Dark Rivers of the Heart

vanthere than the simple fact that it doesn't belong here. Seeking a reason for that ominousness, leaning through the open door, squinting, wishing I'd brought a flashlight, I'm hit by the stink of urine. Someone has pissed in the back of the van. Weird. Jesus. Of course, maybe its only a dog that made the mess, which isn't so weird after all, but it's still disgusting.
        Holding my breath, wrinkling my nose, I step back from the door and hunker down to get a closer look at the license plate. It's from Colorado, not out of state.
        I stand.
        I listen. Silence.
        The barn waits.
        Like many barns built in mow country, it had been essentially windowless when constructed. Even after the radical conversion of the interior, the only windows are two on the firstfloor, the south side, and four second-floor panes in this face. Those four above me are tall and wide to capture the north light from dawn to dusk.
        The windows are dark. The barn is silent.
        The north wallfeatures a single entrance. One man-size door After moving around to the far side of the van, finding no one there, either, I'm indecisive for Precious seconds.
        From a distance of twenty feet, under a moon that seems to conceal as much with its shadows as it reveals with its milky light, I nevertheless can see that the notih door is ajar On some deep level, perhaps I know what I should do, what I must do. But the part of me that keeps secrets so well is insistent that I return to my bed, forget the cry that woke me from a dream of my mother, and sleep the last of the night away. In the morning, of course, I'll have to continue living in the theory that I've made myself a prisoner of reality tucked into a forgotten pocket at the back of my mind. Maybe the burden of that pocket has become too heavy for the fabric to contain it, and maybe the threads of the seams have begun to break. On some deep level, maybe I have decided to end my waking dream.
        Or maybe the choice I make is preordained, having less to do with either my subconscious agonies or my conscience than with the track of destiny on which I've traveled since the day I was born. Maybe choice is an illusion, and maybe the only routes we can take in life are those marked on a map at the moment of our conception. I pray to God that destiny isn't a thing of iron, that it can be flexed and reshaped, that it bends to the power of mercy, honesty, kindness, and virtue-because otherwise, I can't tolerate the person I will become, the things I will do, or the end that will be mine.
        That hot _July night, beaded with sweat but chilled, fourteen in moonlight, I am thinking about none of that: no brooding about hidden secrets or destiny. That night, I'm driven by emotion rather than intellect, by sheer intuition rather than reason, by need rather than curiosity. I'm only fourteen years old, after all. Only fourteen.
        The barn waits.
        I go to the door, which is ajar I listen at the gap between the door and the jamb.
        Silence within.
        I push the door inward. The hinges are well oiled, my feet are bare, and I enter with a silence as perfect as that of the darkness that welcomes me…
        Spencer opened his eyes from the dark interior of the barn in the dream to the dark interior of the rock-pinned Explorer, and he realized that night had come to the desert. He had been unconscious for at least five or six hours.
        His head was tipped forward, his chin on his chest. He gazed down into his own upturned palms, chalk white and supplicant.
        The rat was on the floor. Couldn't see it. But it was there. In the darkness. Floating.
        Don't think about that.
        The rain had stopped. No drumming on the roof He was thirsty.
        Parched. Raspy tongue. Chapped lips.
        The truck rocked slightly. The river was trying to push it over the cliff.
        The tireless damned river.
        No. That couldn't be the explanation. The roar of the waterfall was gone. The night was silent. No thunder. No lightning. No water sounds out there any more.
        He ached all over. His head and neck were the worst.
        He could barely find the strength to look up from his hands.
        Rocky was gone.
        The passenger door hung open.
        The truck rocked again. Rattled and creaked.
        The woman appeared at the bottom of the open door. First her head, then her shoulders, as if