John Hart - Down River

“Unless you have a better idea.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dolf repeated, then got up and went to the truck.

I tied the rope off with a clove hitch and dropped the loose coil over the edge. It flicked against the stone as it went down.

“Any chance you have a flashlight?”

He pulled one out of the truck, handed it to me. “You don’t have to do this,” Dolf said.

“I’m not sure what I see down there. Are you?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Positive?”

He did not answer, so I turned my back to the hole and grasped the rope. His hand gripped my shoulder. “Don’t do this, Adam. There’s no need.”

I smiled. “Just don’t leave me.”

Dolf muttered something that sounded like “dumb ass kid.”

I got down on my belly and slid my legs over the edge. I planted my feet, let them take what weight they could, put the rest on the rope. I caught Dolf’s eye once, and then I was in, the lip of the crevasse seeming to fold over me.

Cold crept up and the air thickened. I descended past layers of rock, and the descent tore the warm, bright world away. The sun abandoned me, and I felt them, three hundred of them, some still alive when they went in. For an instant, my mind got away from me. It was real, as if I could hear the crack of shot on rock, the high screams of women tossed in alive to spare the cost of a bullet. But that was centuries ago, a faint vibration in the ancient stone.

I slipped once, heard the rope sigh as my weight came onto it. I swung away from the wall, and the void tried to suck me down, but I didn’t stop. Ten feet more and the smell overwhelmed me. I forced a breath, but the stench was thick. I put a light on the body, saw twisted sticks of legs, and moved the light up. It struck the exposed curve of forehead bone, what had looked, from above, like an upturned bowl. I saw the hollow sockets, the tattered flesh, and teeth.

And there was something else.

I looked closer, saw denim turned to black, and a once white shirt now eggplant with seepage and decay. I almost threw up, and it wasn’t because of the colors or the smells.

I saw insects, thousands of them. They moved beneath the cloth.

And they made the scarecrow dance.

Four hours later, under a vault of clear, sweet air, they hauled Danny Faith out of the ground. There was no pretty way to do it. They went down with a body bag, and used the winch on one the sheriff’s trucks. Even over the whine of it, I heard the scrape of the vinyl bag, the apologetic knock of bone on rock.

Three people followed the body out: Grantham, Robin, and the medical examiner. They wore respirators, but still looked as fragile and gray as charred paper. Robin refused to meet my eyes.

No one but me was saying for sure that it was Danny, but it was. The size was right, and the hair was hard to mistake. It was red and curly, not something you saw that often in Rowan County.

The sheriff made an appearance while the body was still in the hole. He spent ten minutes talking to his people, then to Dolf and to my father. I could see the animosity between them, the distrust and dislike. He spoke to me only once, and the hatred was there, too: “I can’t stop you from coming back,” he said. “But you shouldn’t have gone down there, you dumb shit.” He left right after that, like he’d done the only important job and still had better things to do.

I caught myself rubbing my hands on my thighs, like I could abrade away the smell or the memory of the damp rock. My father watched me, and I shoved my hands into my pockets. He seemed as stunned as I, and moved close every time Grantham approached with yet another question. By the time Danny left the knob for the last time, my father and I stood less than five feet apart, and our own troubles seemed reduced next to the awkward sack that refused to lie flat in the back of the sheriff’s truck.

But the body wasn’t there forever. The trucks dropped away and quiet descended again. We stood in a rough line by the broken stone, the three of us, and Dolf’s hat was in his hand.

Danny Faith was no more than three weeks dead; but for me, in some strange way, he’d been resurrected. Grace had been hurt, yes, but Danny had nothing to do with it. I felt the hatred slip away. In its place rose bittersweet relief, quiet regret, and no small amount of shame.

“Can I give you a ride back?” my father asked.

The wind moved his hair as I stared at him. I loved the man, but could not see a way past our problems. Worse, I did not know if I still had the energy to search one out. Our words came with cost. His nose was swollen where I’d punched him. “Why, Dad? What else is there to say?”

“I don’t want you to leave.”

I looked at Dolf. “You told him?”

“I’m tired of waiting for you two to grow up,” Dolf said. “He needs to know how close he is to losing you for good. Life is too damn short.”

I spoke to my father. “I’m staying for Grace’s sake. Not for you or anything else. For Grace.”

“Let’s just agree to be civil, okay? Let’s agree to that and see what the future brings.”

I thought about it. Danny was gone, and I guessed that there were still things to say. Dolf understood, and turned without speaking. “Meet us at the house,” my father called after him. “I think we can all use a drink.” Dolf’s truck coughed once before the engine caught.

“Civil,” I said. “Nothing has been resolved.”

“Okay,” my father said, then, “You really think it’s Danny?”

“Pretty sure,” I said.

We stared for a long time at the black, black hole. It wasn’t the fact of Danny’s death or the questions that his death raised. The rift between us was as raw as ever, more so, and we were both reluctant to face it. It was easier to contemplate the dark slash in the earth, the sudden wind that pressed the thin grass flat. When my father finally chose to speak, it was of my mother’s suicide, and of the things I’d said.

“She didn’t know what she was doing, Adam. It didn’t matter if it was you or me. She’d chosen her moment for reasons we can never understand. She wasn’t trying to punish anyone. I have to believe that.”

I felt the blood leave my face. “This does not seem like the time to talk about it,” I said.

“Adam-”

“Why did she do it?” The question tore itself free.

“Depression does strange things to the mind.” I felt him looking at me. “She was lost.”

“You should have gotten her some help.”

“I did,” he said, and that stopped me. “She’d been seeing a therapist for most of that year, for all of the good that it did. He told me that she was improving. That’s what he said, and a week later she pulled the trigger.”

“I had no idea.”

“You weren’t supposed to. No kid should know that about his mother. Know that dredging up a smile took everything she had.” He waved a hand in disgust. “That’s why I never sent you to see a shrink.” He sighed. “You were tough. I thought you’d be okay.”

“Okay? Are you serious? She did it in front of me. You left me there, in the house.”

“Somebody had to go with the body.”

“I scrubbed her brains off the wall.”

He looked appalled. “That was you?”

“I was eight years old.”

He seemed to fall away from me. “It was a hard time,” he said.

“Why was she depressed? She’d been happy all of my life. I remember. She was full of joy and then she died inside. I’d like to know why.”

My father looked at the hole, and I knew that I had never seen such distress in his features. “Forget it, son. No good can come of it now.”

“Dad-”

“Just let her lie, Adam. What matters now is you and me.”

I closed my eyes and when I opened them I found my father standing before me. He put his hands on my shoulders again, as he had in his study.