Above the Waterfall

by Ron Rash

  Nobody but me knows what’s alone in my heart.

  I get my bike and ride to my cabin, gather my sleeping bag, trail mix, flashlight, and water bottle. A breeze awakens the wind chimes as I step back outside. I listen for a few moments, then ride up the Parkway to a campsite. I put my sleeping bag down and get in. After a while the breeze thickens. Around the moon gray clouds ghost.

  PART FIVE

  Thirty-one

  You go that far deep and dark down, my grandfather once said about being in the caisson, it makes you love these mountains all the more. I thought of him saying that as I drove to the courthouse on Friday morning. But I knew that, unlike my grandfather, C.J. was wishing he’d never come back. Last night, I’d almost picked up the phone to call and see if I could do anything to help him or his family. But I’d decided to wait until I talked to Levon Carlson. If someone else had poisoned the creek, I still hoped Tucker might reconsider firing C.J.

  “What’s got you here so bright and early?” Ruby asked when I came into the office.

  “A hunch that this may turn out to be an interesting day,” I answered. “Anything I need to know about?”

  “Nothing so far. Somebody threatened a clerk at the 7-Eleven this morning, but it’s the one inside the city limits so it’s not our problem.”

  “Where’s Jarvis?”

  “Since it was so quiet he went to serve those two domestic warrants,” Ruby said. “By the way, I was thinking of buying Jarvis something to celebrate him being the new sheriff. Any ideas?”

  “How about a six-pack of antacids and aspirin?”

  “I don’t doubt he’ll need them,” Ruby said, not returning my smile. “It’s a hard job and I’ve watched it take a lot out of you. Sometimes I think too much. I’ve prayed about it at times, Sheriff. I pray it hasn’t.”

  I’d worked with Ruby for nine years and it was the first time she’d ever said something so personal to me. I almost smiled and asked if they were Baptist or Catholic prayers, but I caught myself. Why diminish a gift you might have never known you’d been given?

  “Thank you, Ruby,” I said.

  I went into my office and watched the clock’s minute hand begin its slow crawl to the top. The warden or his assistant would be at the prison by eight, but eight eastern standard time or central? Knoxville was eastern but Nashville was central. I did a quick Google search and saw Roan Mountain was in the eastern time zone. I set my cell phone on the desk and called Becky on my landline, but same as last night, there was no answer. I checked and there was no e-mail from her. You’ve got enough to focus on, I reminded myself, but I was worried.

  The courthouse clock chimed eight and ten minutes later my cell phone buzzed.

  “We’ll have it set up for nine o’clock,” Joseph said. “We’ll call your landline.”

  I had fifty minutes to kill so I told Ruby I was going over to Greene’s Café. I sat alone in my usual booth and studied the list of questions I’d written last night for Carlson. As I sipped my coffee, I thought of a couple more and wrote them down, then folded the paper and stuck it in my shirt pocket. When Lloyd asked if I wanted a refill, I didn’t look up, just shook my head.

  “You look like you’re trying to solve all the world’s problems, Sheriff.”

  “No,” I answered, raising my eyes, “just one.”

  “Well,” Lloyd said. “I guess that’s a start.”

  I walked back to the courthouse. Ruby was on the phone but she motioned for me to wait as she said a quick good-bye and hung up.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Ruby said. “What kind of cake would you like at your retirement party, carrot or chocolate. Margie West gets booked up quick, so I was going to get the order in.”

  “Chocolate,” I said and went on to my office.

  I’d just sat down when suddenly it was as if I’d stepped off a porch not knowing an abyss lay below. Falling with no rope or steel cable to pull me out. Because retiring hadn’t been quite real until this moment. I was fifty-one. My father had lived to seventy-three and he’d been a smoker. What could I expect, thirty years, maybe more? All those hours to fill, and with what? Even if I took the night watchman job, that was part-time. I’d do some farming, and do it organic, but still, come winter, I’d have idle time. Painting, reading . . . what else?

  This is what everyone feels when they get ready to retire, I reassured myself. It’s a change, and any kind of change can be scary, because you don’t have your footing. But then I thought about what I wouldn’t be doing—no more visits to inform good people such as Ben Lindsey of a disaster that had befallen someone they loved. I’d never have to walk into a meth house where some child was breathing poison. No, occasional boredom would be fine.

  At nine o’clock sharp my landline rang.

  “I’ve got it ready,” Joseph said. “I’m hooking you up right now.”

  “You know what this is about?” I asked once Levon Carlson was on.

  “No,” Carlson answered, “but I ain’t got nothing to say unless you promise me a shorter sentence, or at least a carton of cigarettes.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Just tell me where your cell phone is.”

  A squawk came from the line’s other end.

  “That damn bitch I had living with me has it. She wouldn’t go my bail but didn’t mind gabbing off a thousand minutes on a phone I paid for, then using my credit card number to put more minutes on it.”

  “All of this was while you were in prison?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Carlson said, loud enough that I had to hold the receiver farther from my ear. “Them Visa mush heads sent the bill here, care of Roan Mountain Correctional Complex, like they figured I was sitting around chewing the fat for hours on a cell phone in a goddamn fucking prison. She probably charged panties and Kotex on that card too. They didn’t think that a goddamn bit strange either. Damn that bitch and Visa both.”

  “What’s the girl’s name?”

  “It’s Bitch, I’m telling you. First name, middle name, and last.”

  “Besides that?”

  “Besides Bitch?” Carlson said. “She don’t deserve no other name.”

  “I don’t care if she deserves it or not. Just calm down and tell me what it is.”

  “Shiloh,” Carlson said, spitting out the word.

  “That’s her first name?”

  “It’s a nickname she got from some sappy song.”

  “Do you know her first or last name?”

  “What the hell did I need to know her last name for?” Carlson said indignantly. “I wasn’t going to marry her or anything. I was just letting her stay with me awhile. She was probably living under a bridge before that. You’d think she’d be the least bit grateful, but hell no.”

  “How did you meet her?”

  “I used to do some business where I-40 runs over the river. She bought from me there a couple of times. I don’t know where she lived, but like I said, I’d not doubt under that bridge.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I hope in hell, if they’ll have her,” Carlson said. “But if she’s alive, I don’t know, unless she’s back down there near the interstate.”

  “How about giving me a description.”

  “A skank.”

  “What kind of skank?” I asked. “Blond or brunette, tall, short, fat, skinny? White, black, Latino?”

  “Hell, man, white, I got standards. Brown hair. Average height, say five-six, not skinny but not fat either.”

  “How old?”

  “I don’t know. I mean she was legal but it wasn’t like she was someone’s granny.”

  “That’s not giving me a lot as far as a description.”

  “She’s got a tattoo of a rose on her ass,” Carlson said.

  “You know any of her friends?”

  “Mister, she didn’t have no friends,” Carlson said. “Whatever you’re after her about, I hope it’s something that puts her in the electric chair. You need a volunteer to pull that switch, I’m yo
ur man.”

  “How about her family?”

  “She never said a word about her family.”

  “And you can’t remember her real first and last name?”

  “If I could, I’d tell you,” Carlson said, “but I never heard her called any name but Shiloh.”

  “Anything else you can tell me about her?”

  “She had lousy taste in music and wouldn’t watch anything on TV but game shows and them big-haired preachers,” Carlson said, “once in a while a ball game.”

  “If you think of something else, have Joseph call me.”

  “So what you going to do for me after all I give you?”

  “Unless you come up with something else,” I said, “you’ll have to settle for a carton of cigarettes.”

  “Camels,” Carlson said.

  I thanked Joseph for his help and hung up.

  Shiloh.

  I remembered the song vaguely, something about a boy and girl playing together. In the Bible Shiloh meant place of peace, or at least that’s what Preacher Waldrop had said in a sermon. He’d claimed you could hear the peacefulness in the word itself. Shiloh.

  I sat for a few more minutes, thinking about what Carlson had told me, trying to connect it to the fish kill. I called the resort just on the off chance and said I needed to get in touch with a worker named Shiloh. The receptionist said no Shiloh had ever worked there as far as she knew. The next logical call was the Knox County sheriff’s office. If she hung out with the likes of Carlson, she’d probably been picked up for something, drugs or prostitution most likely. But then what? Find out she was drugged up and dialed the wrong number, which again seemed about as likely as anything else, or that she’d given the phone to another person, or simply lost it. Carlson, of course, could be lying about the phone, but that was hard to imagine from the way he’d reacted.

  I called Knox County and told them what I wanted. They said they’d check their database. It didn’t take long. No one with that name, the woman who called back said. I dialed Gerald’s number to see if he recognized the name, but no one answered. He was probably out in his garden, or simply too ornery to pick up.

  I went to the window. Two boys with baseball gloves walked toward the park. At the intersection a young mother with a stroller waited for the light to change. A blue pickup approached as green switched to yellow, passing beneath the light as it turned red. At least a warning ticket, I thought, since the woman and baby were there. Then something else, something about the cell phone, stirred in the back of my mind, just as quickly darted back inside. I tried to coax what it was out into the open, but it wouldn’t come.

  Over the years I’d learned that sometimes the best way to solve a problem was to let it believe you were busy with something else, replacing a burned-out porch light, fixing a leaky faucet. The solution would edge on out and you’d see it clear. I set a trash can beside the desk, on it two clear-plastic trays.

  In ten minutes, the drawers were empty. I carried a tray filled with rubber bands and paper clips and pens out to Ruby. The trash can was full but there was little in the other tray. A pocketknife my grandfather had given me, a striped tie, a few dollars’ worth of change, an unopened box of watercolor brushes. I could tuck my watercolor and the Hopper painting under my arm and make one trip to the truck instead of two, so I walked over to Hopper’s painting to lift it off the hook. But before I did, I studied it a few moments, especially how the red of the freight car contrasted with the yellow of the brush and grass behind it. Yellow and red. Mix them and . . .

  Thirty-two

  Imprismed. Morning’s fawnlight yokes inside dew beads, each hued like a rainbow’s hatchling. But they cling like tears about to fall. Memory cascades, last night with Gerald, the drawn gun at the resort, Richard, all rushing toward the cliffs of fall, the fall of footsteps. I roll up my sleeping bag and ride past the park entrance and the resort. I leave the bike and enter the woods. But not to Gerald’s house. I enter his barn and climb into the loft. I lie on the straw and I can’t hold it back and it all comes again . . .

  Promise me, children, not a single word, Ms. Abernathy had whispered. Then she’d led us down the hallway single file to the basement doorway, into the cave feeling of tight walls and cool dark. I am the very last, reaching for Ms. Abernathy’s hand as we make our way to the basement’s concrete floor. There we are, long moments silent, the only sound pipedrip. Light slants pale yellow on the stairs we came down. Dust motes drift within, as if to say No one’s passed through here in years. No other light but what leaks from the other basement door Ms. Abernathy herds us toward. Almost there when her shhhhh stills us. Footsteps come halfway down the basement stairs and pause. Both my hands clutch Ms. Abernathy’s. Another footstep and a shoe and a pants cuff appear. The pipe drips loud and my first tears well. I try to squeeze them back inside me but the first one splats on the concrete floor and I know he has heard it, and I look up to tell Ms. Abernathy and she covers my mouth with her hand but too late and the paused feet come down the stairs.

  Thirty-three

  The number was still on my desk pad and I dialed it. Joseph wasn’t in, but when I told the new guard what I wanted he said he’d go ask.

  “Carlson said blue.”

  I called Jarvis’s cell phone.

  “I need you to go get Darby Ramsey. Don’t give him a reason. There’s probably a woman out there with him but don’t bother with her. Just bring Darby in. You got all that?”

  “Yes,” Jarvis said.

  “There’s one other thing. Once you’re on the way back, ask him how Shiloh’s doing.”

  “Shiloh?”

  “Yeah, just ask how she’s doing. Then call me if he acts like he knows who you’re talking about. Just say ‘affirmative,’ if you call.”

  “Nothing else?” Jarvis said.

  “Nothing else.”

  You could still be wrong, I reminded myself, but I didn’t believe that. No, it was Darby. What I didn’t know was why. It would take Jarvis fifteen minutes to get to Darby’s house. I tried to turn my thoughts to how nice it would be next summer sitting on my cabin porch, but my eyes kept drifting back to the black office phone.

  It finally rang.

  “Affirmative,” Jarvis said.

  “Did you see her as well?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Bring Darby on in,” I said, “and keep him in the office until I get back.”

  I put on my gun and holster and left. I wasn’t trying to drive fast but the speedometer kept lifting. In a few minutes I passed Jarvis coming the other way, Darby in the backseat. When I turned onto Otter Creek Road, I thought about setting the blue light on my dash to shake her up, but decided something other than drugs might go down the toilet. If the phone was still around.

  I slowed when the barn came in sight, then pulled off in front of the farmhouse. She wasn’t on the porch. I didn’t knock, just turned the knob and opened the door. She was in a recliner, watching a game show turned up too loud. She wore jeans like last time, but instead of the orange University of Tennessee football jersey, a man’s flannel shirt covered her wasted frame. How much weight had she lost since Levon Carlson had last seen her? At least thirty pounds. On a stool beside the chair was a bag of blue crystals and a glass pipe. I stepped all the way in and she finally noticed me. An orange Bic lighter was in her hand. She closed her palm over it, as if concealing the lighter might make the drugs and pipe disappear too.

  I picked up the remote and turned off the television.

  “You’re not waiting until Darby gets back, Shiloh?” I asked. “That’s smart on your part, because he’s in some serious trouble. I’m just hoping he hasn’t gotten you in it too.”

  She looked at me and whatever she felt was not surprise, which said as much about her life as anything. Nights spent under bridges, sordid acts done for drugs, beatings, rapes, she lived in a world where bad things never strayed for long. Robin Lindsey in another year or two, I couldn’t help thinking, if R
obin wasn’t in jail or dead.

  “You’ve got Levon Carlson’s cell phone and I need it,” I told her, raising an open palm when she started to deny it. “Don’t speak, just listen. Give me the cell phone and answer a couple of questions and I’ll walk out of here. I’ll even leave your baggie and your pipe. But if you don’t tell me where the phone is, I’m going to take you straight to jail. So what’s it going to be?”

  “Darby will kill me if I tell you,” she answered.

  “No, he won’t. I know you called his uncle, and I know that was Darby’s idea, not yours, same as I figure somebody else was in on it besides you two.”

  “You ain’t going to arrest me having that?” she asked, nodding at the baggie.

  “Not today, Shiloh. You get a free pass on everything, if you answer my questions.”

  “You swear,” she said, more doubt than hope in her voice.

  “Yes.”

  She looked at the pipe and baggie, then back at me.

  “All I done was tell that old man he needed to meet someone at a waterfall.”

  “That’s a start, but where’s the cell phone?”

  “You’re not trying to trick me,” she said, “by saying you won’t charge me today but charging me tomorrow?”

  “No.”

  Shiloh still didn’t look like she quite believed me, but let out a sigh and laid the lighter on the stool.

  “I sold it.”

  “Who’d you sell it to?”

  “That pawnshop outside town, the one near CVS,” Shiloh said. “Darby told me to throw it in the river but I knew I could get some cash for it. It was got rid of, that was the important thing.”

  “Who else helped Darby do this?”

  “I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Nobody came here to talk to him?”

  “Well, one night someone drove up,” Shiloh said. “Darby told me to stay inside, so I didn’t see him. After that, Darby talked to whoever it was, but it was always over the phone.”