Deep River Burning

by Donelle Dreese

  Other than visitors by boat, there was no civilization on the island. No industry, no docks, no seaside restaurants, no hotels, no public bathrooms, no water pumps, no picnic tables, no sidewalks. She was also keenly aware of the fact that no one could hear her if she screamed. Although the others weren’t a great distance away on the other side of the island, the surf would pick up her voice and carry it out to sea in the wind.

  She undressed completely and felt the wind sweeping down her body with each article of clothing that fell to the sand. Her hair blew around, brushing her face as she turned in circles to feel the air caressing places that hadn’t been touched by the wind in a long time. She ran to the water and dived in. The salty water and strings of seaweed wrapped around her as she allowed the hands of the surf to set her back ashore, as if being a strong parent moving a child out of the way of danger. She waded in the bubbling surf for a while kneeling down to feel the froth and foam wash over her.

  “Denver?” She heard a voice behind her.

  “Oh my God!”

  “No, not God, just a priest,” the voice said.

  “Why aren’t you asleep?”

  “Why aren’t you?” he retorted. Denver ran for her shirt and sat on the sand laughing.

  “Denver, you could have drowned. The rip tides are very dangerous this end of the island,” he said looking concerned, but also amused. He handed her the rest of her clothing and turned around while she finished dressing.

  “I never sleep when I’m camping,” she replied.

  “Why is that?”

  “I think I’m just afraid I’ll miss something,” she said after thinking about it for a moment. “And what about you?”

  “I was sitting near the dune behind us, just thinking.”

  “What about?”

  “Oh, about the change that is always taking place in our lives.”

  “Yes, things have to keep moving, I suppose.”

  “Even the shoreline is moving. In some places, it is eroding. In other places, it is building up. And isn’t it true that our lives are that way? We lose a part of ourselves in one place, but gain something new somewhere else. As we age, our bodies weaken, but our wisdom accumulates and sharpens. There is always a trade off. I guess the key is to make sure that you sit where the sand is building.”

  “Are you happy, Father?” She asked out of the blue.

  He thought for a brief moment and said, “I am. The path that I have chosen for myself is not an easy one, but I know it is the right one. There is great joy in knowing that you are following the path set out for you.”

  “So, how do you know when you are on the right path?”

  “You have to listen very carefully, and be mindful of the voice inside of you. You have to pay close attention. The answer is there, if you are willing to listen for it. But there are many things that happen that you can’t change, things that you just have to accept. I’m thinking about using the topic of acceptance in my next homily.”

  “There are some things you should try to change though, right, the things that can be changed?”

  “Oh, yes. Just try to do it for the right reason.” Father Allen paused and looked up at the sky. “I’m not sure if you know this about me, but I’m a bit of a night owl. In the darkness, there is clarity. When the sense of sight is not being stimulated, your other senses become more active, and one of those senses is intuitive. Darkness also gives you the opportunity to practice your faith, that everything is going to be okay, that you can trust in the cycle of things, and you are safe even though you can barely see just a few feet in front of you.”

  “It is a dark night,” she observed. “But what I like about the sea or a river at night is that you not only have the light from the moon itself, but you also have the light of the moon that is reflected off the surface of the water. It’s like shining a light in a mirror. I don’t know if it really is more light, but it seems like it.”

  “You grew up next to a river. You are a water person, for sure.”

  “What does that mean?” She laughed.

  “The journey of every river is to flow toward the sea. It is born from its spring, then it travels through the landscape picking up and unloading sediment. It connects with other rivers until it drains into the ocean. It is how we learn that we are all part of the collective. We are the collective. So, maybe you are exactly where you need to be.”

  “You’re not a priest. You’re a philosopher,” she replied.

  Father Allen laughed. “I suppose I’m both.” He paused as if to think about it for a moment. “You seem happy here,” he said finally.

  “I am . . . for the first time in a while. I love the birds. And this place. I have found so much here. I think Isabel Beach has saved my life.” She looked at Father Allen who was looking at her curiously.

  “Have I ever told you the story of Isabel?” he asked.

  “No. I don’t believe you have.”

  “Come. Let’s go for a walk.

  “The house that is next to the sanctuary was once a large cottage owned by a family who bore the name Berringer,” Father Allen said as he pointed at the house. “A young woman from Spain by the name of Isabel used to live with the family as an attendant to Mrs. Berringer. As the story is told, Isabel was very petite, but a tireless servant girl, who fell deeply in love with the family’s oldest son, Thomas. The father, Mr. Berringer, was a hard man, and he did not approve of the union. It is rumored that Mr. Berringer was secretly in love with Isabel himself, and therefore, thwarted the union out of jealousy. The father was so insistent that the two of them must stay apart that he released Isabel from her duties, leaving her suddenly without a home. No one knew where she had gone, not even Thomas. So, Thomas, enraged by his father’s actions, left America to sail to Spain to follow after Isabel, thinking she had fled back to her native country. Meanwhile, Isabel, distraught at the thought of being away from Thomas, took refuge in a church just a few miles up the beach and came back a few days later to see him. But he had already gone. Another few days passed when news came to the beach that the vessel that carried Thomas had gone down in a storm and that most on board had perished, but some were still alive. When Isabel heard the news, she came every night to these beaches and waved a lantern over the water in hopes that Thomas had survived and would see her light and know where to swim to shore. When many days had passed, far longer than one could survive at sea after a shipwreck, Isabel walked into the waves and was never seen or heard from again. A few days later, her lantern was found here on this beach wrapped in seaweed.”

  “Have you ever seen her, Father?” Denver asked.

  “Have I ever seen who?”

  “Isabel. On the beach, walking, waving her lantern?”

  “No, but then again I am a priest. The only ghost I believe in is the holy one.”

  “Yes. I suppose that is true,” she replied and smiled.

  “Why do you ask such a question?”

  “Because I have seen her.”

  “What do you mean? Isabel?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I saw her on the beach wearing a long, sheer, light-colored dress waving a lantern out toward the water.”

  “When did you see this?”

  “The first night I came to North Carolina. You found me the next morning sleeping.”

  Denver didn’t know if Father Allen believed her. They both looked at one another very deeply. It was one of those times when he looked more like a man than a priest to her, standing there in front of her with the wind blowing his dark hair in the pale blue and silver light of dusk. He paused and narrowed his eyes like he always did just before he told her an important story or revealed a truth he’d been keeping.

  “Why did you tell me that story?” s
he asked as they stood in the sand and watched the waves crest and fall in upon themselves.

  “Well,” he said, pausing for a moment. “You said that Isabel Beach saved your life. But the sea can also take away life. That’s how this beach got its name. You and Isabel both came to the beach with your own will. Isabel wanted to die. You wanted to live.”

  “I don’t understand what you are trying to say.”

  “It wasn’t Isabel Beach that saved you,” he said. “It was you who saved you.”

  They said goodnight, and Denver walked back to the campsite. She tried to brush the sand from her legs and clothes. She crawled into her tent and closed her eyes feeling the wind fill the tent and then release as if the tent were breathing. She believed Father Allen when he said that it is important to accept that which cannot be changed. We can fight our circumstances all we want, dream them away, deny them, smoke or drink them into oblivion, but we are going to be left with the same clarity at some moment when we least expect it, when the clouds pull away from the stars. And it is a blessing, just like the stars, a space of infinite possibilities. It means giving up a part of ourselves to something larger, something wiser, and something far more compassionate than humanity.

  On Bear Island, by the broad reach of the sea, there was no doubt about what that meant. Josh didn’t like priests. He thought they were all frauds, with an honesty that reached only about as far as their hands would stretch when they passed you the collection bin. He thought their attempts to raise themselves above the seedy side of humanity was merely a front supported by a fancy robe and string of stock phrases of encouragement and religious rhetoric. That was how Josh used to feel about priests. He might not feel that way anymore. Father Allen didn’t hide his humanity. He lived by his philosophies, or at least made every attempt to. She placed her head on a small camping pillow and finally felt tired, gratefully tired, and much to her surprise, she fell asleep.

  When the sand began to brighten and colors came back to the seascape, she heard Jimmie’s voice and a few others preparing coffee and breakfast. She only had three hours of sleep, but she awoke and pulled herself out of the tent feeling stiff and old. Every square inch of her body was covered in salt and sand and her back hurt from sleeping on the lumps. The sand flies were out in full force, and it was clear that the one absolute about beach camping is that sand gets into everything. She remembered something Jimmie told her on the canoe trip over to the island. “There is this interesting phenomenon about camping. People tend to enjoy it the most once it’s over.”

  Morning is a magical time of day. It’s hard not to feel hope when there is the promise of a new beginning hanging on everything. Even the air was a little sweeter. The breeze was lighter and cooler, and she easily forgot the harshness that would come to the beach as the day progressed.

  It was easy to forget about a lot of things when standing next to the sea. The enormity puts it back into perspective, reminds us of what is not important by swallowing it whole. The colors of morning are foggy, muted peach, blue, and pink. The waves are gentle and their white tips somehow look whiter in the morning light. The sun effortlessly, ceremoniously cracks over the horizon, unobstructed and fiery. It doesn’t take long and the day has officially begun with new shells to find and pieces of seaglass curled up in seaweed.

  She had forgotten about so much of her past in this world of water and ships that sometimes she feared the sea, especially when it came in for high tide. She thought that one day it would never turn around, but just keep seeping toward her until it engulfed her. At the thought of it, she remembered her swim the night before. The darkness can hide many things. But here was morning, the metaphor for all firsts—a first kiss, the first rain after drought, the first time to shake the curl of a baby’s hand, the first few strokes of a violin concerto. Here was the reminder that starting over was not only possible, but necessary.

  Chapter 19

  Bernita

  Two years later

  Denver’s dreams were filled with the voices of those she lost, and when she saw other people who reminded her of them in some way—with their hair color, the shape of the nose, a jaw line, or freckles—she would lose herself for a while in memory, the way a bird flies through fog and reappears a few moments later in a ray of sun.

  She had successfully pushed Adena far back into a place in her mind where the windows were closed and the shades drawn. There was no need for it at Isabel Beach and rarely anything that happened on the coast reminded her of coal. Still, North Carolina had its own strain of sorrow. When she first moved to Isabel Beach, Iris had told her that if she decided to stick around that someday she would get to experience a hurricane. It seemed that this was the day she would get that opportunity.

  It was late September, and Hurricane Bernita was a category three storm that was moving toward Wilmington, North Carolina, and gaining strength. Iris and Jimmie boarded the windows of the sanctuary and bought the necessary supplies to stay in town for the storm while many others were leaving the coast for inland towns. Father Allen opened up the church as a storm shelter for people who had nowhere else to go or couldn’t leave for one reason or another. The sturdy, brick church had been through many hurricanes and had always been able to withstand the high winds. The building was set back just far enough so that it was protected by the dunes and was rarely flooded by storm surge. Because the church had often been used as a storm shelter in the past, it had a backup power supply in case there was a power outage.

  As the winds began to stir and the sky took on a gray, blank countenance as far as the eye could see, Iris backed up her truck to the back of the church where Jimmie, Denver, and Father Allen were waiting to unload the bottles of water, food, blankets, and other supplies into the back entrance of the church where there was a large mess hall with a kitchen. They unloaded the goods and then Denver went home to pick up a few belongings. She still lived in the apartment down the street near the church, so it was a short walk, but already the rain was blowing sideways, with a heavy, sustained rhythm.

  It was early evening and the hurricane was expected to make landfall around 1 am. She huddled under a yellow raincoat and ran down the street toward her apartment. The streets were already desolate and most of the cars that were usually parked on the street and in the driveways were gone. She got her backpack out of the bedroom closet and looked around her room, wondering what to take with her. Clothes, a book or two, toiletries, a camera?

  She realized that it was another one of those moments when you are supposed to decide what possessions are most important to you, and stuff them all into a bag and hope for the best, like when she packed her bags before she boarded the bus in Pennsylvania to leave her childhood behind. She found herself tucking away into her backpack some of the same items that she packed back then, a small stack of photographs, Aunt Rosemary’s postcard, books, an engraved pen that her father gave her when she started college, the piece of bloodstone, and a note her mother placed on the top of her dresser on the morning of her seventeenth birthday that read, Happy Birthday, Denver. I love you. Have a great day!

  In the meantime, people began to arrive at the church to ride out the storm. Father Allen’s church was not the only shelter open in Isabel Beach so they weren’t expecting a huge crowd, but many of them would be disappointed vacationers. During the winter months, Isabel Beach was a quiet, sleepy, seaside village, but during September, the town bustled with people looking to escape their gritty, landlocked cities.

  She finally returned to the church, but she waited until the rain began to blow completely horizontal and the dark of night was only a short time away. She didn’t want to go, but at the same time, she didn’t want to be alone.

  When she arrived at the church, Father Allen was circulating through the church comforting people and shaking their hands, reassuring them that everything would be all right while Jimmie was keeping an eye on the
non-stop weather forecast on television. Hurricane Bernita increased in speed and was upgraded to a category four storm, which meant the damage could be devastating and that widespread power outages were expected that could last for weeks. Windborne debris would be deadly, roofs and windows would be destroyed, and many trees would be down blocking the roadways. Power lines could be snapped and live wires could fall into pools of water in flooded areas.

  Denver heard all of this news and went into the bathroom at the church and cried. She was twenty-two years old, and she felt like a child. She hadn’t felt this level of fear since she thought the ground was going to collapse beneath her back in Adena. At least in this situation, maybe people would pull together since there was no one to blame. They wouldn’t hate each other because of the disaster. They would help each other. There would be no one in denial, and the only target for blame would be God.

  It was a long night. She didn’t get much sleep but neither did most of the people who were at the shelter. The sound of the building shaking and debris being whipped onto the roof and sides of the building were enough to unnerve anyone, even Jimmie who thrives on survival, self-reliance, and an adrenaline rush. The howl of the wind kept her awake along with the sneezing and coughing of others in the shelter who didn’t want to be there. Jimmie was different. Denver wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw a look of glee cross over his face when the power went out. Perhaps he thought he would finally get the opportunity to use his skills for surviving dangerous and primitive conditions.