Crossing the River

by Fenton Johnson

  He turned. “You’re late,” he said, in the voice that Bernie might have used to say the same thing. “I expected you here fifteen minutes ago.”

  “We can’t stay away. The place won’t let us.”

  “You can’t stay away. I don’t give a damn if the place burns to the ground ten minutes after I’m gone.”

  “So you snuck out here past half the U.S. Army just to enjoy the view.”

  For a moment Miracle said nothing. He turned away from her. “I snuck past the roadblock to have a beer for the road,” he said finally. “I’m leaving.”

  She was not listening. She had listened too long, and what she wanted to say was too important. She had switched gears, from years of idle waiting to a headlong rush into her first chance to escape, and now she was back here again, with her son, her lover’s lover’s lover, and gearing down was not possible, not here, not yet. “It’s time we had a talk,” she said, moving to the bar.

  “About what?”

  “About the Inn. About your father.” This was the hard part. “About Talbott Marquand.” He stood at the pool table, rolling the cue ball from hand to hand across the green baize. He said nothing. “It’s just you and me, Miracle, you and me and the Inn, we’re all that’s left.”

  “It’s you. It’s you, and it’s the Inn. It’s not me.”

  “We’ll change it all,” she said. “It’s not going to be like it was before. I’ve changed things before. I’m changing them again. I’ll figure out how to do it different and by God I’ll make it different. Talbott and Rosamund—screw them both. They got what they deserve, which is each other. We’ve got what we’ve had all along, which is each other. We’ll change how things are done and wake up this whole damn town in the process. We’ll make things different.”

  Miracle smiled. “You do that. If anybody can you can. But I’m leaving.”

  “Leaving?” His words sank in. She rested a hand on the bar, for the feel of its warm, substantial bulk under her hands. “When?”

  “Tonight. Now. It’s what you wanted. It’s what you’ve tried to get me to do for years. Well, you were right.”

  He was right. She had prayed that he would get out and away. She’d got what she wanted; her prayers had been answered.

  She slumped against the bar, rubbing her temples with her thumbs. “Miracle, don’t leave,” she said dully. “Not now. We can change things. We will change things.”

  “You’re saying that a little late, seems to me. If it’s so easy to change things, why didn’t you change things with my father?”

  Martha clenched her teeth. It’s the Miracle in you, she wanted to scream, but she knew it was more. He was a man now, his own man. He had turned into a man in this past year, while she was looking the other way. “You can hurt somebody you love, Miracle. It happens. If you love somebody, it happens. It will happen to you.”

  “Not if you don’t need anybody in the first place. You can’t hurt somebody if you don’t need them and they don’t need you. It’s the needing that makes you weak. So you just don’t need, or you have the gumption to keep it to yourself. Whichever. You just don’t let it happen, that’s all.”

  “Oh, no,” she said, from instinct more than thought. Then she heard the echo in his words. “Never a fool for love.” She’d thought it herself, not so long ago. Coming from her son it sounded foolish. She had loved and been loved, and for all her regrets she knew better. There was no giving it up, any more than giving up the Inn itself.

  “There’s nothing there but hurt,” he said.

  “There’s that. But there’s more, Miracle. It just takes guts. You wear your heart on your sleeve and you expect people to take a pot shot at it and they do, and then you have a stronger heart. How are you going to know what it feels like to be run over by a train, unless you lie down on the track?” He laughed at this, a slow, quiet snort, as if he found it funny but didn’t want her to know. Encouraged, she plowed on. “I have the guts to come down here because I love the place. I had the guts to love Talbott, to love Bernie; however, things didn’t work out, I loved them both, in a way. Not a perfect way. But a way.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  The readiness of his words hurt, quick and deep. Him, too, a part of her cried. She pushed it down. You can hurt somebody you love, she told herself. He is a son. This is his right. She thought of ways to say this, to fit all the words she knew together to say what she wanted to say. In the end she knew only the truth, and could think of nothing better than to say it. “Oh, Miracle, I did love them. I wasn’t much older than you when I met Bernie. Owner and operator of the Miracle Inn. Who wouldn’t fall for Satan’s bartender, when he offers you a drink from the devil’s family heirloom? And so I fell, if it wasn’t love it was falling, I know that, I had no more choice in what I was doing than a coon on the run.

  “And then I was treed, and what could I do but sit tight and make the best of things? And I did, and I had you.”

  The cueball slipped neatly from Miracle’s hands. In the silence it dropped neatly into the pool table’s north corner pocket.

  Miracle stirred himself and circled the room, turning out the lights except for the bare bulb in its green shade, over the pool table. In his walk, in that bow-legged Blanchard swagger, Martha saw Bernie. There were things to say, things she had wanted to say all her life. She crossed the uneven floor to his side.

  He pulled a silver flask from his pocket. “Satan’s heirloom,” he said. “Father gave it to me, Christmas Day. He said it’s never left the hands of the Miracle who ran the Inn. He wanted it kept that way.” He stuck its cool weight into her hand.

  “Miracle,” she began.

  “I know,” he said. “Closing time.” He tugged at the cord that dangled from the pool table light. In the swath of blue light from the parking lot streetlamp he picked his way across the planks, leaving Martha alone in the dark.

  She thought to follow him, to explain her mistakes. Words, words, words, surely she could put those into words, could teach him to love wisely, to avoid her mistakes and pain.

  She made herself stand still. He had earned the right to go; she let him go. She stood back from the door, until she was sure he had enough time to clear the levee, until she was sure he was gone.

  Outside, the Georgia blond sat in his jeep, drumming his fingers on the wheel. She climbed in. “Satisfied?” he asked.

  The jeep jerked forward, throwing her back into her seat. “Beg pardon,” he said, “but if the lieutenant happens along he’ll be pissed.”

  At the orange sawhorses they stopped. He thrust his handkerchief at her. “Ma’am, I’m sorry to have to tell you this but your face is covered with gunk.”

  She took his handkerchief and wiped her face. The handkerchief came away black. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Here I’ve gone and messed up your handkerchief.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, I guess you can get somewhere to wash up. You must live hereabouts.”

  “Very close. Not far at all.” She gave him back his handkerchief, then seized his hand and shook it. “Thanks for your kindness. If you’re ever this way again, stop in. Whatever you want. It’s on the house.”

  “Thank you, ma’am, I appreciate that. We’ll be around for the next few days. I just might take you up on that.”

  She was sure he was smiling, though it was dark and his face was turned from her. She climbed from the jeep. She was torn inside—she was hoping to see Miracle returning, his mind changed, all angles and bones and love and forgiveness. But in turning around, in looking for her son, her eyes strayed to the pale blond halo of the soldier’s hair, as he drove around the barriers to rejoin the roadblock. She stood watching, until he disappeared into the smoke.

  15

  Crossing the River

  Miracle walked to the north end of New Hope before the new bridge cleared of people. After a while there came a steady stream of cars that during the dynamiting had been held back. He was afraid to hitchhike. The chances were too grea
t that any car that stopped might belong to a friend of the family. He stepped from the road and hid in the woods. He found a patch of pine needles, not too damp, where he lay back, his duffel bag for a pillow, and fell asleep.

  When he awoke the highway was empty. He stood on the gravel shoulder of the road for an hour, thumb out. Five cars passed, none even hesitating at the sight of a young man with a duffel bag standing at the road’s edge.

  He never considered turning back. Free of the place, free of his name, free of his family, free of the past, he was free at last, like a Holy Roller getting religion on the floor with God: thank God, thank God, free at last. Just before dawn a truck stopped, a semi-trailer truck that took up its side of the road and then some. Miracle needed the driver’s hand to help him into the cab.

  In the light from the dash, Miracle studied the driver, his first accomplice on the road to freedom. He was thick, with a round belly nesting against the steering wheel. In one hand he gripped the wheel, in the other he held a cup of coffee and a cigarette. He wore thick black safety glasses that slipped down his nose. Every few minutes he pushed them up with the lip of his cup.

  “You from around here,” he said, after going through the shift pattern.

  “Sort of.”

  “I figgered. Pour me some coffee. There’s a thermos under your seat. Not too much, I got to be able to shift.” Miracle poured. The driver took the cup without so much as a nod of thanks. “What are you doing here,” he said.

  “Hitchhiking.”

  “I can see that,” the driver said drily. “You’re not one of them draft dodgers, are you?”

  “No, sir,” Miracle said.

  The driver shot a glance sideways. “I see. Well, I’m sorry but you can’t be too careful these days. I don’t have no truck with draft dodgers. I got too much at stake. Besides, they ought to be where they’re running from.”

  “What are you doing here so early?” Miracle asked, anxious to turn the conversation from himself. “How come you’re not on the turnpike?”

  “Overweight,” the driver said cheerfully. For a moment Miracle thought he meant himself. “Too many cops on the turnpike. Besides, I thought I might as well try out a new road. I ain’t never been this way, you couldn’t take a truck this size this way until they opened up that new bridge just south of here.”

  “I know.”

  “I reckoned you might. Well, they’ll be barreling through now. Every overweight truck in Dixie’ll find out about this road. Them turnpike cops are mean.” The driver slurped some coffee. “Maybe you can tell me what’s going on down there. I drove across that bridge and it looked like the flames of hell, just to the north, all this smoke and whatnot. Looked like they blowed the place up.”

  “They did.”

  “Blow it up, eh? That must have been one hell of a sight.”

  It was, Miracle thought, it surely was, but you won’t get it out of me. He was getting better at this game. He kept his mouth shut.

  They entered Blue Gap, where the highway twisted and turned back on itself before shaking free of the hills and striking north in a straight line for Louisville. They rounded the last hairpin curve. The road cut a swath into a limestone cliff, then hugged a creek down through the hollow and out into the flatlands. Miracle craned his neck for a look at the knobs disappearing to his right. The first hint of dawn outlined the hills in darkest blue, darker than the Virgin’s cloak, the color of Rosamund’s eyes. Miracle pushed the thought from his mind.

  “So I guess you’re old enough to run away,” the driver said.

  “I’m not running away.”

  “And I’m a Christian man that goes to church on Sundays and keeps his eyes on the sidewalk when the pretty girls pass. That’s OK. You ain’t getting no shit from me. When I think what I left home. Where’re you heading?”

  “Wherever this truck takes me,” Miracle said. “And then some.”

  “Well, I’m going to Chicago, and then I’m turning right around and heading back to Alabama. You let me know where you want off. Hell, I could even bring you right back, you change your mind.”

  “I won’t change my mind.”

  “I believe you. You don’t look like the mind-changing type. Not with a jaw like that. My mamma told me once, ‘A square jaw is a square deal.’ She married a man with no more chin than a fox.” He pumped down the window to spit his cigarette butt into the wind. “Where’d you get a jaw like that anyhow?”

  “Chicago,” Miracle said abruptly.

  “My ass. If you was born in Chicago, I was born on the moon. I can’t say what family that jaw comes from, but that’s family, sure as my shitty eyes. People around town see these thick glasses, they say, ‘Eyes that bad, you must be a Essex,’ and they’re right. It’s in the blood, and there ain’t nothing you can do about it. Running away from that kind of thing’s like running away from your shadow. I know. I tried.”

  They rolled on. The sky lightened. “Chicago,” Miracle said. He liked the way it rolled off his tongue. It had a north sound to it, tall buildings and millions of people and baseball in July.

  “It’ll be cold as a dead snipe’s asshole, April in Chicago,” the driver said.

  “I’ll get along.” Miracle turned to the window, to let the conversation drop.

  In the sky, a band of rose widened above the distant hills. Traffic thickened. The truck entered a cloverleaf, the driver engineering the tight curve with much cursing and grinding of gears.

  Then they were on the turnpike, heading north. Past downtown Louisville, a grouping of squat square buildings with a single framework of steel and blue glass rising at one end.

  Chicago will be bigger than this, Miracle thought, bigger than imagination, stores and buildings and millions of people, not one of whom had heard the Miracle name or bought liquor at the Miracle Inn.

  Then they were on the bridge across the Ohio River. Miracle looked down, miles it seemed, to the tugboats pushing flat barges, slicing the olive glass surface of the river. From his perch high above he looked back to the south, past the smokestacks and through the city’s yellow smog, to the faintest line of hills farthest seen, where the sun poked between two rounded knobs. Through the haze, he saw the twin hills of the colored bar, carved in golden oak, with the vines and clusters of grapes to either side, and the sun peeking from rounded hills in the center. Leaning his head against the cool window, he closed his eyes and lost himself in his dreams.

  Martha slept poorly that night. Bernie and Talbott and the blond soldier from Georgia and the fancy dancer in the mountain café all wandered through her dreams, sometimes changing faces in a way just the shy side of a nightmare.

  At dawn she gave up the fight. She made her bed and straightened the room. The wood mosaics stared down from the wall, Mary Mother of Sorrows and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Martha felt she had her own share of sorrows—lost loves, lost husband, lost family and friends—though she was lagging far behind the Virgin in getting publicity for them. When first she had laid eyes on the mosaics, she wondered if she would ever be able to accept her troubles with that patient saintliness. She knew now that she would not.

  She did not check Miracle’s bedroom. Instead she walked to the Inn, to see how it had survived and to postpone for a few minutes the certainty that Miracle was gone for good.

  The parking lot was covered with ash. The windows were gray. To the south thin wisps of smoke rose from the charred remains of the Boatyard Bridge.

  She circled the roadblocks and walked past the road’s end to the river bank. A jumble of twisted, half-melted girders half dammed the river, whose floating trash and brush wedged itself against the rubble. Where once there had been creosoted planking there stood only the stone pilings, marching like blackened tombstones from one bank to the next. Cracked and crumbling, they were strong enough still to hold the whole mess in place. “The first heavy rain and we really will have a mess,” Martha muttered. “And where will the Army be then?”

  She watched t
he river and the ruins: this place that had changed, once a bridge from one life to another, now a reminder of her wantings and weaknesses. She did not stay long.

  Back at the Inn she glanced into the storeroom, where a fifth of bourbon had been jarred from its shelf, filling the air with the brown smell of spilled whiskey. She mopped up the glass and bourbon and opened the back door to let in air.

  The front door opened. She cocked her head. Her heart beat a little faster; her face flushed. Only a stranger would come to the Inn when it was so clearly closed. Someone in town for the dedication, someone from away, from over the hills—maybe the Georgia blond, taking her up on her invitation? With spring in her step she bounded through the storeroom bins and boxes, toward the open door.

  It was Talbott Marquand. He stood before the colored bar. He opened his mouth and closed it, once, then started again. “Where’s Miracle?”

  “He’s gone,” she said simply. “For good, as far as I can tell. For his good, as far as I can tell.”

  Talbott ducked his head. “I’m sorry. I thought he would be here. He didn’t say anything to me about leaving.”

  “When would he have said anything to you?”

  “We talked, once. Not long ago. About you. About Rosamund.”

  “How nice that you found the time. You’ve been so busy lately.”

  “I’m getting a divorce. It takes time.”

  “Not too much time to get engaged to Rosamund Uptegrove.” He flinched. Her lips tightened in a satisfied line. He did not raise his head or move from the shaft of sunlight piercing the plate glass window. In the yellow light his hair shone soft and fine as corn silk.

  “So he just left,” Talbott said.

  “He just left. Like others I could name, but with the courtesy to let me know.”

  Talbott’s thick stubby hands wandered around the brim of his hat. Martha had never seen him this nervous. Watching the workings of his fingers, she remembered Bernie and Miracle, now gone; and the woman who many years before had turned her back, for good reasons, on another man. She remembered her words to Miracle, the night before.