Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates Page A

had to ask him to repeat himself, with whom did he
want to speak?—telling her, this stranger who was a lifeline to him as a mere
straw would be to a man submerged in water just covering his head in a slightly
thickened, lowered voice of no discernible accent Ray Annick please, this is
Gerald
    Ferguson
calling Ray Annick please and the woman went away and the din of voices and
laughter increased and finally Ray was on the line edgy, apprehensive,
"Yeah? Gerry? What is it?" knowing it must be trouble, for Ferguson
was no friend but a legal associate who would never have called Ray Annick at
such a time unless it was trouble, and The Senator said in his own voice
faltering, desperate, "Ray, it isn't Ferguson, it's me," and Ray said
dumbly, "You?" and The Senator said,
"It's me and I'm in bad trouble, there was an accident," and Ray
asked, with the faint falling air of a man reaching out to support himself,
"What? What accident?" and The Senator said, his voice now rising,
"I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do: that girl— she's dead,"
banging his already bruised forehead against the filthy Plexiglas wall of the
telephone booth, so there was an instant's shocked silence and then Ray said,
"Dead-----!" more an inhalation of breath than an expletive, and then
he said, quickly, "Don't tell me over the phone! Just tell me where you
are and I'll come get you," and The Senator was sobbing now, furious and
incredulous and aggrieved, "The girl was drunk, and she got emotional, she
grabbed at the wheel and the car swerved off the road and they'll say
manslaughter, they'll get me for-----" and Ray interrupted, now angrily,
with authority, "Don't! Stop! Just tell me where you are for Christ's
sake, and I'll come get you." And so The Senator did.
    The
digital numerals of his Rolex still flashing: 9:55 p.m.
     
    But
none of this Kelly Kelleher knew or could know for it seemed to her that in
fact the accident had not happened yet—for there was the shiny black Toyota
only now turning off the highway onto the desolate rutted road, the bright
romantic moon above, something low and jazzy on the radio and, yes, she knew
this was a mistake, probably a mistake, yes probably they were lost... but lost was their intention.
    As the black water filled her lungs,
and she died.
    No:
at the last possible moment coughing and choking she strained to lift her torso
higher, to raise her head higher straining so that the small muscles stood out
from the sinews and bone of her left arm as her fingers gripped what she no
longer quite understood was the steering wheel but knew it was a device to save
her for there was the bubble floating above shrunken now from its original size
but it was there and she was all right hugging a startled Buffy St. John hard,
hard, vowing she loved her like a sister and was sorry she had so deliberately
shut herself off from Buffy these past two or three years telling her it was an
accident, no one to blame.
    And,
yet, had it happened...? The car speeding
skidding along the road that seemed to have no houses, no traffic only swampy
land stretching for miles everywhere the spiky brown rushes, the swaying tall
grasses, stunted pines, so many strangely lifeless trees— treetrunks —
and the harsh percussive rhythm of the insects' cries in their mating as if
sensing how time accelerated, how the moon would shortly topple from the sky
turned upside down and Kelly saw without registering she saw (for she and The
Senator were talking) in a shallow ditch beside the road a broken dinette
table, the front wheel of an English racing bicycle, the headless naked body of
a flesh-pink doll... looking away from the doll not wanting to see the hole
between the shoulders like a bizarre mutilated vagina where the head had been
wrenched off.
    You're an American girl you love your
life.
    You love your life, you believe you have chosen it.
    She
was drowning, but she was not going to drown. She was strong, she meant to put up a damned good