Chapter 4 (continued some more)

Sedgewick hung up. It was her. And he knew what was wrong, what made her voice crack and stammer, though he hoped against hope that he was totally, completely, utterly wrong.

He crossed the parking lot, slow but sure. At the edge of the bank he looked down to the boulder and the black and green and flesh ball perched on top. Her head was again buried. Sedgewick picked his way down the slope, carefully placing each foot. At the bottom, where the bank washed away to stones and sand, he stooped and picked up a few golf ball size rocks.

He stood about ten feet behind the boulder and the crumpled girl. He looked down at the rocks in his hands, the girl still oblivious. One was pockmarked and beaten, chunks missing and broken off, jagged. Another was smooth, polished and worked over by the continual passing of water and minute grains of sand. He took the pockmarked rock in his fist, clenched it, and then hurled it with all his might up into the clear blue sky and out over the blue water of the Mississippi.

The rock hung in the air and Sedgewick held his breath, waiting for the sploosh that would shatter the silence and announce his presence. He closed his eyes and counted. One. Two. Splash. Three.

He opened his eyes and fell into the deepest well of tears drowning the greenest eyes he'd ever seen. The lump grew in Sedgewick's throat. A lump he hadn't realized was back, a lump that wanted to choke him. It was a lump he knew well.

Allison had the same lump, and from ten feet away Sedgewick could see her lip quivering slightly and a tear break from the pool in her eye and follow a well-worn path down her freckled cheek.

Sedgewick walked forward and stopped a few feet from the boulder. He pushed the sand with his shoe.

"Sometimes it helps," he said, holding out the smooth rock and looking past Allison to the Mississippi. Her body convulsed with the slightest of giggles, but it could have been a sob. Sedgewick couldn't tell.

She pulled herself from the boulder, stood on her own two feet, which were bare and sunk into the sand, and took the rock from Sedgewick's outstretched hand. She didn't wipe the tears from her eyes, but closed them, tightly, letting the tears run freely, draining her eyes. She finally opened them, looked out across the water and hurled the rock, hard and violently, letting out a pained scream as she did. She dropped to her knees with the effort, but kept her head up to watch the rock scream over the water like a baseball and then slowly drop into the water. When it splashed she dropped her head.

Sedgewick just watched. He toed the sand some more with his shoe, and turned the third rock over and over in his hand. He could see Allison sobbing again, see the muscles ripple through her body with each wave. Her cries became louder and louder, and Sedgewick bit his lip. When he stepped forward Allison raised her hands and clenched both fists, then erupted, smashing both hands into the sand and punching, punching as she screamed and her body racked with sobs.

He put his hands on her arms to steady her, to stop the violent outburst, but she kept going. Sedgewick closed his eyes, as tight as they would go and wrapped both arms around her, not tight and suffocating like a bear hug, but still strong and firm. She continued to punch with her fists, lashing out at anything and now that was Sedgewick. More than hugging her, he was containing her from exploding out of herself and leaving nothing but an empty, broken shell. She landed seven, eight, a dozen blows to Sedgewick's chest before she finally stopped. And they weren't weak, light punches either. They hurt. Allison did more than run in the mornings, she played soccer and worked out.

She finally collapsed into Sedgewick, burying her face in his chest, where she'd just pummeled and quite possibly bruised him. Her knees sank into the sand, and Sedgewick's did too as he pulled this girl close and held her in his arms on the edge of the Mississippi.

"Did it help?" Sedgewick asked, his eyes lost in a daze, his grip on Allison not loosening. She didn't move either but nodded her head.

"How… how did you know?"

"I know."
"I just can't believe…" The sobs overcame her again.

"I know."

"I can't believe she's gone."

"Your mom?" Allison nodded.

"Was it… did your mom…?" The question never fully came out. She just stopped.

"No, she didn't die," he answered. "I don't think. But I did lose her."

"But, the rocks…"

"My grandfather…" Sedgewick started, feeling a tremor in the depths of his soul. His eyes grew heavy with the weight of it all, and he closed them.

"…my brother…" Sedgewick continued, "my dad."

Allison pulled herself away and looked into Sedgewick's face. His eyes were still closed against the world. He was biting his lip. She reached out her hand, bits of sand still clinging to it and touched his cheek. He turned his face into her hand and slowly opened his eyes.

The tiniest of smiles broke out on Allison's face and she began to cry again, this time for her mother and Sedgewick's mother and grandfather and brother and father, and it just as well have been the entire world. She smiled only because she couldn't understand how one lone person could endure so much loss and still not be lost himself.

Tears were still coming from her eyes, but now they flowed from Sedgewick's as well, a single tear at first, but then another and another and another. They dropped from his face, some falling to hers, others falling to the sandy beach.

Together their tears fell, tributaries to the mighty Mississippi, winding through the heart of a nation before finally emptying into the salty ocean hundreds of miles away.

It was just this morning he'd even learned her name. Allison.

Sedgewick's mother was named Allison.