Deep River Burning (8 page)

“Well look at what we have here,” Officer Frick said, feeling rather good about himself at that moment.

“What do we have here?” Denver asked.

“You smell like a cocktail party that went on too long.”

“I’m cleaning up glass from a broken wine bottle.”

“Why?” Frick asked. “What do you care?”

Denver didn’t answer him.

“I ought to take you down to the station right now,” he said taking a sip of his coffee.

“For what?” Denver asked. “Disorderly street cleaning?”

Officer Frick paused and took a sip of his coffee. “Why don’t you just head on home, Denver,” Frick said, softening his tone. “You got most of the glass. I’ll call someone to come out and clean up the fine pieces.”

“All right,” she said. “Goodnight.”

“I think you mean good morning,” Frick said as he walked back to his patrol car. As Denver walked away, she realized that Officer Frick would have to find a new job.

When Denver got home, the sky was starting to lighten and several birds were singing, but the full blown chorus hadn’t started yet. She tried to open the door quietly in order to not wake up Aunt Rosemary but the creaks from the old hinges echoed through the house. Denver poured herself a glass of water and sat down at the kitchen table. She wasn’t particularly proud of her night of regression into adolescent delinquency, but she was more worried about Helena. She hadn’t known her to be so destructive. Denver got up from her chair and walked upstairs with her glass of water. As she walked down the hall, she was surprised to see Aunt Rosemary’s door open. She glanced into the room and saw a suitcase half full and Rosemary lying on the floor with her legs extended up the wall.

“Oh hi, Denver. I thought I heard you come in,” she said.

“What are you doing?” Denver asked a little perplexed.

“Meditating with my legs up the wall.”

“Why?”

“Because it keeps me centered and gives me energy.”

“Uh, okay. I’ll take your word for it,” Denver said.

“Do you want to join me?” Rosemary asked.

“Not really.”

“Ok, but you look like you need it more than I do. Did you have a rough night last night?”

“Probably. It could have been worse. I mostly just felt like walking all night. Do I want to know what time you get up in the morning?”

“Before the birds,” Rosemary smiled.

“Are you leaving?” Denver asked as she walked around the room.

“Yes, I need to get back to Florida. Dan is starting to think that I’m never coming back.” Rosemary bent her knees and dropped her legs down to one side and slowly sat up.

“Oh God.” Denver sat down in the hallway in front of Rosemary’s room by sliding her back slowly down the wall. She put her face in her hands and said, “Everybody’s leaving.”

“Well, I suppose you are right about that. If not now, then soon.” Rosemary looked at Denver for a little while. “Have you decided what you are going to do yet, Denver? You are welcome to come down to Florida. We would love to have you.”

“I’m not sure. I need to think about it.”

“You look a little like the world is going to end. You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just tired.”

“Letting go is hard. It sounds simple, but somehow it is often very difficult anyway. Letting go of people and places and thoughts and things along the way is all preparation for the
big
letting go. That doesn’t mean you forget, you just let go.” They were both silent for a few moments before Aunt Rosemary said, “Hey, I’m going downstairs to make some scrambled eggs. Would you like some? The eggs are fresh from Cumberland’s farm.”

“Sure,” Denver said as they both stood up at the same time. As Denver walked back down the hallway, she noticed how some doors were open and some doors were closed. The sun that was beginning to rise was spreading light into the rooms and into the hallway through the open doorways. On some level, Denver knew that it was time to focus on the open doors. She touched the closed doors as if to bless them and say goodbye, and then followed Aunt Rosemary down to the kitchen.

The following day, Denver woke up late to the sound of the phone ringing, although she was too tired to answer it. She went to Aunt Rosemary’s room and saw that all of her belongings were gone. She left the room exactly as she had found it. Denver went downstairs and saw on the kitchen table a bowl of black raspberries that Rosemary must have picked from the back yard and surrounding fields. Next to the bowl was a note that said:
Don’t wait until tomorrow. Enjoy me now.

A few days later, Denver received a postcard from Rosemary who was visiting some friends in North Carolina on her way back to Florida. The postcard featured a photo of a baby loggerhead turtle in the ocean surf, heading out to sea. The message on the back of the postcard read:
It’s all good. Love, Aunt Rosemary.

Chapter 14

Revelations

She remembered what Rosemary had told her.

Anger has a bad reputation, but not always deservedly so. Anger can save you. It can help you refuse to tolerate the mud and poison in life. It can create electricity in your blood so you can tunnel your way out of a dark, inhospitable cave. It can build a steel rod up your spine so you cannot be knocked down again. It can show you that you can love yourself, even when others choose not to. It can help you remember things that you should never forget.

In Adena, there were no answers, no perpetrators visible, only victims who had fought their way toward peace, resistance, or resolution. The feeling inside of her, that it was time to leave, was all she could think about. She had the money her parents had left her. At least she had that to give her a sense of security and freedom. Her world needed to take a hard turn to one side or the other in order to keep her from drowning in Adena’s deep river of dissolution.

She searched her mind for all the possibilities and finally, one night, as the telephone and power lines were being severed to further motivate people to leave, she came across a book she had read from her father’s bookshelf. It was a large collection of short stories and there was one story she remembered above all the others. The story was about a woman who had sunk into the dark mires of depression and found her way out by traversing the cold northwest tundra with her two dogs in January during a snowstorm. It was a story that started off like a typical hibernal horror tale with all of the foreboding signs of a frozen corpse huddled in snow-covered dog carcass, but that wasn’t the way the story ended. In this story, the woman survived. She held on and prayed, and in the darkness of a thirty-below snowstorm, she thought of all the miracles that life had afforded her.

While Denver had no interest in a life threatening experiences or winter camping, she remembered the hope that Josh gave her when they talked about traveling the country, and she remembered Aunt Rosemary whose lyrical voice and words of wisdom frequently floated across the surface of her mind like serene, white clouds, although not really sinking in. Like the woman in the story, Denver knew that she just needed to hang on, that the storm would pass, that there were things she could be grateful for. She also knew that it was time to act.

She sold the house and much of its belongings to the state. What she couldn’t sell, she gave away. She donated items to Goodwill and to the Salvation Army and threw away boxes of clutter from the basement. She was surprised at how easy it was for her to toss away her old stuffed animals, games, and mementos from high school. Those things didn’t matter to her anymore, and it didn’t feel right staying in the house any longer. She never really felt that it belonged to her. It was her parents’ house and without them crossing the thresholds, roaming the hallways, and filling the rooms with their voices, it didn’t seem like home.

She stuffed her tall pack with as much as she could carry, including a camera, a notebook, a few books, and a photograph of her parents sitting on the porch swing. Other than this photograph, she didn’t care all that much about anything else that was in the house.

What she would miss the most were the paintings on the walls. Both her mother and her father had an exquisite admiration for beauty, and they surrounded themselves with paintings by artists who were extraordinarily talented but mostly unknown. There were paintings of birds, old barns, farm houses, rocky streams, sunsets, and one painting of a path that curves into the woods and then just disappears. The paintings were every bit as captivating as something you would find in an art gallery.

She gave a few of the paintings to Helena who was unsure about what she was going to do and where she was going to go. When they said goodbye to each other, they pretended that they would see each other again soon to make it easier, although both of them knew that it might be a long, long time before they would cross paths again. Denver said that she would write or call as soon as she had an address, but Helena didn’t know where she would be by that time. They had to tell each other, and themselves, that it would be okay, that they would find each other again, that their roads would intersect someday when the coal storms turned into spring rains. Denver told Helena that one day she would come back to Adena, but she told herself that she would never come back.

She felt drawn to the sea. She boarded a bus heading in the direction of the New Jersey coast. She wanted to see the ocean and its immensity, to feel the power of something much larger than Adena and her own life. She didn’t fully understand why she felt a pull toward the coast, a place that she had only visited on rare occasions for short periods of time, but the connection was real and at that time in her life, necessary.

Departure was at 5:50 am. She sat in the Greyhound bus in a seat on the right-hand side. When the tires began to roll, there were very few other passengers to disturb her as she dreamed and directed her thoughts out the window. When the bus turned onto the highway, the tears also began to roll, unexpectedly and large. She was feeling fine. She was feeling good, but the tears came anyway. She didn’t want to cry. She could have slept, but the early morning peach glaze over the world was a rare sight, and she wanted to remember every moment of her journey. She had looked at the faces in the bus terminal before she boarded, and she looked at the faces of those sharing her ride. Where were they going? What were they seeking? Were they lost too? What did they think of the world when they looked out the window with their sleepy eyes and tired heads leaning on the window? She listened to the sound of the bus engine as it accelerated down the highway.

The bus driver was a jovial, middle-aged man who didn’t pay attention to anything except for the road and the voices in his head. Sometimes his lips moved quietly forming incomprehensible words and sentences. At times, it seemed as if he got so caught up in the conversation he was having with the people in his mind that his response would erupt loudly, startling those on the bus who were still awake. People in the front rows would look at each other as if to ask, “Who is he talking to?” He seemed oblivious to the passengers that sat behind him, cut off from their faces, their concerns. His job was to drive the bus and stop where it was scheduled to stop. No doubt he had already seen his share of lost souls trying to find their way to something or away from something. Perhaps the road would be easier if there weren’t so many choices, so many street signs with bold arrows and towns with appealing names.

Denver felt like a vagabond, which wasn’t so bad. In fact, feeling like someone else for a while pleased her, and she had half the inclination to walk into a store along the bus route and buy a bandanna and big hoop earrings. The freedom felt good. To hop a Greyhound and just let it go wherever it took her. Only the driver and the other passengers cared where the bus was going.

It was her immediate goal to resist the temptation to stay in bed for the rest of her life, and so she migrated toward things that excited her. She tried to think about what was in front of her rather than what she was leaving behind. She wanted to go to the ocean and live in some drowsy seaside town where she could see the ocean every day and the salt air would permeate everything she owned. She’d leave the windows open so the wind could blow the waving sheer curtains. In this sleepy seaside town, there would be a bright and roomy grocery store and a café with paintings of sailboats and ships on its walls. Life would be slow there. She’d eat things like conch chowder and seafood salad and watch the fishing boats come to port with the men looking tired and wind-blown. The sounds of seagulls would become so much a part of her life that she’d hear them in her sleep. She’d decorate her little cottage in the pale, salt-washed colors of peach, green, blue, and yellow.

But the fantasy ended as fast as it came. “I’m afraid, God,” she whispered. “I’m afraid of iron doors slamming me into a small, black room with no windows. I’m afraid of coal. I’m afraid of love. I don’t want to play this game anymore, this guessing game that pockets our choices on a roulette wheel.”

The bus bounced rhythmically on the interstate highway as the bus driver turned on his right turn signal. He pulled into a bus station in Scallywag, New Jersey. She went into the bus station and studied the maps hanging on the wall. She was halfway through New Jersey and heading east. A man caught her eye from his seat in the bus station and he watched her go into the restroom. He seemed lost in his own tired box with very few windows. Each time a bus pulled in, his face blossomed as if he had been waiting there his entire life for someone’s arrival, but the passenger he was looking for never came.

Something about him reminded Denver of her own invisible prisons, the ones that kept her from totally accepting Josh. But then again, maybe this man was free, more than the rest of us. He reminded her of Pilner with the weary and distant look on his face that broke her heart. She felt the fury she still harbored toward those who murdered her parents, and how she used to beg for some way to get away from the pain. If only they would have come to kill her too.

She went to the counter and bought a ticket heading south. She had an hour wait, but she made do by reading Rachel Carson’s
The Sea Around Us
. What she wouldn’t give to know the sea so well.

When the bus to Norfolk announced its departure time, she closed her book and carried her belongings to the bus. She always sat on the right side about six seats back. This bus was cleaner and more spacious than the other one, but unfortunately she couldn’t sleep very well or read on buses. So, as the bus began its southern trek, stopping in every little town and burg on its way to pick up and drop off new passengers, she observed and compared them all to Adena. She wished she could stop remembering, but images of Adena in her mind were irrevocable. She could pass through a hundred towns and never forget how it looked, how it was, and what it came to be during her time there.

Her plan was to never return, even though she only had a few more college credits left to take to get her bachelor’s degree. The fall semester and resuming her life as a student seemed out of the question. Her father would not have liked this decision, but there was no clear place to go back to anymore. The spirit of the town lay quiet with what was once human trespass. Street signs, however few, had been stolen. An abandoned cab of an old rusty rig sat lopsided in a ditch near a brick building with its windows smashed in. The tires were blown out and the print on the door was indecipherable.

Adena didn’t seem so small to her when she was growing up on inner tube rides and late summer carnival food. She was a junkie in love with cotton candy, funnel cakes, and the haunted house where yarn hung from the ceilings to feel like cobwebs in the dark. She knew it was yarn because she reached up and tried to pull it down once. All she got was a brush burn. Sometimes, the lights would be turned down very low and a darkly dressed person standing in a corner would jump out as if to grab her, then there was a black out before she was grabbed. The barely visible shapes would then disappear into a deep, black nothingness. The field where the carnival always stood was now a moderately sized expanse of grassy solitude with stone roads that show two tire tracks flecked with small pieces of black coal. Adena had become its own tragic figure, dying by the very source that created it.

When she arrived in Norfolk, the air was noticeably warmer and more humid. She didn’t intend to stay in Norfolk, but it was getting late and she needed a place to stay. She walked to a cheap hotel down the street that she noticed earlier as the bus was heading toward the station. It wasn’t a nice hotel, and it wasn’t a nice part of town, but it was within walking distance of the bus station so it would have to suffice.

If the hotel were a restaurant, it would rank somewhere between a McDonald’s and a QuickMart deli counter, but as long as they could manage clean sheets and a sturdy door lock, she didn’t care. It’s a good thing she wasn’t too particular. She found a dead cockroach in the shower, cigarette holes burned through the sheets, and one of the plastic cups had a woman’s lipstick on it. The table next to the bed held the phone, a lamp, and a bible opened up to the book of Revelations. She had read about the end of times before, but some of the verses held different meaning for her now, particularly chapter 9:

And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.

And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.

And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.

And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man.

When she read these passages, she saw Adena and the openings in the earth where smoke rose to the sky in sinister plumes. She also saw judgment, punishment, and violence. There were no locusts, but the trees were blanched, killed from the roots up, and the mine fire did not discriminate. It hurt whatever was in its way. But here in this biblical passage, the green things were protected.

She didn’t sleep well, but she didn’t expect to, so she wasn’t disappointed or even overly tired. The morning energized her when she saw that it was turning out to be the kind of day she loved, sunny and windy with large gray-trimmed white clouds passing shadows over the sunlit surfaces. She walked down to the bus station with a spirit of hope inside of her as she considered the possibilities of the new life she might lead. She could be anyone she wanted to be.

The night before, as she was trying to fall asleep, she thought about where she wanted to go after Norfolk. Barely a day went by when she didn’t think of Josh and all the stories he told her about the places where he wanted to go. He told her once about coastal North Carolina, how he read about an island where there are wild horses and a graveyard of ships and remote shell-filled beaches. Plus, she knew that Rachel Carson spent time in North Carolina studying the sea environment, which inspired Carson to write the book Denver had been reading. She also remembered Aunt Rosemary’s postcard of the loggerhead turtle. At the bus station, she bought a map of the southeast coastline and a ticket heading toward east North Carolina.

The bus was scheduled to leave at 10 in the morning and the station was filled with people. When bus 529 to Wilmington announced for passengers to board, she was one of many who gathered their belongings and entered the overly air-conditioned rows of seats. She took her normal spot on the right-hand side and watched the bus fill up after her. When the bus was nearly full, a frazzled woman, who didn’t look to be more than thirty-five, entered the bus. She looked concerned when she saw there were only two seats available. One next to a large man in the back of the bus reading a newspaper through some black framed reading glasses, and one next to Denver. Denver instinctively moved her bags from the seat and put them on the floor in front of her. The woman sat down, heavily exhaled an exasperated “thank you,” and put her bags on the floor in front of her while holding another in her arms.