Above the Waterfall

by Ron Rash

  Until Richard. When the FBI said he was responsible, I didn’t believe them, despite what Richard had told me two weeks earlier. This was an office with a dozen workers, not an empty vacation house. Even when the news reported that part of his boot matched a pair worn at a rally, I told myself it was coincidence. But then the jawbone with four back teeth, two fillings a dental X-ray confirmed. How could I have been so wrong about someone? Perhaps my father was correct: I should have gotten over it like the other children. If I had known more people, really known them, learned from them . . .

  A nighthawk is near, its call electric, brief: a cicada’s first syllable. Farther off a barred owl calls. Such sounds may soothe me into sleep, into the dream of where the iron ring yields to my grasp. But as I go back inside, I also take my grandfather’s watch from the mantel, free the gold chain from its fob, and place the chain around my neck.

  PART TWO

  Ten

  Trey Yarbrough opened his pawnshop at 9:00 A.M. except Fridays and weekends, so on Tuesday morning I had time to stop in after confirming with Jarvis that the raid was on. Trey sat on a stool behind the counter, a silver trumpet in one hand and a rag dabbed with polish in the other. The windowless cinder-block walls, coated thick with white paint, were bare and bright as an interrogation room. Which seemed a smart move on Trey’s part. Plenty of his customers had bad memories of such rooms, as well as a desire to conduct business in places not so well lit, so were probably less likely to haggle.

  On the shelf behind Trey, a twenty-gallon aquarium held a timber rattlesnake thick as a man’s wrist. Wrapped behind its wedged head was a necklace of copper wire, attached to the wire a small ring. A message taped above the tank said THIS FELLOW IS LET OUT EVERY NIGHT. I CUT THE POWER TO THE LIGHTS BECAUSE HE LIKES CRAWLING AROUND IN THE DARK. BREAK IN IF YOU FEEL REAL LUCKY.

  “Interested in a trumpet, Sheriff?” Trey asked. “One of your deputies could play the cavalry charge when you take on the bad guys, like in that Apocalypse Now movie.”

  “Taps would be more like it, since I’ve got less than three weeks left, though I wouldn’t mind borrowing your snake to pitch inside a trailer later today. Keep us from having to go inside.”

  “Another meth bust?”

  “Yeah.”

  Trey stepped back and tapped the aquarium, triggering a sound like a maraca. When the tail stilled, I counted nine buttons.

  “Two months and not a scratch on my doorknobs and locks,” Trey said. “No dead bolt or security system ever did that.”

  “You really let that thing out at night?”

  “Damn straight. If they break in, it ain’t about scaring. I want it to bite the sons of bitches. Of course they got more poison running through them than that snake does. It’d likely be the one worse off.”

  “Probably so.”

  Trey started polishing the trumpet again. He was at least sixty but his curly gray hair reached his shoulders. On weekends, he played guitar at the Skinned Cat with some other old-school rock and rollers. Trey was good, gifted with long fingers whose nails he kept carefully manicured, but what you’d notice first about Trey was his eyes, one blue, the other gray. Guess my DNA hedged its bets during the Civil War, he liked to joke.

  “So what you looking for?” Trey asked.

  “Officially, a TV and a chain saw.”

  “Just the last few days?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “a break-in.”

  “No TV or chain saw, but damn near everything else. One fool came in with a hearing aid yesterday, said he’d pulled it out of his daddy’s ear when the old man died that morning. I should have done the world a favor and shot the bastard. You ever think it would come to this? I swear to God, Les, it’s got so bad I can’t find the words to describe it, can you?”

  “Job security,” I said.

  “I guess so, for the likes of us,” Trey sighed. “But if you deal with our kind of clientele long enough, you start wondering why God just don’t lick a finger and thumb and snuff out the whole damn thing. You’re smart to go ahead and get out. So first of the month, you’re officially retired?”

  “First of the month.”

  “How’s that cabin of yours coming along?”

  “Good. It should be done by December.”

  “Billy Orr does good work,” Trey said.

  “He does, and he doesn’t let you forget it when he hands you the bill.”

  “For sure,” Trey said, and set the trumpet in the display case. “So what else are you looking for?”

  “Did Darby Ramsey bring in a lawn mower?”

  “Yeah, last week, but I sold it yesterday.”

  “It was Gerald’s.”

  “He’s one shameless piece of shit, ain’t he?” Trey said. “I figured he hadn’t come by it honest, but if I’d known it was Gerald’s, I wouldn’t have took it. He’s a rough old coot but I like him.”

  “Well, let me know if Darby brings in anything else. I’d love to bust his ass one more time before I retire.”

  “If he shows up with something, I’ll call you,” Trey said. “Be safe today doing that meth bust. You’re in the home stretch.”

  Outside, the sun had hauled itself completely over the mountains. It was going to be a warm day, which would make being in the hazmat suit all the more miserable. Mist Creek Valley, that was where we’d be going, though enough meth got cooked there that Jarvis had renamed it Meth Creek Valley. Rodney Greer looked to be one of those cookers, because last week before dawn Jarvis had hidden his patrol car on a logging road and walked up to Greer’s trailer, kicked up Sudafed foil packets among a trash heap’s ashes.

  Ruby was at her desk when I entered the office.

  “Did the judge call?” I asked.

  “No, was he supposed to?”

  “Only if Harold Tucker asked for a warrant. How about around here? Anything I need to know about?”

  “Jarvis was looking for you earlier but he stepped out,” Ruby said. “Barry’s downstairs double-checking the equipment. You know how he is about that.”

  “It’s good to have someone that careful around,” I said. “You make sure they’re still doing it after I’m retired.”

  “You know I will,” Ruby said. “But you be sure to look after my boys today.”

  My boys. That’s what she called Jarvis and Barry. She especially doted on Barry, who was still in his twenties, just eight months on the job. Ruby had been here long enough to know anything from a traffic stop to a domestic could get an officer killed, but like the rest of us, she worried most about the meth raids. I knew that as soon as we left she’d take a St. Christopher medal from her desk and rub it while she prayed we would come back safe, a Southern Baptist calling for backup.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll look after them.”

  “And yourself too,” Ruby added.

  I’d been in my office only a few minutes when Jarvis knocked on the door. With his freckles and cowlicked red hair, hazel eyes that never seemed completely awake, Jarvis looked more like a teenager rousted out of bed than a man almost forty.

  “I’ll soon start getting my stuff out of here,” I said as he sat down.

  Jarvis blushed.

  “I’m not wanting to rush you, Sheriff.”

  “I know that but you need to get settled in. As far as what’s on the walls, I can leave the calendar, the state map too.”

  “Sure,” Jarvis said, and pointed a finger at the watercolor behind me. “I don’t guess you’d be willing to sell that one, would you? I’ve always liked it. It’s calming to look at it, which I expect I’ll be needing a lot more of in a few weeks.”

  I looked back at the painting as well. Dark blue mountains rising into a light blue sky. In the lower-right corner, L.C. ’94.

  “I won’t sell it, but I will leave it here for now.”

  “Thanks,” Jarvis said. “You won’t mind if I hang it on this side of the room, will you?”

  “That’s fine,” I said, turning to face him. “So
you’re sure Greer’s been cooking?”

  “I’m sure,” Jarvis said, “and not just because of what was in the trash pile. You know how these places are. It had that dead feel about it.”

  I did know. Some of it you could see, windows closed and shades pulled down, doors never opened wide. There might be a grill or horseshoe pitch out front but they never looked used. Everything appeared not so much left behind as surrendered in a siege. A white flag raised. Just let us have the drugs and the rest is yours.

  “And Ben Lindsey’s daughter is still with Greer?” I asked.

  “I drove by there yesterday and her car was there.”

  “Any sign of diapers in that trash heap?”

  ”I didn’t see any.”

  “Maybe she at least has enough sense left to leave the baby with her parents,” I said. “She’s done that before.”

  “I hope to God so,” Jarvis said.

  The worst thing was finding a child inside. You’d approach the house or trailer lots of time not knowing. Then you’d see a toy or baby food jar and get a knot in the belly. Things normally associated with happiness, like a teddy bear or pacifier, became ominous as headlights beaming up from a lake.

  “But no other adults there, right?”

  “Didn’t look to be.”

  “Then I’ll tell SBI to just be backup,” I said. “Barry’s downstairs getting out the Tyvek and respirators. You’d better go check on him. You know how he gets if he thinks a child might be involved.”

  “I know,” Jarvis said.

  Jarvis went downstairs. Because of his boyish looks, he might get tested early on, but he’d proved that he was plenty tough enough for the job. After Jarvis backed down the big talkers, busted a few heads if necessary, the word would get around. Tough but not sadistic. I couldn’t see Jarvis beating a drifter senseless with a blackjack or strip-searching some kid just because he could. He’d make mistakes but he’d learn from them. Jarvis would do fine.

  It was almost eleven. I always liked some coffee and a few minutes of downtime before a raid, but before heading over to Greene’s Café, I Googled “Sarah Barker” and “Hoyt Counseling Center.” An updated staff photograph appeared. The first thing I noticed was that the silver earrings looked new. Their design was triangular, perhaps a pyramid or a mountain. A gift from her husband or maybe one of her sons. Sarah’s eyes were the same, green with flecks of gold-brown, and there was life in them. The sides of her mouth argued more smiles than frowns. I enlarged the photograph. Her hair was shorter, a bit more gray. Maybe another line on her brow, throat a bit looser. Looking for signs of aging, enough that one day I might be able to tell myself, See, this is not the woman who came wading out of the river that afternoon, smiling and bare but for the water glistening off her.

  Sarah had a good life now, three kids, a husband, the Lexapro working. After her first child was born, she’d begun sending me Christmas cards. I’d watched her family grow, the photo more crowded with each new child, the steady rise in their heights. Season’s Greetings from the Barkers. The first year I’d sent a Christmas card back, addressed to the whole family, but never after that. After five years the cards quit coming and I was glad. To show you I’m all right and whatever you did or didn’t do is forgiven was one way to look at the cards. But a darker part of me couldn’t help thinking Sarah was also saying See what you might have had. Evoking the broken promise of that long-ago afternoon on the river, when Sarah and I were happy and in love and vowing to stay so the rest of our lives.

  I studied the photograph a few more moments and thought about yesterday how I’d felt sadness for Becky at the resort. But another part of me had felt vindicated. See, Gerald’s not what you thought he was. He can be filled with rage and violence.

  At the café, the breakfast patrons had left and the lunch crowd hadn’t arrived, so I was the only customer. I took my usual seat in the back booth and Lloyd brought me my coffee.

  “See any rain clouds out there, Sheriff?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “If it gets any drier, the catfish will be carrying canteens.”

  “I reckon so.”

  “That going to bother you?” Lloyd asked, nodding toward the counter’s radio.

  I shook my head. Because they were busy preparing lunch on Sundays, Lloyd and his wife, Betty, listened on Tuesdays to a rebroadcast of the church service.

  As I sipped my coffee, the congregation sang “Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown.” The piano was the same one I’d grown up listening to, rickety and never quite tuned right, but the music felt all the more sincere because of it, the same with the congregation’s mismatched singing. I recognized a couple of voices, older, a bit shakier, still fervent. At the hymn’s conclusion, rustles and murmurs as the hymnals got stashed in the pew pockets. Preacher Waldrop began the opening prayer. He was over eighty but his voice remained strong and vigorous.

  After the prayer, Preacher Waldrop read aloud from the book of Mark, the passage where Peter walks on water before getting scared and sinking. Then he launched into his sermon.

  “There Peter was, with Christ Almighty standing right afore him, the fellow even now called the rock of the church, and Peter floundering away with no more grace than a three-legged mule. Ponder it. The same Peter that seen the lame trot off without a stumble, blind folks with their eyes awash in every color of the rainbow. Peter had been there to witness it all. His own eyes seen the dead wiggle out of grave quilts like a moth shucking its cocoon. Have you seen such a sight in your woods or fields, brothers and sisters? I have. It was of an afternoon and I thought that cocoon was nothing more than a fox turd. They ain’t no way to say it but that. All brown and dried-up looking. Then that cocoon give a shiver and this little head poked through and then its body spread out as pretty a set of wings as I’ve seen on bird or butterfly. Big green wings, the very color of new life itself. Now you’re thinking, Preacher, you was talking about old Peter and now you’re talking about moths. Brothers and sisters, it’s all one. There Peter was, looking straight into the very eyes of God, walking the Sea of Galilee and then of a sudden up to his neck in water. Some would argue he lacked the true believing, but I say he had enough faith to go it a ways, and when he couldn’t go farther Christ fetched him up. What am I saying? I’m saying that the walk to God ain’t easy for the best of us. Now some would say, Preacher, if Peter had misdoubts there in the very glory of the Lord, what of us left here that ain’t seen the dead raised nor the leper folk healed. All we seen is hard trials and sorrows. I’d not deny it. Burdens are plenty in this world and they can pull us down in the lamentation. But the good Lord knows we need to see at least the hem of the robe of glory, and we do. Ponder a pretty sunset or the dogwoods all ablossom. Every time you see such it’s the hem of the robe of glory. Brothers and sisters, how do you expect to see what you don’t seek? Some claim heaven has streets of gold and all such things, but I hold a different notion. When we’re there, we’ll say to the angels, why, a lot of heaven’s glory was in the place we come from. And you know what them angels will say? They’ll say yes, pilgrim, and how often did you notice? What did you seek?”

  I could almost hear Becky offer a soft amen as Lloyd turned down the radio and came over with his coffeepot.

  “He can still whittle out a bully sermon, can’t he?”

  “It seems so,” I said.

  “And a good man too. I’ve never heard a bad word told against him.”

  I nodded, because it was true. He was a good man. On that evening eleven years ago, Preacher Waldrop had come to the hospital and sat with me an hour while we waited to see if Sarah would live. He could tell I didn’t want to talk about it and he respected that. When the doctor gave us the word, Preacher Waldrop touched my shoulder and left.

  I paid Lloyd and walked back across the street. You can see heaven all around us, Preacher Waldrop claimed. But Mist Creek Valley would soon confirm that the same was true of hell.

  Eleven

  Chkkk
chkkk. A red-winged blackbird saying away from me keep, away from me keep as he commandeers a cattail masthead, ebony coat blazoned with red epaulets fringed white. Above the drainage pond, galax’s skunky scent. Nearer the stream, cardinal flowers bloom. I touch a petal, some moisture yet. I check the campsites, then head back to the bridge. I set both arms on the railing, look down. Always a dizzying raft feel first, wood and water both moving, then only water as the bridge staples to the banks. Months past their name, mayflies emerge. Ephemeroptera. Brief lives spent aloft, they drift down light as dandelion spores. A brown trout sips one off the surface. Beneath the trout, mica-flecked sand gleams white. Come fall the female’s caudal fin will nudge the grains to make a nest, her eggs spilling like pearls into a purse.

  The trout rises and curves. On its flank the spots Hopkins calls rose moles. A water snake, bankblended until now, unspools into the water, prow headed as it swims across, rests in the opposite shallows. On its back, inscape of dark brown saddle marks with thin pyramids of yellow. Last week a man had brought one to the office, two children in tow. Killed a moccasin, he bragged. I’d shown the children how a viper’s head differed, explained why all snakes were needed, including the venomous ones. This snake swivels downstream, a current within a current, soon under the bridge. As I turn to watch it reemerge, Carlos comes up the trail, a child’s plastic bucket in his hand.

  “Look at this, Beck. A kid caught it above the beaver ponds.” Carlos holds the bucket between us. “I thought it was a brook trout fingerling at first.”

  A yellow-orange belly, dark flank dotted, but not a trout.

  “Percina aurantiaca,” I tell Carlos. “The common name is tangerine darter or river slick.”

  “I’ve never seen one before,” he says. “What’s their range?”