Saints at the River

by Ron Rash

  “There’s things I got to say to you,” he said.

  It seemed unlikely, but I wondered if he’d planned on me driving him home. Done it just to get me in a place where I had to hear him out. Daddy’s voice trembled when he spoke.

  “There ain’t a day goes by I don’t think about me leaving you and Ben alone. I forgot all about those beans on the stove. I’d have never went to the store if I hadn’t.”

  “I don’t want to hear this,” I said.

  “Your Momma forgave me. Your brother, the one with the most right to be hard-hearted, he forgave me. But you ain’t and maybe God ain’t either. You know what it says in Matthew, Maggie. You ain’t forgot all your Bible yet, have you? ‘But whosoever shall hurt one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.’ ”

  I turned onto Damascus Church Road, but the house was still a mile away. I pressed the radio’s ON-OFF button, but I’d forgotten how few stations reached this deep into the mountains. Allen had the radio on the AM band. All I got was static.

  “Do you know how many times that verse jabbed barb-deep in my heart? I know what I done,” Daddy said, his voice trembling, “and not just to Ben but to you.”

  How damn convenient this is, I thought. You wait till you’re dying and make this dramatic confession and everything’s set straight, everything’s forgiven, a perfect Hollywood ending.

  “I blame myself and always have,” Daddy said.

  Don’t let him pull you into this, I’d been telling myself the last few minutes, but the self-pity in his voice made me speak.

  “Then why did you treat Ben like it was his fault?” I said. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that I shouldn’t blame myself, that it was your fault, not mine? It mattered then.”

  I crossed over Licklog Creek and then up the last rise. I drove up to the house and put the car in park but did not turn off the engine.

  “Why can’t it matter now?” Daddy asked.

  Because I don’t want to let you off that easy, I thought. Because you’re the only one left to blame.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said.

  Daddy got out of the car and closed the door. I watched him slowly climb the steps, his hand gripping the rail. Please don’t look back at me, I thought, and he didn’t.

  I drove back to the community center, the place where two decades earlier the pig picking had been held to help my family pay Ben’s hospital bills. Neighbors and friends had brought yellowware filled with cole slaw and baked beans and potato salad, gallon jars of sweet tea and homemade ice cream still in the churns. The women covered tables with food and drinks while Daddy and the other men huddled out back with Lou Henson as he basted the pig with a paintbrush.

  I’d been inside with Aunt Margaret and the other women. They made a fuss over me, telling me how pretty I was and how much I’d grown. They were good women and they meant well, but it somehow made it all worse, being treated like I’d just been baptized or had a birthday and Ben still in the burn center in Columbia with only Momma there with him. I made my way out the back door, walking as fast as I could down the path to the creek, my hand over my nose and mouth to block out the smell of burning pig.

  I sat by myself on the bank until Aunt Margaret came. Though she wore a dress she sat down beside me. “I know this is a hard time for you, girl,” Aunt Margaret had said. “But it’s going to get better.” It could have been five minutes or it could have been thirty, but Daddy came down to the creek as well. He carried two paper plates sagging with food. He handed us the plates and plastic forks and napkins, then went back to get our tea. He sat down beside me on the bank. “I reckon we’ve had about as much kindness as we can stand,” he’d said, as his left hand settled awkwardly on my shoulder.

  It was not a convenient memory, because I couldn’t frame it neatly into the black-and-white photograph I’d made of my past.

  WHEN I ENTERED THE COMMUNITY CENTER, ALLEN AND ONE other reporter remained with Luckadoo, Phillips, and the Kowalskys. A few river rats lingered at the back, looking lost without Luke.

  “You all right?” Allen asked, as we drove back to the motel. “You looked upset when you first came back.”

  “I’m fine now.”

  “This problem between you and your father, is it something recent?”

  “No.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Not tonight. Maybe some other time.” Allen’s right hand touched my arm. “We can talk of other things, though. Right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  At the motel Allen parked the car and turned off the ignition. Neither of us reached for the door latch.

  “So what other things do you want to talk about tonight?” I asked.

  Allen looked straight at me. “How about that I’m falling in love with you. That I want to be with you tonight, but I’m not sure that’s what you want.”

  “It’s what I want,” I said.

  “It’s been a year and a half,” Allen said. “I’m not sure how well it will go.”

  “I think we’re after something more significant than a one-night stand,” I said. “Tonight won’t decide what happens between us.”

  A Chevy Blazer pulled into the lot, and one of the cameramen who’d been at the meeting got out and entered the lobby. The motel’s gaudy neon sign flickered on. For the first time I could remember, the Tamassee River Motel flashed its NO VACANCY sign.

  As the parking lot filled up around us, the room windows brightened. Occasionally there was the sound of an ice bucket being filled, a door being shut. Lightning bugs sparked as they hovered above grass already dampened with dew. We left the car and went to our separate rooms.

  In the bathroom I found that the onset of love had not produced any miracles as far as my appearance, so I settled for what cosmetics could do. Many of the older people in Tamassee believed mirrors were passageways between the living and the dead, and after funerals every mirror in a house was veiled so the departed couldn’t return. Aunt Margaret had done the same when Momma died, shrouding each one with a piece of dark muslin. I wondered what Claire Pritchard-Hemphill might feel if she watched me prepare myself to make love to her husband. A dim sadness? Or perhaps the dead were beyond such human concerns.

  I cut off the light and went into the main room and sat on the bed. When I heard Allen’s footsteps I did not wait for a knock before opening the door.

  CHAPTER 8

  I woke to the sound of rain. Lying in bed I wondered if the Kowalskys and Brennon also heard that rain and understood what it meant.

  “Good morning, sleepyhead,” Allen said, when I opened my eyes. He nuzzled close to me.

  “It’s raining,” I said, settling my back deeper into Allen’s chest.

  “Good,” Allen whispered, pressing his mouth against my ear. “There’s nothing better than being in bed with a woman on a rainy morning.”

  “It’s not good for Brennon or Kowalsky,” I said. “If the Tamassee rises over one and a half feet, I doubt they’ll be able to put that dam up even if Luckadoo does give them permission.”

  “Maybe the rain will let up soon.”

  “Maybe, but it also depends on what it’s doing upstream.” I looked at the clock on the lamp table. “Almost eight,” I said. “What time will they make the announcement?”

  “Phillips said between eleven and twelve. We’ve still got a little while,” he said, as I turned to him.

  BY THE TIME WE GOT TO THE RANGER STATION, THE RAIN HAD thinned to drizzle. Fog on the Tamassee’s surface smoldered like a doused fire. The air was cool, and I was glad I’d packed a sweatshirt. The calendar might say it was May, but it seemed more like October, the kind of morning I’d always enjoyed on the river, because everything, even the water, was always quieter. On those mornings the fog felt like a countercurrent, moving opposite the earth’s rotation to hold everything, even time, in abeyance. I hoped, if Mrs. Kowalsky
was somehow right, that this was what her daughter’s soul now felt. Not fear or loneliness but a sense of being one with something transcendently beautiful.

  “Why the wry smile?” Allen asked, taking my hand.

  “A realization that at least in spirit I’m still one of Luke’s followers.”

  “He’s not the only person who cares about that river,” Allen said, and there was irritation in his voice.

  I squeezed his hand.

  “I know that. I’m just saying that if you spend enough time on the Tamassee you can’t help but believe a lot of what Luke believes.”

  Allen freed his hand from mine. “But you don’t regret taking the photo?” he asked.

  A part of me wanted to answer no and leave it at that, because things were going well between us, too well to let something already done create a problem. But I couldn’t do that.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m afraid I do.”

  Anger sparked and caught in Allen’s eyes. “And I’m responsible for setting up that photograph, right? That’s what you said in my office.”

  “I could have left it in the darkroom. It was my decision to give it to Lee.”

  I paused as a camera crew from a Greenville TV station passed. Billy walked toward us, saw our faces, and quickly changed direction.

  “So even after last night’s meeting you still want Ruth Kowalsky’s body to stay in that river?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want that. But I don’t want the river damaged either. Luke’s right about what can happen when a precedent is set.”

  “And you’d feel that way even if it were your child in that river? You’re like Luke that way as well?”

  “I don’t know what I’d feel,” I said.

  “No, you don’t,” Allen said. “But Ellen Kowalsky knows. It’s not some abstraction she can look at with detachment.”

  Nor can you, I thought. Maybe none of us can be detached.

  “It’s done,” I said. “I don’t want us to fight about this.”

  “I don’t either,” Allen said, but his tone wasn’t convincing. He nodded toward the front porch of the ranger station, where the Kowalskys stood with Brennon and the congressman. “But I don’t understand why you can’t feel good if this woman finally has some closure.”

  “I will,” I said. “About that at least.”

  When Luckadoo and Walters stepped out of the ranger office, Allen and I moved closer, joining a crowd of over a hundred people. Almost everyone who’d been at last night’s meeting had come to hear the Forest Service’s decision, including the press, which counted among its ranks two camera crews who had not been present at the community center. I did not see the aides to the governor or Senator Jenkins. They knew the outcome and were already headed back to Columbia and Washington.

  Luke had come as well, fresh out of the county jail. He stood with the river rats. Sheriff Cantrell and Hubert McClure leaned against the porch’s side railing, their eyes steady on them.

  Luckadoo took out a pair of black reading glasses and read from a sheet of paper.

  “The Forest Service has decided that under the present circumstances a portable, temporary dam built by Brennon Corporation will be allowed at Wolf Cliff Falls on Section Five of the Tamassee River.”

  Brennon and Kowalsky shook hands as Mrs. Kowalsky hugged the congressman.

  “This will never hold up, Luckadoo,” Luke shouted, as a woman held a microphone to his face. “I promise you Sierra Club lawyers will start petitioning the courts on behalf of the Tamassee this very afternoon.”

  “Are you saying you believe you can still stop this?” the reporter asked.

  “We’re going to sure as hell try, lady.”

  Luke turned from the reporter, and when he did he saw me. He shoved through the dispersing crowd until we were face-to-face. His clothes were soaked. Dark crescents lay beneath his eyes.

  “Do you think the Kowalskys understand what they’re going to find down there after almost five weeks?” he asked me.

  “I don’t know,” I said, and as soon as I spoke realized I’d kept the truth from myself. Because the image I’d been carrying around in my head was of Ruth Kowalsky minutes after she drowned, not weeks. I’d pictured her in some timeless state. Maybe her soul was, but not her body.

  “Well, I have a pretty good idea, Maggie,” Luke said, “and you do as well.”

  And I did, because I knew not only what water could do to a body given time but also what crayfish and larvae and fish could do.

  The reporter had trailed Luke over to where we stood. She stuck the microphone back in Luke’s face.

  “Are you saying the body will be damaged?” she asked.

  The stupidity of the question seemed to calm Luke for a moment.

  “Get your cameraman over here,” he told her. “My answer will make a good segment for your evening news.”

  The reporter motioned for the cameraman. When Luke saw the red recording light come on, he turned to the camera and began to speak.

  “I helped bring a college student out of Bear Sluice two summers ago. He’d only been in there five days, not five weeks. We could get to him, but the water was too strong to pull him out by hand. We tied cable around him and used a winch. We gave the winch five turns and an arm and head came flying out and landed on a sandbar. We got the rest of him out one piece at a time.”

  The reporter’s mouth opened as if she were about to gag. She lowered the microphone, her free hand signaling for the cameraman to stop recording.

  Luke turned and moved in, his face only inches from mine.

  “That kid’s parents were there,” Luke said. “They saw it all, Maggie.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  Luke was so close I could feel his breath when he spoke. “God, I hope this isn’t just some twisted way to get back at me for what happened between me and you years ago.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” I said, meeting Luke’s eyes.

  “Ease up, Miller,” Allen said, stepping closer to fill the void left by the reporter.

  Luke turned to Allen. Eighteen hours of frustration showed on his face.

  “A friend of mine sent me information about you she found on the Internet. Information about your wife and daughter. I could tell you what I think your part in this is really about.”

  Sheriff Cantrell and Hubert McClure were walking rapidly in our direction. People were clearing a space around us. Carolyn left a bench and walked toward us as well.

  Luke turned from Allen and looked at me. “But I won’t,” Luke said.

  Sheriff Cantrell stepped between Luke and Allen.

  “What’s going on here?” he said.

  “Nothing,” Luke said. “I’m leaving.”

  “Good,” Sheriff Cantrell said.

  “Let’s go,” Luke said to Carolyn, who stood beside him now.

  “One more thing, Miller,” Sheriff Cantrell said. “I don’t want you or any of your buddies within fifty yards of that dam.”

  Luke turned away.

  “Fifty yards,” Sheriff Cantrell reiterated. “If you get any closer to that dam I’ll lock you up, and the bond will be a sight higher than five hundred dollars. We clear on that?”

  Luke and Carolyn walked across the road to his truck and drove off. I leaned close to Allen.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  Allen didn’t reply.

  “Luke was just trying to make you angry.”

  “No, not angry,” Allen said. “He was ready to say some things to hurt me.” Allen paused. “But he didn’t. If I’d been him I’m not so sure I would have held back.”

  Allen looked up at the porch where Ellen Kowalsky continued to talk to her congressman. He watched her for almost a minute.

  “You want to go back to the motel?” I asked.

  “No,” Allen said. “I need to ask Brennon a few questions.”

  “I’ll go too,” I said. “I might get a good photograph.”

  Five reporters were
already ahead of us. I took out the Nikon and snapped some photos, mainly of Kowalsky, who smiled and patted backs as though he’d finally closed a long negotiated and frustrating business deal. But as soon as that thought came to me I knew I was being unfair. This was probably the first thing he’d had the slightest reason to feel good about in almost a month. I stashed my camera in my backpack and looked at the sky and saw the sun trying to rub through the gray overcast.

  “Ask him about the rain,” I prodded, as Brennon finished with the reporter in front of us.

  Brennon smiled when he saw Allen and me and extended his hand. He was more animated than I’d seen him before.

  “Finally some good news, eh?” he said. “And you two had a lot to do with it. That article and photograph made a huge difference, especially with the politicians.”

  “Good news for you all at least,” Allen said.

  “Yes,” Brennon said. He motioned toward the Kowalskys. “When Herb called two weeks ago and asked me to help I almost said no. But after hearing Ellen last night—well, I’m just glad I’m here.”

  “What about the rain?” Allen asked.

  “One of my people has been keeping tabs. It’s not over two feet yet.”

  I stepped closer.

  “You’d go in at two feet?”

  “Sure,” Brennon said. “We built one last year and the water was two point three.”

  “But this is white water,” I said, trying to keep my voice level.

  “Doesn’t make any difference. Besides, the river’s going down some. It won’t be above one point eight before we start.”

  “And when do you start?” Allen asked.

  “Two o’clock this afternoon. My men are waiting at the motel with the equipment. All I have to do now is get in touch with those twins. They’re doing the diving. The only problem is, I can’t call them because I’ve forgotten their last name.”

  “It’s Moseley,” I said. “Ronny and Randy Moseley.”

  “Yeah,” Brennon said. “That’s it.”

  THERE HAD BEEN A WELL-MAINTAINED CUTBACK TRAIL LEADING to Wolf Cliff Falls, but it no longer existed. The bulldozer we’d passed on the logging road had gouged a new trail—a road-wide, hundred-yard mudslide. Foot traffic made it worse, as people slipped and slid down the ridge, grabbing onto scrub oaks and mountain laurel to keep from tumbling into the river.