THE REVERSE CURRENT - The Night at the Riverbank
There is a specific kind of qu
Night at the
There is a specific kind of quiet that lives along the border river in
It isn’t peaceful.
It’s the dead, suffocating stillness of a room where everyone is holding their breath, waiting for a trigger to snap.The air off the water smelled of rotting water hyacinths, wet gravel, and cold diesel.It was twenty minutes past midnight.
I was standing in the mud beneath a cluster of weeping willows, three miles west of the legal crossing.
The mud here was thick, black, and pulled at the heels of my boots with a wet, heavy suction every time
I shifted my weight.I had twenty-five kilograms of raw morphine base sitting between my feet, packed into two waterproof rubber sacks.Seng was crouched four feet to my left, his knees buried in the wet reeds.
His gold-capped teeth weren’t flashing tonight.
He had his jacket zipped up to his chin, his shoulders hunched, his eyes darting back and forth across the pitch-black water.
Every time a frog jumped or a river rat rustled in the bamboo, his whole body gave a little twitch.”They’re late,” Seng whispered, his breath coming out in thin, grey plumes.”Shut up,
Seng,” I said softly.My hands were inside my coat pockets.
My right palm was sweating against the cold grip of a short-barreled revolver
Vance had handed me before we left the staging house.
I didn’t want the gun.
I hated the weight of it in my coat—it dragged the right side of my jacket down, making me feel lopsided, clumsy.
Vance had insisted. “You don’t cross the river without iron,
The water makes men crazy.”Vance wasn’t down in the mud with us.
He was sitting two hundred yards back up the ridge, parked on a dead-end logging spur in his black
Toyota pickup, keeping the engine idling, watching the road through a pair of night-vision binoculars.
Vance didn’t touch the goods himself anymore.
He provided the contact, took his fifteen percent cut, and let younger men stand in the mud.A faint, rhythmic splashing sound drifted across the water.Pad.
Pad.It wasn’t an engine.
It was an oar hitting the river, wrapped in rags to deaden the noise.Out of the wall of river fog, a long, low wooden skiff drifted into the shallows.
The bottom of the boat grated against the gravel with a sound that made my teeth ache.Two men stepped out into the knee-deep water.The one in front was tall, unnaturally thin, wearing a heavy dark slicker that smelled of cheap paraffin.
Blackie—a middleman from the northern province who had been buying small loads along the border for five years.
Behind him was a kid no older than eighteen, carrying a vinyl gym bag slung over his shoulder, his hands jammed deep into his pockets.Blackie didn’t come up onto the dry mud.
He stayed in the river, the freezing water swirling around his calf-high rubber boots.”Seng?” Blackie’s voice was raspy, stripped raw by years of smoking unfiltered tobacco.”Yeah,” Seng grunted, standing up carefully, his boots squelching in the mire. “We got the material.
Twenty-five.
Clean.”Blackie didn’t look at
His eyes slid over to me.
He squinted through the dark, trying to read the lines of my face under the brim of my cap.”Who’s the new guy?” Blackie asked, his left hand shifting under his slicker.”He’s with me,” Seng said quickly, his voice tight. “He’s
Vance’s man.
Don’t worry about him.
Show us the paper.”The kid with the gym bag stepped forward, but his boots slipped on a mossy river stone.
He went down hard on one knee, splashing icy river water all over his trousers and the bottom of the gym bag.”Fuck!” the kid gasped, scrambling back up, his teeth instantly chattering from the cold. “Jesus, it’s freezing!
My hands are numb!””Hold the bag up, you idiot!” Blackie spat, turning on the kid with a sudden, vicious flare of temper. “Keep the paper dry!””I slipped!
The fucking rock moved!””Shut your mouth!” Blackie hissed, his head jerking back toward the ridge.
He was trembling.
I could see it even in the dark—his shoulders were tight, his jaw working frantically.
He wasn’t just cold.
He was high, or coming down hard off a run of pills, his nerve frayed down to the bare copper wire.He turned back to us, stepping out of the water onto the mud. “Open the rubber sacks.
I want to smell it.”I didn’t move.Seng looked at me, hesitating, then bent down and unzipped the outer rubber casing of the first bundle.
A sharp, unmistakable odor filled the small space between us—vinegar, ammonia, and the bitter, stale tang of processed poppy resin.Blackie squatted down.
He reached into his coat, pulled out a small brass pocketknife, and flicked the blade open.
His hand was shaking so badly he dropped the knife into the mud.”Damn it!” he swore, groping blindly in the dark dirt.”Take it easy,
Blackie,” I said quietly.
It was the first time
I had spoken since the boat touched the bank.
My voice sounded flat, heavy in the fog. “Nobody’s rushing you.”Blackie froze.
His hand stayed buried in the wet mud.
He looked up at me, his eyes wide, whites showing all the way around the pupils in the dim starlight.”What did you say?” he whispered.”I said take it easy,” I repeated. “Get your knife.
Test the goods.”Blackie stood up slowly.
He didn’t pick up the knife.
He stepped backward, two steps, right back into the knee-deep river water, his boots splashing loudly.”This is bullshit,” Blackie muttered, his head jerking from side to side, looking at the dark willow trees above us. “This feels wrong.
The water’s too cold.
The river’s too high.”Seng stared at him in utter disbelief. “What the hell are you talking about?
The goods are right here!
Look at it!””You brought a stranger,” Blackie rasped, his voice rising in pitch, turning thin and panicked. “And who’s up on the hill?
I saw a headlight flash on the ridge two miles back!””That was a timber truck on the main road!” Seng yelled, forgetting to keep his voice down. “Blackie, don’t be a fucking fool!
We’ve been standing in this mud for an hour!
The money’s right there in the bag!””I’m not doing it,” Blackie said.
He grabbed the kid by the shoulder, shoving him violently back toward the wooden skiff. “Get in the boat!
Get in the boat now!””Blackie, wait!” Seng lunged forward, grabbing the gunwale of the skiff. “You can’t just walk away!
Vance paid for the transport!”Blackie didn’t pull a gun.
He reached into his slicker, grabbed a heavy wooden push-pole, and slammed the blunt end straight into
Seng’s chest.Seng let out a wet oof and went down flat on his back in the black mud, his legs kicking wildly.The kid tumbled into the skiff, the vinyl gym bag hitting the wooden floorboards with a dull, heavy thud.
Blackie shoved off the bank with the pole, the longboat spinning quickly out into the main current, swallowed almost instantly by the thick grey river fog.The sound of the rags hitting the water drifted back once— pad, pad —and then there was nothing.Silence.Seng was sitting in the mud, gasping for air, cursing in a high, hysterical whimper as he wiped river slime off his face.”Crazy son of a bitch!” Seng sobbed, his hands clawing at his chest. “Crazy, twitching bastard!
He panicked over a stone!
He panicked over the fucking water!”I stood there under the willow tree.I didn’t pull the gun out of my pocket.
I didn’t chase the boat.
I just looked down at the two rubber sacks sitting in the mud between my boots—twenty-five kilograms of raw base, untouched, unbought, completely worthless standing here on a riverbank at one in the morning.My right hand came out of my pocket.
It was slick with cold sweat.I looked up at the ridge, where the dark silhouette of
Vance’s truck sat idling in the trees, its exhaust pipe sending thin plumes of white smoke into the winter night.This was the business.It wasn’t a grand, calculating chess game played by men in tailored suits.
It was a filthy, chaotic scramble in the dark with twitching addicts, slippery rocks, cold water, and men who lost their nerve over the sound of a falling leaf.I knelt down in the mud, zipped the rubber casing shut over the vinegar-smelling sacks, and hoisted fifty pounds of poison onto my shoulder.”Get up,
Seng,” I said softly, turning my face toward the hill. “We have to walk back up.”