• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

DROP ME IN THE WATER A Thesis Presented to The Graduate Faculty of The University of Akron In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Fine Arts Tara Kaloz May, 2011 DROP ME IN THE WATER Tara Kaloz Thesis Approved: Accepted: _________________________ _________________________ Advisor Dean of the College Imad Rahman Dr. Chand Midha _________________________ _________________________ Committee Member Dean of the Graduate School Eric Wasserman Dr. George R. Newkome _________________________ _________________________ Committee Member Date Robert Pope ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER PROLOGUE. CARRIE ANNE (AFTERLIFE) . iv I. OLSON . 1 II. GEORGE . 20 III. CARRIE ANNE . 43 IV. TOMMY . .64 V. OLSON . 82 VI. DANI . 102 VII. JOE . 116 VIII. OLSON . .. .135 iii PROLOGUE CARRIE ANNE (AFTERLIFE) The water takes me in like breath and I resonate with the saturated inhale-exhale, exist as a hiccup that chokes out the lungs, drowns them. Foam lines the banks of the river, laps at the root systems of trees like the spittle that lines the mouths of newborns and the lips of seizure victims. I am the fragment that gets stuck in the throat, but the whole process lacks the constriction. Instead, I am snuffed, deprived of oxygen until the ability to glow gets extinguished. Then there's just the wick. The charred-up stick figure remains of what was once a viable vessel. I'm naked. Leaves press themselves slick against my skin. They stick close to my humilities, yet never provide sufficient enough cover. Fact is, I don't care. I don't question how I came to be clothes-less, who did the undressing. Perhaps it was me. I just float. I'm weightless and in love with the feel of the subtle unpredictability of the tiniest waves as they lap and lap and soothe my bluing body. There's the color of the water. At once, it is blue, brown, black, red. It is green and algae-invested. The mossy tendrils whisper against my skin. They are the dendritic iv veins that spread out, reaching and reaching for nothing in particular. Maybe they're reaching for me, so I find myself stretching out my fingers and moving past the tips. I am further than my body and am able to wrap myself around and in between the weeds, the roots, the rocks and silt and sand and then the water itself. I am every atom and every bubble on the fuzzy remnants of foam. One second, present, the next, lost to inevitable evaporation. Then I'm down. There's a hole in my head and the river leaks inside to fill my brain. My skull is lacking a stopper so the stuff just sloshes in and out until I'm full. I feel porous and sponge-like. I gulp the drink and start sinking, plunging down and down to nestle in the mud, among the bones and offal of fish. When I'm under, I see the sun breaking through and trying to relieve the darkness. Sometimes there is nothing but the overwhelming light and I become an insect encased in amber. A deep freeze that lacks all cold. The red dilutes to orange then to yellow then white. The whiteness is blinding and smothers the life. I am once again weightless and the water is warm. My ears hear the plugged throb of pressure, that cottony suffocation that makes everything loud and muted at once. A muzzled sound like heartbeats slows and slows and lulls me to sleep, a slippery metronome like a pendulum swing. Rocking like the back and forth of an in-motion hammock. The woven roping twisting and twisting tighter and then cinching the skin until the body's completely cocooned. When I come out, I am nothing like I was. And then it's just me, without the body. A bobber in its up-down effervescing. Swarms of minnows below nip and tug at the invisible line that's cast. They bite and bite until they sever the cord and free me, allow me to float to the surface, then higher and v higher until I'm touching the sky with its blue. Until the clouds. Until the sun swallows me like oxygen and there's nothing left behind. vi CHAPTER I OLSON When the first warming yawns of light stretched over the surface of the river, the blood had already finished drying onto the hardwood floor. It pooled out of Carrie Anne’s head and, without the splintered-open hole above her left earlobe, she looked to be lost in a dream. I dragged my Marlboro down to the filter and snuffed it out in the kitchen sink, pocketing the soggy nub. I crouched near Carrie Anne’s feet and took out a pen and small notebook from the inside of my jacket. With the notebook flipped open, I practiced balancing it in my palm, steadied by the weight of the pen. My eyes outlined the body, a slow crawl that omitted nothing. I wrote in the notebook and wiped at my face with the sleeve of my shirt. The bottoms of her black heels were scuffed from the daily nine to five, the commute from small river town to city sidewalks, up elevators and onto the soft cushion of corporate carpet. I imagined how those heels shaped her walk, accentuated every curve. She wore them well. I placed her at a copy machine, leaning on her elbows with an 1 unbuttoned blouse, teasing everyone away from their computers. This was and wasn't the woman I had known so many years before. My mouth was dry, I licked my lips. Her legs were parted enough to allow my eyes under her skirt. At the edges, the hem had begun to come loose. A dark green thread rested on her left thigh. Her sweater absorbed some of the bullet's shock, little spots of brownish red freckling the fabric. “Why did you stay?” I said, knowing there'd never again be an answer. There was no one there, just the shiver of sound resonating through the air, damp from the open windows and the river outside. The wine glasses clinked together above the bar. The subsequent silence strong enough to demand a shatter. Joe must've cracked the windows in the kitchen to lessen the smell he expected. They were closed when I left Carrie Anne alone the night before. She could've opened them, but the girl I had known always complained of a chill, even in the middle of summer. Many of my memories had her wrapped in the warmth of a blanket. Her eyes weren’t fully closed, but looked skyward under the lids. None of that mattered. By squinting, I could see the bright blue of her iris and knew it was losing its color. I wanted to close her lids the rest of the way, but was hesitant to touch her body, especially those fine, delicate features that seemed about ready to break. A slight vibration tugged at my skin, my fingertips. My hand pricked with a tingling numbness like needles. I allowed the sting. I closed the notebook, shoved it back inside my jacket. My knees cracked when I stood and I made my way around her outline to the untouched puddle under her head. It 2 looked unreal, staged. For a second, I expected her eyes to flutter open, for her to laugh at me for believing in her death. My hand was shaking. There was the inability to control myself, something I'd never experienced in quite the same way since. I pulled out a pair of white latex gloves from another pocket, but resolved to forget procedure and pushed the gloves back inside. This whole scene was set up as just another job, but there were differences. Joe had been more careless than usual, opting to do the dirty work himself instead of sending his errand murder man George. I'm no cop. Though if I was maybe Carrie Anne would still be here. Still walking around without the hole in her head, all her smarts spilling out and staining the hardwood. Maybe if I had a badge, I would've been able to do some actual good, make a real difference. Instead, I chose the inside route. The tunneling in only got me stuck, trapped between hard rocks and filth. I had to dig, had to get dirt under every nail, and maybe I got so deep I forgot about the light that had been driving me. Enough of this mole-ish metaphor. I fucked up, it's that simple. I returned to the river town and got a job with Carrie Anne's husband, Joe. I told him I grew up with his wife and needed work. He said he'd get back to me and a couple days later I was in. I told him not to tell her, something I realized he had no intention of doing in the first place. I wasn't clear what the front was, at first, but I knew Joe worked for a pal of his at a nearby car dealership. Mostly beaters and Buicks. Then I got my employment papers 3 for this fine little establishment known as The River Rat. It was a dive bar at its best, complete with jukebox, broken table legs, and neon in the window. Apparently, every member of Joe's crew worked at the bar, including a legit bartender who never failed to pour a good drink. Underneath all that, Joe ran the type of business that wasn't advertised in the yellow pages, that escaped Better Business bureaucracy.

Load more

  160

Copy Link