John Hart - Down River

She refilled her sherry, drank a large swallow. “She was twenty-one when the baby came. Unmarried and unrepentant. Lived in a tent in the woods. With my grandbaby!” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have it. Couldn’t have it.” She paused, gazing inward. “I did what I had to do.”

I waited, knowing more or less how the story would end.

She sat up straighter. “I talked to her, of course. I tried to make her see the error of her ways. I invited her back into my home, told her I would help her raise the child properly. But she wouldn’t listen. Said she was going to build a cabin, but she was deluding herself. She had no money, no resources.” The old lady sipped sherry and sniffed. “I got the authorities involved…”

The words trailed off. I was about to prompt her when she spoke, loudly. “She ran away. With my grandbaby. California, I heard, on a quest for like-minded people. Freaks, if you ask me. Witches and pagans and drug abusers.” She nodded. “Well, let me tell you”-she nodded again, repeated herself-“let me tell you…”

“California?”

She finished the sherry. “She was high when she went off the road. High on pot with the baby in the car. Sarah never walked again. And I never saw the child, either. My grandchild died in California, Mr. Chase. My daughter came back a cripple. I never forgave her and we’ve not spoken since.”

She stood abruptly, swiping at her eyes. “Now, how about something to eat?”

She rustled her way into the kitchen, where she stood with her hands pressed flat on polished granite, head bowed. She did not move. She did open her eyes. Food, I knew, would not be prepared.

I stood and placed the photograph back on the shelf. I tilted it to catch what light there was.

It was all there.

So clear to me now.

I lay a finger on the glass, traced the line of her bright smile, and understood, finally, why she seemed so familiar to me.

She looked just like Grace.

I cut into the trees from a bright, empty stretch of road, passed by Ken Miller’s bus without slowing down. When I pulled to a stop in front of Sarah Yates’s cabin, a cloud of red dust hung in the air behind my car. I crossed the porch in two strides, and my hand was loud on the door. No answer. But the van was here, canoe at the dock. I pounded again and heard a noise inside, a low muffle that swelled into footsteps.

Ken Miller opened the door.

He wore a towel around his waist. Sweat matted the hair on his chest. A hot flush infused his face. “What the hell do you want?” he asked.

Beyond him, shadows filled the main room. The bedroom door stood ajar.

“I’d like to speak with Sarah,” I said.

“She’s indisposed.”

Then, from within, Sarah’s voice. “Who is it, Ken?”

He yelled over his shoulder. “It’s Adam Chase, all hot and bothered about something!”

“Ask him to wait a minute, then come and help me.”

“Sarah…” He was displeased.

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Sarah said.

When Ken looked back at me, there was murder in his eyes. “I am so tired of you,” he said, then pointed at the row of chairs on the porch. “Wait over there.” Five minutes later, the door opened again. Ken pushed past me without looking up. His jeans were unbuttoned, shoes untied. He walked off without once looking back. A few moments later, Sarah rolled her chair onto the porch.

Her words came as a matter of course. “No man likes being interrupted in flagrante delicto.” She wore a flannel robe and slippers. The back of her hair was still wet with sweat. “That’s the nature of the beast.”

She rolled to a stop and set the brake on her chair.

“You and Ken…?” I said.

She shrugged. “When it suits.”

I searched her face, looking for hints of Grace, and wondering how I’d ever missed it. They had the same heart-shaped face, same mouth. The eyes were a different color, but had the same shape. Sarah was older, her face more full, the white hair…

“Well, spit it out,” she said. “You’re here for a reason.”

“I saw your mother again today.”

“Good for you.”

“She showed me a picture of you when you were young.”

“So.”

“You looked just like Grace Shepherd. You still do in a lot of ways.”

“Ah.” She said nothing else.

“What does that mean?”

“I’ve been waiting twenty years for someone to notice that. You’re the first one. I guess it’s no surprise. I don’t see many people.”

“You’re her mother.”

“I’ve not been her mother for twenty years.”

“Your child did not die in California, then?”

She turned sharp eyes on me. “You covered some ground with my mother, didn’t you?”

“She misses you.”

Sarah waved a loose hand. “Bullshit. She misses her youth, misses the things she’s lost. I’m no more than a symbol of all that.”

“But Grace is her granddaughter?”

Her voice rose. “I would never allow her to raise a child of mine! I know what that road looks like: narrow and sharp and unforgiving.”

“So you lied about the accident?”

She rubbed her lifeless legs. “That was no lie. But my daughter survived.”

“And you gave her up?”

The smile was cold, eyes like green stone. “I’m no mother. I thought that maybe I could be, but that was just self-deception.” She looked away. “I was unqualified in every way.”

“Who’s the father?”

She sighed. “A man. Tall and fine and proud, but just a man.”

“Dolf Shepherd,” I said.

She looked frightened. “Why would you believe that?”

“You gave him the child to raise. In the note you gave me, you wrote of good people who love him. Of good people who will remember.”

Her face hardened.

“There’s no other reason you would do that.”

“You know nothing,” she said.

“It fits.”

She measured me, debating her words. When she spoke, it was with determined finality. Like she’d made some brutal decision.

“I should have never spoken to you,” she said.

They buried Danny Faith under a featureless, steel sky. We settled into folding chairs that could have been formed from the same metal. Heat percolated through everything so that clothing grew damp and flowers drooped. Women I’d never seen moved crenellated fans before faces done up in hard-won perfection. The funeral was planned and paid for by an aunt of Danny’s whom I’d never met. I picked her out easily enough-she had the same red hair-and I pegged the rest of the women as her friends. They’d come in old cars with smallish men, and their diamonds struggled for luster in the empty light.

His aunt looked pained, but I watched her in silent admiration. The coffin cost more than her car. Her friends had traveled far to be with her.

A good woman, I thought.

We sat for a while in near perfect silence, waiting for the appointed time and the words that would follow Danny into the ground. I saw Grantham at the same time that his eyes found me. He stood at a distance in a dark, buttoned coat. He watched the gathering, studied faces, and I tried to ignore him. He was doing his job-nothing personal-but I saw that my father was watching him, too.

The preacher was the same who’d buried my mother, and the years had been cruel to him. Sadness spilled from his eyes. His face stretched, long and careworn. Yet his words still had the power to comfort. Heads moved in accord. A woman crossed herself.

For me, the irony was hard. I found Danny in one hole so he could be put into another. But I nodded at times, and the prayers rolled off my lips, too. He’d been my friend and I’d failed him. So, I prayed for his soul.

And I prayed for mine.