The River
People still swim in the river, but it’s so polluted that when they get out and sit on a towel, their butts leave a grease print. Kids used to skinny-dip in it and have picnics on the banks when my mom was a girl, but now it smells like sewer water and basically, that’s what the river is. The paper mill messed it up and then the mill closed because it was run by a bunch of criminals and even though for thirty-some years people made a living there, they all ended up in the same place—out of work, and after all those years and boxes of paper, what good did it do anyone? All we have to show for it now is a closed factory and a poisoned river where the only fish that can still live in it are carp, and the one or two times I’ve seen some of them, they looked like scaly lumps with eyes. Turd-fish is what they are. I feel sorry for them for being so ugly and living in a toxic river but they are nasty. It’s like the paper mill crooks left their signature scribbled across every inch of the water—Tough shit! Yours truly, and every plant or fish or person living in or near it is friggin’ screwed.
The river starts up in Minnesota or maybe it’s Canada and they named it after some Indian chief called White Cloud. I like that name, even if it reminds some people around here of a brand of fancy toilet paper, which I suppose is a sick coincidence, because the paper mill used to make toilet paper, but not that kind. On school days when it’s warm enough, kids cut classes and go down to the smelly, sad riverbank to drink and smoke pot and get naked in the reeds, but I think that’s lame. There are snakes in those reeds, and some people saw a wolf or a coyote around there a couple of times too, but I don’t go mainly because I don’t like to drink until I get sick. If I am a priss, I could care less. I’d rather be classy, like those women who acted in black-and-white movies, the ones with the wavy hair and pouty lips and speaking voices like sharp knives—so quick and clean you didn’t know they’d cut you until a long time after they’d done it.
My dad, being one of the people who lost his job, is pissed off all the time, and Mom has started saying that she is going to leave him to stew in his own angry juices if he doesn’t get a new damn job soon and hold onto it. He worked as a house painter for a couple of months over the summer, but then he got into an argument with the boss who said he used too much paint and Dad lost his temper and quit. Mom said that she’s going to take me and move in with my sister Thea who lives four miles away in Sill’s Creek and doesn’t want us anywhere near her place unless we’re just stopping by to bring her stuff from the house, but it’s not like she can lock Mom and me out, especially because Mom would pay half the rent and cook for us, but with Thea working at the one Italian restaurant around here that isn’t just a greasy pizza place, she doesn’t really need to eat at home, if she eats at all. Lately she’s been on a diet because one of the cooks said she had a big ass, which isn’t true at all but she believed him because she has no real guy in her life and always feels crappy about herself.
I don’t think I want to go with Mom if she moves to Thea’s. Even though he’s a huge crab, I worry about Dad. I worry that he would go crazy if we left him. I’ve seen him crying and aside from a show about women in Africa getting their privates cut up, it is probably the worst thing I have ever seen. When he cries, it’s like he becomes someone I don’t know at all and won’t ever know and then he’ll turn into one of those weirdos who hang out by the VFW and make cracks about Polacks and how many nuns you need to change a light bulb.
He has a project that he’s working on instead of going to a job Monday through Friday, something he spends whole days at the library doing research for and I have to help him because he says it will build my character. He says I need to learn more than what they teach me at school, but I know that already. I’m supposed to learn how to take on the government and “the slimeball politicians who are criminals just like the paper mill bastards, only politicians get to rob everyone blind in broad daylight and then shake hands all around.” I need to learn to stand up for myself and write letters to the newspapers so that the politicians know that their slimeball moves are being noticed. Most of the time I don’t feel like doing any of this stuff, but for a little while he’s in a better mood if I do.
Right now he’s working on the river. He’s not letting me off the hook with this project either. I hate the word project because it’s now his favorite word and it means that I’ll have to spend half the afternoon doing something really boring. He wants to sue the big company that owned the paper mill and make them clean up the river and pay millions of dollars to everyone who lost their job over there. He’s trying to convince people he used to work with to sign up with him so they can turn it into a class action suit, which he says would give them a lot more power.
Mom says something else: “You’re not a lawyer, Tom. I hate to break it to you, but you have no idea what you’re getting into trying to take these people on.”
“They’ve destroyed our river and stolen our jobs,” he says back, his voice too loud. “If we don’t have a strong case, I don’t know who does.”
“Of course you have a case, but two things they have that you don’t are money and the best legal counsel available.”
Dad’s face gets even more squinty. “I’m going to find someone who will do it pro bono. It could be as important as the big tobacco case.”
Mom shakes her head. “Nothing will ever be that big again. Companies have new ways to keep people like you at bay.”
“Nope. You’ll see that I’m right.”
That’s his other favorite thing to say now. You’ll see. Mom rolls her eyes when he says it. “I must be blind because I never see a thing,” she says.
“You’re real funny,” he says. He’s mad but Mom doesn’t care. They are like two cats without claws who keep hissing at each other because they can’t do anything else.
