The Forgiving River

To Reason with Madness

Adam worked in the hot noon sun, working on the dilapidated tractor, his hands and lower arms covered in grease, dirt and sweat. The knuckles on both hands showed torn skin in various stages of healing, tears caused by a slipped wrench or a wayward rope. He paused and took his cap off, pulled his arm across his forehead, wiping away the sweat that threaten to drip into his green, troubled eyes.

Off in the distance, he could see Jasper, his old bloodhound, running across the field, carrying something in his mouth. Jasper loped up to Adam, dropped the treasure at his master's feet and looked up at him, waiting for a rewarding pat on the head or scratch behind the ears. Adam smiled down at the dopey dog face and reached out a hand to pat the dog. But before his hand reached Jasper, Adam froze, his hand suspended in mid air. At his feet, laid a human hand.

Adam looked away at the woods, and then down at the hand. At the woods. At the hand. Hand. Woods. Hand. The panic built slowly in him. Rising from his groin, through his stomach, chest, heart, burning his throat, filling his head with tightness and chilliness. The river of despair that he swam in his nightmares now spilled over into his waking hours and threatened to drown him. It was almost as if Adam could feel the water rising around his ankles.

Slowly, he knelt down to pick up the hand. It was hers, there was no doubt about it. The skin was callused from doing laundry, dishes, gardening, all of the duties that a wife would have,. Not to mention the plowing, sowing, livestock care, all the duties the wife of a farmer and a drunk would have.

On the back of the hand was a smudge of dried blood and about two inches above the ridge was the jagged, charred edge. He turned the hand over, and noticed the bruise around the ring finger and the abnormal angle at which the finger bent. They had yanked on her finger until the ring came off, dislocating her finger in the process.

He was going to have to go see them, he thought with a sickly braveness. He hated himself for being such a coward, but even in the blazing sun, he felt a shiver tremble up his spine.

He got into his dusty pickup, slammed the door, rolled the window down, and gunned out of the driveway and up the road, kicking up a cloud of powdery dust as he went.

As he drove, he thought back in amazement at how it came to be that he would be involved in something so dirty and criminal as this. It had all started innocently enough, just a night out for poker with Jack. Now he drove up the road with a dead woman's hand on the seat beside him, on his way to reason with a pair of madmen.