Slivers

by Randall Brown

We skipped graduation, drove up to the Poconos to her secret mountain spot, a sliver of stream among bear and deer tracks, minks and otters. Wild brook trout, the biggest the size of her hand. While she cast her fly, I sat on a rock, spotting fish, directing her presentations.

Every now and then, through the evergreens, sunlight reached her, like the soft lighting given to old movie stars. She looked like Katherine Hepburn chasing after lost leopards. Her smile, up at me on the rocks with polarized sun glasses, made me wonder if I’d feel this way again, in college and beyond, how unlike this it could become – with everything about her a tiny bit messed-up, her hair, her clothes, her parents, her flyline, her feelings, everything.

And then the first bullet hit against a tree above me. Whizz.

“Down,” I said. “Down.” I scrambled off the rock and landed on top of her, against the bank. We heard faraway voices. Kids shooting instead of graduation. Shooting at nothing.

“Hey!” I screamed. “We’re here!” Whizz! Against leaves. Into the water yards from us. We both curled up tight, my body covering hers.

“We’re here!” I screamed again. Whizz. Against the bark. Tiny branches and leaves snapped off. “Fuck!We’re here!”

A bullet whizzed past my face.

“You feel that?” she asked.

“Yeah I felt that.”

“You're gonna kill someone!” she screamed out. “There’s someone fucking here!”

Nothing. They’d run out of bullets, moved on, maybe heard her.

“Your heart,” she said.

“Yours too.”

That silence felt overwhelming. Neither of us let go. We stayed like that for the longest time.