by James Wade
Praise for River, Sing Out
“Echoes of Jim Harrison, Cormac McCarthy (and perhaps a smidge
of Flannery O’Connor)…Taut, lyrical, and precise, the prose soars
in this important new novel by James Wade.”
—Elizabeth Wetmore,
New York Times bestselling author of Valentine
“With echoes of Jim Harrison, Cormac McCarthy (and perhaps
a smidge of Flannery O’Connor), River, Sing Out is a beautiful,
brutal meditation on survival and love in the face of nearly
unspeakable violence and depravity…Taut, lyrical, and precise,
the prose soars in this important new novel by James Wade.”
—Elizabeth Wetmore,
New York Times bestselling author of Valentine
“Wade, whose striking debut, All Things Left Wild (2020),
traveled back a century in Texas history, uses an unlikely friendship
to explore an equally wild present-day landscape…A haunting fable of
an impossible relationship fueled by elemental need and despair.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“If you read one novel this year, make it this one. James Wade’s River,
Sing Out is an instant classic filled with characters that will break your heart,
lyrical prose as haunted as the river it evokes, and a Southern Noir undertow
that wholly sucks you in and keeps you turning the pages until its searing,
masterful conclusion.”
—May Cobb,
author of The Hunting Wives
Also available from James Wade
All Things Left Wild
Copyright © 2021 by James Wade
Published in 2021 by Blackstone Publishing
Cover design by Kathryn Galloway English
All rights reserved. This book or any portion
thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner
whatsoever without the express written permission
of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations
in a book review.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental
and not intended by the author.
Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-9826-0107-2
Library e-book ISBN 9781982601065
Fiction / Literary
CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress
from the Library of Congress
Blackstone Publishing
31 Mistletoe Rd.
Ashland, OR 97520
www.BlackstonePublishing.com
For Coy and Dorinda
In memory of Peggy Hageman
Prologue
In an age far removed from the age of men, the world was yet unsettled, and the land drifted overtop the sea, and beneath the soil ancient lithospheric complexes of rock collided and pulled apart and collided again. Mountains did emerge, oceans rising and falling away, and steam erupted from the bowels of the earth where great fires burned in that inner furnace. And always they had burned, since the first whit of calcium came spilling forth from the cosmos, fleeing the last gasps of dying stars, abandoning its elemental hosts so that a new form might come barreling into existence—an astronomical explosion passing through the vestiges of forgotten galaxies, gathering to it allochthonous minerals and energies ripe for creation.
And in that great long ago we were all of us water creatures, and such truth held within us for millennia as we did gather and pool along the sea. And as the rivers reached out across the dry world, we followed—never straying too far from the flowing life what created us.
For the world we know now is a world receded. The very ground upon which we stand is a borrowed commodity, loaned to us by the ocean and its tides. The ebb and flow of earth and all its creatures brought about by the shadows of moons and the dust of stars, the consequence of elemental warfare on celestial plains.
Thick deposits of marine salt were drowned by the growing coastal waters and their waves of green. Silt to sand to swamp. Marshlands and hardwood forests spread north from the widening gulf, nine hundred miles from the great ocean to the east. And there the yellow pines made their last stand against the desert valleys and jagged uplifts, and there in such climate all their own, the forests grew and thrived and covered the country in deep, impassioned glories of green—eclipsing the horizon, veiling away all markers of the world without.
One such nativity leading to another, until at long last the river did manifest. In what would become Eastern Texas, the Neches was born dripping and gathering, collecting and pooling and drawn by gravity into the dirt, and there carving out its own bearing—a great pathway to the sea. From the hills of Van Zandt County, then some four hundred miles to the Gulf of Mexico, and along the way joined by creeks and rivulets with pathways of their own, and all connected in this selfsame destiny, wherein all stories share an ending, all lives a like fate.
And through these ages untold, the river did act as the lifeblood of those alongside it, those sons of Adam who pulled from its basin rice and timber and great tracts of each. Then came the oil and refineries and the promise of fortune, and the river was dug deep and unnatural along the estuary where it spilled into the ocean, and the water turned at once brown and polluted.
Soon the dams and spillways were built for the creation of lakes and reservoirs and the populations to come. And come they did, and forests felled and banks muddied; and the people abandoned the river, lost in some modern notion of promise and progression. So the river drew to it a sinister force, and along its banks grew deep roots of poverty and perturbation. And there the story begins and ends and begins again, as each rhythm of the earth’s turning draws the water darker still.
1
The bank man lived in the sort of house befitting his position. A man handling money must be trusted to make smart decisions. His decisions had resulted in this house, that was the thinking. It was built on a hill above the rest of the neighborhood. Elevated. Imposing. Proper. The lawn was kept green and mowed, and the brick siding and stone columns were pressure washed each season.
Appearances were important.
He’d brought in a woman from Houston to decorate. She told him about layered design, feng shui, and statement pieces. She showed him the difference between granite and quartz countertops, between aspirational and reimagined layouts. In the end, the bank man told her to do whatever looked best.
It was a Tuesday. The soft light of the morning leaked through the bedroom windows, and the bank man studied himself in the mirror.
“What’s my first appointment?” he asked without looking away from his reflection.
“Nine a.m.,” his phone answered. “Janice Howe.”
The bank man furrowed his brow. The widow Howe was long overdue on her mortgage. He wasn’t sure she understood what that meant, or that she understood anything at all. He’d tried to explain the way of things to her. She would smile a faraway smile and nod.
“Edward’s the one handles these things,” she’d say. “He and Jack Copeland grew up together.”
She’d say these things to the bank man, and he’d tell her Edward was dead these last ten years and Jack Copeland of Copeland Bank and Trust had passed some five years before that.
The bank man did not look forward to such conversations. No, to speak to the elderly was something altogether unsettling, under any circumstance. To converse with someone so near to death’s door felt unnatural, as if by his very presence he may be revealing himself to death so that death might know him and return for him in some dark hour
before his peace could be made.
And what a struggle such peace had come to be. As a child there was no worry of death, of nonexistence. Then slowly the fear manifested and evolved, and the bank man’s brain propped up the tried-and-true defense mechanisms of man. He would put off the thought, plan to confront it later in life, once he had accomplished those many things that would make him happy, bring him peace. Perhaps he would even believe in the things he sang and the things he heard on Sunday mornings. What greater peace could there be than knowing death was only the beginning?
But as the years passed, such comfort had not been found, and so many suppressed fears would come flooding back as the man stood in front of these once-young lives, so near to their end, so sad in their being.
He breathed in then out, nodding, and leaned closer to the glass to inspect a stray hair. He took it between two fingers and plucked it from his head. He studied it.
“Kicking that old woman out of her house got you going gray?”
The bank man wheeled toward his bedroom door and saw the two men watching him. One shorter, one impossibly large.
“Christ Jesus,” the bank man said. “You scared the hell out of me, Mr. Curtis.”
“Morning, Mr. Klein,” the shorter man said, stepping into the room.
“Well, good morning. You mind me asking what it is you’re doing here?”
“I need to make a withdrawal.”
“That’s fine, but—”
“I know it’s fine,” the man said, cutting him off.
“—but you got to come down to the bank, Mr. Curtis. That’s how it works.”
John Curtis smiled. His teeth were a gnash of thin yellow bone.
“I know how it works,” he said.
“Alright,” the bank man said. He looked at his phone, measuring the distance between where he stood and where it rested on the dresser. “So, I’ll meet you down there.”
“Down where?”
“At the bank.”
“For what?” the man asked. He slid his hand down the length of the dresser top, stopping it on top of the phone.
“For you to make a withdrawal.”
“I can make it right here.”
The bank man swallowed hard. Swallowed the truth of the situation, and it sunk into his stomach and landed so hard he thought he might shit himself.
“Well, Mr. Curtis, I don’t—I don’t have much cash in the house.”
He tried to swallow again but couldn’t.
“That’s a lie.” John Curtis shrugged. “Don’t matter though. I ain’t here for cash.”
“What, uh, what is it that you’re here for?”
“Done told you.”
“I don’t understand,” the bank man said. He spoke softly. He closed his eyes.
“No, you don’t. Most don’t. Most don’t understand because they can’t understand. They’ve spent their whole lives living in a world full of choices. Just like you.”
John Curtis looked up.
“What shoes are you going to wear today, Mr. Klein?” he asked.
“What?”
“You’re shoeless, Mr. Klein. You’ve got no shoes upon your feet. But I’m guessing when you walk into that bank this morning, you’ll have some fancy shoes on. So which pair is it gonna be?”
“Uh.” The bank man looked around. “The brown pair, those there.”
“The brown pair. Good choice. Sharp. So how come?”
“What?” the bank man asked again.
“Follow along, haas. This ain’t accounting or whatever the hell it is you do down there in your little glass office. How come you to choose them shoes?”
“They, uh, they go with my suit.”
“Really? Brown shoes with a gray suit? That goes together does it?”
“Yes. No. I don’t—”
“Easy, Mr. Klein. Take you a breath. Folks is having heart attacks at awful early ages now’days. And you got yourself a stressful bank job and all. Just breathe, and tell me if them brown shoes match up with your gray suit.”
“Yes, they do.”
“Well, alright then. Go ahead and slip into ’em then. Put ’em on.”
The bank man steadied himself on the dresser and slid his feet one after the other into the brown dress shoes.
“Fine job, Mr. Klein. Fine job. Myself, I’m partial to the tradition of black with gray, but I must say, the brown shoes do look handsome.”
John Curtis turned to the large man still standing silent in the doorway.
“They do look handsome, don’t they, Cade?” he asked.
Cade crossed his muscle-bound arms. “Look like fancy shoes.”
John Curtis frowned and looked back at the bank man.
“I can’t tell if he means that as a compliment or not,” he said. “Now tell me, did you make that choice or did the suit?”
The bank man was in a full sweat. He felt his breath coming faster.
“I—I made the choice.”
“But you needed to match the suit, ain’t that right?”
“Yes, but I picked the suit.”
“Ahh, you’re sure right, Mr. Klein,” John Curtis clapped his hands on his knees. “You’re sure right. But how come you to choose the suit? Is it because you like the color? Did your father wear a suit like that? His father before him? Did the girl at the shop tell you it looked good? Did she smile at you? Did you think to yourself, if only I had this suit, this gray suit, I bet this little ole gal would spread right open for me?”
The bank man shook his head. He fought the tears.
“Mr. Curtis, do you believe I wronged you in some way? Is that why you’re here in my home, trying to intimidate me?”
“Intimidate? Whoa, Mr. Klein, we’re just talking. Talking about choices. If you don’t want to tell me about the suit, that’s okay. Nobody’s getting ugly here. But think, Mr. Klein, about why you wear that or any other suit. Think about why you do anything a’tall. How much of this life is truly your choice?”
“I am here by the grace of god, if that’s what you mean.”
“It’s not.” John Curtis laughed and shook his head. “It is decidedly not. Another choice you never made, your god. You think you chose between Heaven and Hell, you think you chose forgiveness and salvation over sin. But if you were born amongst the sand niggers in the Iraqi desert, grew up over there with the goats and jihadis and the like, you’d be praising Allah and fucking camels at this very moment. Now tell me I’m wrong.”
“I don’t know, sir. I can’t speak to that.”
“Can’t speak to it.”
“No, sir.”
“Well.”
“Mr. Curtis, can I please, with all respect, ask you to leave my home. If you have business, I’d be happy to conduct it at the bank, which I am running late to as we speak.”
“Alright, alright, I know I’m keeping you. But I’ll make you a deal. Let me tell you a story, and at the end of the story, I’ll say goodbye, and you won’t have to worry about me dropping in on you anymore.”
“I assume I don’t have a choice.”
“Hot damn, he’s starting to get it now, Cade. Starting to get what all this is about. Choices, Mr. Klein, true choices, are a rare breed. You wear brown shoes, black shoes, no shoes, who gives a rat’s ass? That’s not a choice. That’s just culture and trends and narcissism and egos and all the bullshit you were born into. But I wasn’t born into it, nossir. And that’s where the story starts.”
John Curtis motioned to the edge of the bed. The bank man sat, his knees near to collapsing in on themselves.
“Along the banks of the Neches, high up on a hill, there used to set a pine-planked shack. It was my first home. I guess you’d call it that, even though it was a terribly short period of time that I was there.
“My momma was twelve y
ears old, which didn’t much matter to me at the time. Certainly her age made no difference to my daddy. He was some old boy she’d seen over in Groveton. She’d been roller skating with her friends, how girls do. Or at least how they did. I’m not so up on the times. Anyway. By the time he got her back to the river shack she was in bad shape. He’d hit her too hard, you see. Misjudged his own strength. Her own frailty. Either way, he wanted her present and in the moment for what was to come. So he forced her to snort up a line or two of cocaine, and then he went to work on her. He kept her there for however many days and kept on with the powder and the rape and everything else. Then, after however long, he started to notice something. You know what he noticed?”
The bank man shook his head. He was shivering.
“He noticed she was liking it. At least she was liking the coke. She may not have liked the sex, but she wasn’t fighting him. She was addicted, and he was the one with the supply. And one day she told my daddy—the same man who’d stole her away like she didn’t no more belong to this world than a piss pot—that she didn’t never want to go home, wanted to stay with him in that shack for however long he’d let her.
“Turned out, that was about three months.
“Then she started to show, and he put her out. Well, okay. She went home, but her folks wouldn’t take her back. They’d been worried about her, had the police looking for her and all, but she wasn’t the same girl they’d lost. No, sir, that little girl had died. They didn’t want nothing to do with some drug-addict slut got herself knocked up. Can’t blame ’em. Times were different. What would folks think? Hell, what would they say?
“She hitched down to Houston. Big city, big parties. She feeds the habit. Finds a couch here or there to crash. But then she gets so big she’s about to pop, and nobody has the room. Not for her. Not for some baby bound to come out deaf, dumb, and blind.
“She could’ve gone to a hospital, or a women’s shelter, or anything else. But she knew the deal at places like that. No drugs. And that just couldn’t be.
