Down by the Riverside

by Jackie Lynn

  That first day I met them, and as I slowly moved near the rear of the office, Lucas walked in, smiling just like a Girl Scout. “How you doing there, little sister?”

  I’ve now learned that Lucas calls all women under forty, “little sister,” and all those past middle age, “dear,” as in “dear sister.”

  “I’m just fine, thank you.” I answered politely.

  “Rose, this is Lucas,” Mary introduced us just as Rhonda walked in. “And this is Rhonda, his wife,” she added.

  Rhonda nodded as she pulled off the bandana and tied her red hair back in a ponytail.

  “Well, little sister Rose, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” Lucas moved toward me and stuck out his hand, and though I was nervous, I shook it. “You staying with us at Shady Grove?”

  “She at number Seventy-six. Travel trailer,” Mary answered for me.

  Rhonda looked out the small window of the door, but I knew that you really couldn’t see the river row from the office. She whipped around to face me. “Where’s your car?” she asked and I wondered what else she saw, if she had a longer line of vision than most people.

  “Pssst.” Mary made that hissing noise she had made at Deputy Fisk. “Jimmy Novack got it.”

  Lucas grinned. “Four days.” And he slapped me on the back like an old friend.

  Rhonda walked around me and went behind the counter. “Mama still playing cards?”

  Mary took a handful of papers and slipped them inside a folder. She began straightening up around her. “I guess. She called and said she’d be here by lunchtime.”

  Rhonda moved over to the desk behind the counter while Lucas picked up the stack of mail, the newspaper, and sat down at a table pushed against the rear wall. He pulled out a small pair of glasses from the front pocket of his T-shirt and started reading.

  “Rhonda’s mother, Ms. Lou Ellen, plays cards at the Senior Center downtown,” Mary said, as a way of introducing the absent woman to me. “She helps run the place, takes reservations, greets the guests, keeps up with the bookwork,” she added while she opened and closed the drawer by her.

  “But not in the mornings,” Rhonda said. “In the mornings, Mama plays canasta and bridge and sometimes a hand or two of poker.”

  She sat down. “Mama is serious about her cards.”

  I smiled, trying to seem relaxed.

  “Well, it looks like they’re still waiting for the report from the autopsy of Mr. Franklin.” Lucas was reading the paper and when he said the name, “Mr. Franklin,” my head jerked in his direction.

  It shocked me, is all. Hearing the name again like that. My mother’s name in the same sentence as the word autopsy. Rhonda noticed my surprise. The other two in the room looked over at me.

  “My name is Franklin,” I said as a means of explaining, without completely explaining.

  Both Lucas and Rhonda glanced at me and then at each other.

  “Lawrence Franklin was the man they found yesterday up at the sandbar,” Rhonda responded because she thought I didn’t know.

  I nodded. “Yes, the police officer told me his name. It just seemed weird hearing you say it like that.”

  “Who was it?” Lucas asked, meaning the police officer. I was confused at the time. He was staring at Mary, waiting for her answer.

  “Same guy who came last month. Fisk,” Mary said, sounding it out more like fish than what it was.

  Lucas just shook his head while he turned the pages of the paper. “Well, I just pray for the dead man’s soul and I trust in the mercy of our good Lord. That family and that river have both seen enough sorrow and sadness to last a thousand years.” And he folded the paper and took off his glasses and bowed his head as if he were praying.

  Rhonda and Mary bowed, too, and since I didn’t know what else to do, I dropped my head as well.

  Lucas said, “Amen,” and Rhonda and Mary snapped up their heads and went back to work.

  After the awkward brief moment of silence that I assumed was a prayer, I heard a car pull up. We all turned toward the door as an older man, smiling and nodding, walked in. Lucas introduced me to Mr. Clarence Broadnax, the deacon chairman from the Antioch Holiness Church, the same place, I was told, where Lawrence Franklin, the deceased, was also a member.

  We smiled at each other, and I tried to think of a way to excuse myself; but there just didn’t seem to be a polite way to exit.

  Lucas and Mr. Broadnax talked about the weather and fishing until the conversation finally got around to the dead man, a mutual friend of both the visitor and the campground owner. The deacon was asked about Mr. Franklin’s funeral. The older man dropped his head and reported that the preacher said he wouldn’t hold the funeral at the church of a person who had committed suicide. He said the death was the work of the devil and he couldn’t see bringing such evil into the sanctuary.

  The deacon remained standing at the door, his hat in his hand, and just shook his head. “Don’t seem right,” he kept repeating. “Lawrence Franklin been with Antioch since he was a baby. His great-grandfather donated the land to build the building. And that family has done every funeral of every dead member of that church. Some of ’em for free. And now we’re gonna turn our backs on this man.”

  He just shook his head.

  “Lawrence would never do what they said he did,” he noted. “He worked too hard to give it all up like that.”

  Lucas agreed.

  “I just don’t believe it either,” Lucas said. “What could have been so terrible that happened to make a man do that?” he asked. “To make Mr. Franklin do that?” He clasped his hands together and placed them on the table in front of him.

  “That’s just it, he wouldn’t do it,” the deacon replied. “Lawrence Franklin had too much respect for life. He just wouldn’t do it,” he said again, this time his voice breaking from sorrow.

  Mary shuffled her papers and moved things around on the counter. Rhonda turned toward her husband as if he might offer some comfort. And I just looked away. I was embarrassed for him, revealing such emotion, bearing the vulnerability of his disappointment so openly in front of a stranger.

  And then, taking the cue from his wife, Lucas spoke up. There was hardly even a hesitation, just time enough for the thought of it. “We’ll have a service for Mr. Franklin here, by the river.”

  The rest of us stayed quiet. Imagining such a thing. Considering such an idea.

  Lucas continued. “We’ll rent one of those real nice tents and put it up right at the edge of the landing. The processional can drive upriver row. I’ll explain everything to the other campers, and they can stay away if they want or they can participate. We’ll have a nice dinner afterward and invite everybody.”

  He went on. “Mr. Franklin loved this river, came down here almost every day to check the current or measure the sediment or to fish in the pond. He went to see his Maker at the river. We might as well have his service here.”

  I thought it was about the craziest idea I had ever heard. A funeral at a campground? A memorial service down at the river? The river where the man died? A dinner for the family and campers? Just sounded nutty to me. But I guess I was the only one who thought so because I glanced up and both Mary and Rhonda were nodding their heads in agreement, a big grin stretched across Rhonda’s face.

  “Well,” the deacon replied after a long pause. “I guess I’ll have to ask Ms. Eulene about this. She is the mother of the deceased. And this is highly unusual.”

  I thought to myself, Well, that’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one. And I just knew the deacon would decline the offer. I mean, I figured he’d be polite about it, but I surely thought he’d speak for the family and the deacon board and for all folks sensible, and decline. But he didn’t.

  He tucked in his bottom lip, chewing on it a bit.

  “I think it sounds real nice.” He slid his fingers along the brim of his hat.

  He spoke quietly. “You know we was baptized together in the river.” He bowed his head. “Not t
oo far from here,” he added, then waited as if he was remembering.

  “Serve that old back-stabbing preacher right. Lawrence and I both agreed years ago that we were closer to the Lord fishing than we were listening to Rev. Henley try to preach.” He nodded. “Yes sir, I think it sounds just right.”

  As stunned as I was, I turned to see how Lucas was going to react. I guess I was still thinking it might be a joke or something, that he’d name some church that would be more fitting, that he’d offer another alternative. But he didn’t. And to see the look on his face. It was almost holy.

  I don’t mean a look that was self-righteous or the kind to show that he was pleased with himself, I mean it was as if some glory shone on him. It was like a look I’ve never known, never seen, and in spite of the fear and doubt that had been raised in my mind about him and his wife, it did cause me to think that maybe there was something like the Kingdom of God down by that river.

  The deacon talked a little more about the summer storms and the sorrow over the death in the south side community, how the death of Lawrence Franklin still left them shocked and cold. Then he said he had to be going and then not much later Rhonda and Lucas left, and then it was just Mary and me in the office, the way it was before they all came in.

  She had a couple of phone calls to make while I studied the map of the United States they had posted on the wall, and then when she was finished talking on the phone, I asked her what she really thought about having a funeral at the campground.

  She just waved her hand in front of her face. “Pssst.” She made that noise she liked to make again. “That’s nothing new for here.”

  I watched her, waiting for more.

  “We have weddings, birthday parties, sobriety parties, homecoming parties, church revivals, and all kinds of reunion parties. Funeral, no big thing. Shady Grove always a place to mark great passage in life. It just like the river.”

  I didn’t know what she meant at the time. I didn’t even know that she was talking about the Mississippi River, the banks upon which this campground was founded. I just knew when I heard it, that it felt right what she was saying about Shady Grove. Sometimes a place just knows how to honor important moments. Sometimes a place takes up life inside itself and just knows how to mark a thing passed or completed or good.

  I must admit, however, that at the time, I still had some difficulty in thinking about a funeral being held at a campground. I would never identify myself as a religious person and I don’t have any particular opinions about the sacredness of a church building, but I just never considered taking death down to a river. I never thought about a service of memory being held at a place so open, so wild. I guess that’s why I said what I did to Mary.

  “Maybe the old man is right,” I noted. “Maybe it wasn’t suicide after all. And maybe if the preacher knew this, there wouldn’t be a funeral by the river, they’d have the rightful service in the church.”

  Mary tilted her head to one side, handed me a real hard look. “Everybody say it’s suicide,” she said quietly.

  “Maybe everybody doesn’t know everything,” I answered her.

  “You police?” she asked, holding me with a stare.

  “No,” I answered. “I’m a nurse, but I know a few things.” I smiled. “I’m just saying that things aren’t always what they seem.”

  She blew out a long breath. “Yes. This fact I know for sure.”

  “Maybe the police just took the easiest answer, just assumed he had killed himself because of a few things they found out. Maybe they don’t want to work too hard.” I was sorting through possibilities.

  “It could be a cover-up of some kind.” And I began to think of other explanations of how a dead man rolled up on the banks of the Mississippi River. I thought about a boat accident and wondered if Mr. Franklin owned one.

  I felt the office manager staring at me. I turned to her. My face gave away my question. “What?” I asked.

  She kept watching me and finally posed the question that was clearly bothering her. “Why you so interested in this man?” she asked.

  The query was a good one, one I hadn’t considered. I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know,” I replied.

  I could tell my answer wasn’t good enough for her.

  “It just doesn’t seem right,” I noted. “I mean, it just feels like there’s something else going on.”

  Mary still stared at me. I could tell she didn’t believe me, so I thought about her question. I thought about the reason I was so concerned about a cause of death for a man I didn’t know. I wondered why I was so intrigued by something I had nothing to do with.

  “Maybe I just prefer to think about somebody else’s tragedy for a while.” I paused, realizing I was getting close to the truth.

  “I left North Carolina to get away from things in my own life. Maybe I’m just finding it easier to focus on this dead man’s trouble than it is to focus on mine right now,” I confessed.

  The woman nodded and looked away. I knew I had answered her question and had uncovered something very important for myself as well. I didn’t have to say anything else.

  And then, without either one of us knowing it at the time, she said the one sentence that would change my life forever.

  “You should talk to Tom.”

  She said the words as if he was just some man from West Memphis, just some ordinary being who would report to me a bit of history or some legend, somebody, who at the time, we both expected would mean nothing more to me than the facts he could tell.

  “Tom?” I asked.

  “Tom Sawyer,” she replied. She waited.

  “Tom knew the dead man. They old friends, fish and hang out together a lot. He would know if it was suicide or not. Tom Sawyer would know.”

  And upon hearing his name, without having the time to guard my reaction, silence my disrespect, or recognize the fluttering of wings in my spirit, a door opened to my heart; I laughed out loud.

  FIVE

  Mary did not know the literary figure Tom Sawyer. She had never heard of Mark Twain or Huckleberry Finn, though she did think she had met a man named Jim. Mostly however, she did not understand why I would consider it as odd that a man who lived near the Mississippi River would have been given the name of Tom Sawyer.

  “It’s just funny,” I said, “that a mother would choose to name her child after a boy from a book, especially a boy like Tom Sawyer.”

  “Why?” she asked. “This Tom Sawyer, he have demons?”

  I shook my head.

  “Bad blood?”

  “No,” I answered.

  “Then, why it so strange?”

  “It’s just ironic. Two people living near the same area having the same name.”

  She shrugged her shoulders and suddenly didn’t seem very interested anymore.

  “Tom Sawyer.” I was not finished trying to make her see the irony. “He was this little mischievous kid who was best friends with a boy who runs away with a slave.”

  No reaction from Mary.

  “They live on the Mississippi River. He lives with his aunt Polly, wants to start up a band of robbers.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “It’s just odd, don’t you agree, that somebody living on the Mississippi River is named after somebody else who was supposed to live on the same river?”

  She drew in a breath and yawned.

  I don’t know why now, but at that time it was really important that I make her understand me. “Can’t you agree that it’s just a little strange that two people with the same name wind up being in the same place?”

  “Like you and Mr. Franklin,” she said, and her observation stunned me.

  There was a hesitation before I responded. I knew she remembered that I had registered as Rose Griffith, that my credit card had that name imprinted on it as well. I could tell that she was trying to figure out why I had lied.

  “Yes, I guess, like me and Mr. Franklin.”

  I waited.

  “Griff
ith is my married name. I’m divorced,” I said, explaining. “Franklin isn’t really my last name either.”

  She raised her eyes, interested, confused.

  “It’s my mother’s name,” I continued. “It’s the one I’ve chosen.”

  “Rose Franklin, Lawrence Franklin. Tom Sawyer, Thomas Sawyer,” she said it easily, but with much clarity.

  And once it was said like that, our names the same, like two people called Tom Sawyer, somehow it instantly drew me to the dead man, tied us together forever, divided his burden, placing some of it squarely on my back.

  At the time of this early revelation, of course, I was not able to articulate any of my vast emotions or my desire to understand the cause of death, as well as the precipitant events that occurred days or weeks before my arrival and before Mr. Lawrence Franklin’s drowning. I just knew that our shared name was now a rope that tied me to the dead man, linking us together in a way I couldn’t understand.

  “Always more than how it seem,” Mary said, reminding me of the earlier part of our conversation and pulling me back to the moment that was at hand.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Always more.”

  She glanced up at the clock. “I have to go pick up trash again,” she said, apparently finished with our discussion of names and characters. “First time through, not everybody ready and deputy made me lose my place,” she explained.

  “I don’t know where Ms. Lou Ellen is.” And she tapped the fingers of her right hand on the counter in front of her.

  “I can watch the phones if that’s what you need.” I had nothing else to do anyway.

  Mary considered my offer and then agreed. She showed me how to fill out a reservation form and how to read the big blue notebook that had most of the answers to the questions people usually asked. She said that she wasn’t expecting anyone to check in that morning, so I shouldn’t have to worry with that. Then she was gone, saying she’d probably return in twenty minutes.

  After she left, the thoughts of names and relations and life and death still churning in my head, I walked over to the table where Lucas had sat earlier and picked up the paper he had been reading. I scanned the front page until I found the article about this man, about Lawrence Franklin. I walked back to the desk behind the counter, sat down, folded the paper, and began to read.