. At least he didn’t plan on it.

He made it to the road, crossed it, walked into the trees that soon turned to woods. He walked in the darkness for most of the night, looking for the right place. When he finally found it, morning had come, and the sun was bright on the water. He didn’t know the name of the river, but the best he could tell, it flowed down from the Fingers, gathering all the streams and rivers into this body of slow-moving yet resolute water. It seemed appropriate that this be the spot.

He never hesitated. It was as much about penitence as it was about putting a stop to seeing the shadow girl. He lay down with his head hanging off the bank, looking up at the sky. He unscrewed the top of the drain cleaner and held it up like an offering. In a way, he knew that’s exactly what he was making. His sight for his life, his sight for the regret that ate at him, his sight for a second chance to be himself without the rest of the world trying to hold him back.

He tipped the container over, and the nearly clear white liquid spilled out, hitting his rapidly blinking left eye. The burning was instantaneous and exquisite, but he didn’t scream. Instead, he felt pure exultation as the cleaner filled his eye cavity, as he switched to the right one, careful to keep his hand steady as he poured it drop by drop into his pupils.

Once the burning had filled both eyes, he turned around and dropped the container in the river. The excess drained from his face into the water flowing away from the Fingers. He watched it go downstream, a white mess he hoped was his penitence. He watched it until it faded away, not around the bend or out of the range of his vision but gone forever, replaced by a darkness Rufus hoped would somehow save him.