by Ron Rash
‘Here,’ he said. ‘It’s right around here.’
He stepped around the stumps, trying to find the one that belonged to the ash tree. Then he stopped.
‘This is it,’ he said, standing in a clear spot. He held out the shovel and moved it over the ground like a dowsing stick.
‘Somewhere right in here,’ he said.
He dug on one side and I started on the other. The rain had made the ground soft so it was easy going, easy enough to where my thoughts could go where they wanted. That wasn’t such a good thing. My mind was tangled as a blackberry patch and it seemed to be getting more tangled by the minute. An hour ago I’d wanted to believe there was only one way I could feel about the man beside me but that had just been wishful thinking on my part. We’d shared too much.
Even now we worked together, side by side, the same way we’d done my whole life. My deepest memory—deeper than Mrs Winchester’s eyes on me at church, deeper than Momma rocking me when an earache wouldn’t let me sleep—was being with him in the fields, a jar of pretty-colored potato bugs in my hand. Helping him, or at least that’s what he told me those days I followed him through the fields.
Think of something bad he did to you, I told myself. But there wasn’t anything. He’d never raised his hand against me or cussed me. He’d punished me when l’d deserved it but ever always in a gentle way. My not being his son hadn’t stopped him from loving me like a son.
The rain suddenly came harder, like a big knife had slit the sky open. I couldn’t see but a few feet in any direction. It was like a white curtain had fell around us, shutting off the rest of the world. If he’s not your father, who is he then? I thought.
‘Hurry,’ Sheriff Alexander said.
You could tell he fretted more and more about getting back across the river. I stepped out of the empty hole I’d made and started again, closer to the ash tree this time. I dug a good three feet before my shovel brought up something that wasn’t a root or rock. I kneeled down and rubbed the dirt off, dirt a different shade than what I’d dug before.
It was a chain, two pieces of rusty metal dangling from it. I closed my hand around the pieces. I didn’t do it hard but they crumbled like butterfly wings. I dug faster now. I found a medal with the silk still attached, a couple of boot eyelets and some bone chips. I put all of it in the sack with some of the dirt.
I kept digging but all I found was a few shards of Indian pottery and more roots.
‘That’s all there is, son,’ Sheriff Alexander said.
I didn’t want to believe that. I didn’t know what I thought I was going to find but it was ever so much more than what laid at the bottom of the cabbage sack.
‘Let’s go,’ Sheriff Alexander said, his hand settling firm on my shoulder, because I still kneeled on the ground, sifting through the mud for something I might have missed. But I knew I was searching for something I wasn’t going to find.
I stood up and looked at the people who’d raised me. What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to feel? I wanted to ask.
We sloshed back through the woods, my mind still tangled as memories grabbed hold of me like briars. I remembered him sitting on the bed, waiting for me to fall back asleep after a nightmare.
‘You get that from me,’ he’d said. ‘I had bad dreams when I was a kid, too.’ He’d patted me on the shoulder. ‘Don’t fret, son. You’ll soon outgrow it same as I did.’
Then another memory tore into me, a night years later at the county fair when I’d raised a pellet gun and hit the bull’s eye. ‘You’re a good aim, just like your daddy,’ Momma had said. His eyes had met hers and Momma’s face had lost its smile and the teddy bear I gave her couldn’t bring that smile back.
And the memory that tore deepest of all, because it was one that asked a question I had to answer.
‘You’re a Winchester, aren’t you?’ Mr. Pipkin had asked.
When we got to the bank the water was higher but that wasn’t the worst of it. The river was muddy now. There’d be no way to tell where we stepped.
Sheriff Alexander unraveled his rope.
‘You best leave those shovels,’ he told us. His teeth chattered as he spoke. ‘You’re going to have enough trouble getting yourself across.’ He nodded at the sack in my hand. ‘You could leave that too. You could save us all a lot of trouble if you did. My deputy’s on his way up here. Once he sees what’s in that sack this is a murder case.’
l looked at Momma and the man who’d raised me. Beg me to do what he says, I thought. Make this somehow easier. But they didn’t say a word.
I knew at that moment I had to make a choice between the man who’d raised me or the sack of bones and dirt in my hand, and that choice had to be made on this side of the river. It wasn’t near that simple, of course. It wasn’t a matter of what was the right or the wrong thing to do or what I owed the men who claimed me as a son or to Momma or Mrs. Winchester. The only thing that mattered was what I could live with.
I stepped into the river and didn’t stop until the water got to my knees. I turned, my eyes on Momma and Daddy. The current pushed hard against my legs but I stood firm. I grabbled the Gold Star from my pocket and dropped it in the sack. I raised the sack in my right hand and held it between us for a moment before I let it slip through my fingers. The current toted the sack a few feet downstream before it sunk.
‘Let the dead bury the dead,’ Sheriff Alexander said.
Nobody else spoke or moved. For a few seconds the only sound was the rain.
Then Sheriff Alexander threw me the rope end and I started across water that seemed a lot colder than a half hour ago. I waded blind now, moving my feet slow and careful across a bottom I couldn’t see. The current ran stronger, pushing me below where we’d crossed earlier. I wasn’t halfway and the water almost reached my waist.
I didn’t know whether to go back or go on. I just stood there, my brain working like it was in slow motion. I looked back at the others, spread out across the water with the rope in their hands like we were working a seine.
‘Go on,’ Sheriff Alexander shouted from the shallows and I did, because I no longer seemed able to think clearly for myself.
I unraveled the rope from my hand. If I slipped I didn’t want to carry them with me. I took a few more steps and the water started to get shallow again.
Suddenly the rope tightened.
‘I’m caught,’ Daddy shouted. ‘My leg’s in some timber.’
He had one hand on his leg, the other clutching the rope. The water pressed against him and I knew he couldn’t keep his balance long.
‘Hold on to the rope,’ I shouted.
His eyes met mine. I took a step toward him, then another. I kept my eyes locked on his, almost like they were another rope to keep him up. He must have felt the same way for he didn’t so much as blink. For a moment the river and rain weren’t there. It was just me and him.
Then the current bent him like it would a reed and he went under. Momma went under too, jerking the rope from my hand and the Sheriff’s. I lost my balance, the current carrying me into deep water where cold ran up my spine like electricity. When I came up I didn’t see anyone but Momma, who was downstream.
I tried to swim back to where Daddy had gone under but the current shoved me farther downstream with every stroke. I turned and saw the back of Momma’s head bobbing as the water pushed her into an eddy.
I let the water tug me downstream but the current swept me past Momma. When the current slowed I was ten yards below her. I managed to get out of the main current and into the eddy. I swam toward Momma and yelled at her to swim toward me. But the cold had numbed her brain. She looked my way but it was like she didn’t even recognize me.
She turned her face upstream toward where Daddy had gone under. She raised her arms out of the water and started splashing, trying to swim toward him. Then she raised her arms above her head like she was surrendering. Her head went under and her arms and finally her hands.
‘Momma!’
I shouted.
I swam to where she’d gone under. I took a deep breath and dove but the current had taken her away. I dove four times, the current pushing me farther downstream until the water was no more than hip-high again. I bumped up against a big log and that gave me the leverage to stand up to the current. My teeth rattled and my mind was groggy.
Then it was like I forgot who I was looking for or even where I was. It suddenly seemed stupid to be fighting the current when I could just lay down and let it cover me like a warm blanket. I leaned back the same way I’d lean back in a bed. I felt the water cover me and for a few moments everything became dark and peaceful.
Then I felt hands on me, strong hands, pulling me back to the surface, dragging me toward shore.
‘You could have let me sleep a while longer, Daddy,’ I said, then everything went dark again.
THE
DEPUTY
You had best get up to Billy Holcombe’s place,’ the sheriff had said, but never a damn word about why. Which wasn’t any surprise as he’s always been a man stingy with his words. I finished my coffee before I put on my yellow slicker and locked up, because he hadn’t said‘Get here quick’ or‘This is serious.’ Hell, it could have been a damn cat up a tree for all the hurry-up in his voice.
The rain made it a slow haul up the mountain but I finally slid and spun up Billy Holcombe’s drive. I saw the sheriff’s car and a pickup near the water but I wasn’t about to try to drive through that field. I reckoned one stuck county vehicle was enough.
It was like slogging through a big hog pen to get to the river. Every step I had to reach down and pull my leg out of the mud like it had took root. Once my shoe came off, and I had to dig it out like it was a potato.
I shouldn’t have bothered. That pair of shoes was beyond ruined before I was halfway to the water. I thought how nice it would be if I was back at the office, drinking coffee and listening to the rain hit the roof instead of being out in the midst of it. I was thinking I sure as hell hope this is something to be settled quick.
Then I saw someone coming across what had been bottomland, carrying something in his arms. I couldn’t put no face on him because the rain flailed down so hard it was like looking through a waterfall. That water he came plodding through was shallow, so shallow he looked to be walking on it, like he was a haint rising from the river.
He came closer and I saw it wasn’t no haint, but what he carried in his arms might well have been for the boy looked for sure more dead than alive, his face white as caulk.
‘What in God’s name happened?’ I asked.
‘What?’ the sheriff said, shivering so hard he stuttered it out. I looked into his eyes and they were damn near empty as the eyes of a jack-o’-lantern. Hypothermia and maybe shock, I was thinking.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘I got to get you and that boy thawed out.’
I led him over to the car and got the both of them in the backseat.
‘Get those clothes off you and him,’ I said, but his hands fumbled so bad he couldn’t undo the first button. I did it for him, then got a blanket from the trunk and wrapped them in it. I cranked the car and got the heat going good, then called the rescue squad.
‘We got us a shit-load of trouble up here,’ I said. I told them where I was and that they’d damn well better hurry.
l looked in the backseat. The boy was passed out cold but for his trembling, but the warmth roused the sheriff a little.
‘Billy and Amy Holcombe’s still down there,’ he said, his voice still shivery. ‘I got to go try and find them.’
‘You ain’t going nowhere,’ I said. ‘You stay here with that boy and watch over him till the rescue squad gets here. I’ll go find the others.’
But I didn’t find Billy and Amy Holcombe. I sent the divers down that afternoon soon as the rain slacked off. Those poor bastards had a time of it and not just because of the water being muddy. The timber the loggers left made it a rough go as well. It was easy enough for the living as well as the dead to get snagged under a mess of timber, especially in a lake where nothing had settled.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ I told the divers when they gave up for the day.
The next morning I drove back up to Jocassee but I didn’t head straight to Billy Holcombe’s place. There was other dead I had to tend to first.
I got to the cemetery before anyone else. I looked for the divers but they still worked upstream near the Holcombe place. Every few minutes a dynamite blast near the dam shuddered the ground, blasts so loud they made my ears ring. Loud enough to raise the dead, the old people would say, but whether it would or wouldn’t raise the dead didn’t matter a bit. The dead was going to be raised anyway.
Melvin Pearson and his crew showed up directly, the hearse and two trucks coming slow up the road.
‘How’s the sheriff and the boy doing?’ Melvin asked.
‘They’re still in the county hospital,’ I said, ‘but the doctors claim they’ll both be out by tomorrow.’
‘Any chance the others are still alive?’ Melvin asked.
‘I don’t see it likely,’ I said. ‘We walked both sides of the river all the way to Laurel Fork.’
We watched Melvin’s men pull the shovels and picks off the back of the trucks.
‘It’s probably for the best the sheriff’s not here to see this,’ Melvin said.
‘He’d be certain pissed-off,’ I said.
The sheriff had made himself no friends with his petitions and lawsuits and such. Few had felt the same way he had about not moving the graves and certainly not Carolina Power or Preacher Robertson. Or me for that matter, for my uncle was in this graveyard.
The eight men Melvin brought walked toward tin stobs with plastic name tags on them. Stobs that marked where granite and marble and soapstone had once been. The men was all gray-haired, some of them older than you would have thought to do such work, older than some of the folks they was digging up. They worked slow and deliberate as mules and spoke not a word among themselves. As the holes got deeper they stepped into the graves.
I couldn’t help but wonder what it felt like to be so old and be that near death. I wondered if it made them think how close they was to their own graves. But maybe they didn’t think about anything like that at all. Maybe it was just a job and meant no more to them than digging up a septic tank.
A worker in the oldest part of the cemetery stopped digging first. He didn’t say a word, just nodded at Melvin.
‘Excuse me,’ Melvin said and went and opened the back of his hearse.
Melvin lifted out what looked to be a baby casket and carried it to the grave. The old man filled it with pine knots, a silk tie and brass belt buckle, and, last, a few spadefuls of dirt. Mr. Pearson closed the lid and wrote something on the wood before he laid it in the truck bed.
Another worker soon raised his hand, this time from the section of the graveyard where my uncle was buried. But it wasn’t my uncle he’d found. It was Sheriff Alexander’s daddy.
There was a coffin this time. The workers tried to be careful, but the wood was so rotten the bottom gave way and the skeleton shattered like it was made of matchsticks.
Yes, it’s a hell of a good thing the sheriff ain’t here, I thought.
I reckoned something else as well, that maybe he was the only one who’d had any real notion what this was going to be like. I was coming around to his way of thinking real fast.
‘This is wrong, Melvin,’ I said as workers picked up the sheriff’s daddy no bigger than chinquapins.
‘We’re doing the best we can,’ Melvin said, sulling up on me a bit. ‘This ain’t no easy job. We’ll have them Christian buried by afternoon. Preacher Robertson’s going to say a prayer and bless that ground and everybody put in it.’
I looked out toward the river for I reckoned you could call it a river for a while longer at least. I saw that the divers had worked their way downstream near the church. Of a sudden I had a thought of months more passing, that church underw
ater and divers still hunting for Billy and Amy Holcombe. I imagined divers swimming around inside, moving above the pews and pulpit like angels, morning sun streaming through the water and church-window glass making pretty colors all about them.
It was a nice enough picture I painted in my head. But it was a damn lie. Those divers in their black wet suits would be like buzzards if they was like anything as they made slow circles above the pulpit and pews, their eyes looking down to spot something dead.
‘My own momma was in that other cemetery we moved, Bobby,’ Melvin said, pulling my eyes and thoughts from the church. ‘I’ve done no worse here than I’ve done to my own beloved.’
I nodded. Melvin was just doing his job, doing it as best he could. It wasn’t a particularly agreeable job, but mine wasn’t either at times. I reckoned we were both in the same shitty business of dealing with other people’s bad news.
One of the workers moved to my Uncle Luke’s grave. I didn’t want to see what he was now. I wanted to remember the way I’d seen him last, laid out in his front room for the wake. He hadn’t looked good then but at least he’d looked like a human being .
‘I got to go check on the divers,’ I told Melvin. ‘Send one of your men if you need me.’
‘I’ll do that, Bobby,’ he said.
I walked out the gate to my car. I could still hear the shovelfuls of dirt hit the ground, the raspy sound the shovels made as they broke into the earth.
‘Give it a couple of weeks,’ the county coroner Calvin Rochester said when the divers gave up after three days. ‘There’s a good chance they’ll rise on their own.’
But for the next six months the only thing that rose was the water, covering up houses and barns and roads, turning creeks into coves, sinking Billy and Amy Holcombe deeper and deeper.
It was spring when a body finally did come up, but it wasn’t one folks had been searching for. This body already had been buried.
One of Carolina Power’s people found a coffin bobbing in the middle of the lake like some fisherman’s trotline, so they called the sheriff and Calvin.
