Deep River Burning

by Donelle Dreese

  She went home and took Shelly for a long walk and thought about Father Allen. She thought about his dream, how it sounded good to her. She put on her bathing suit covered by a pair of knee-length sweatpants and a t-shirt and walked to the beach and looked out over the ocean. She was finally able to allow her tears to loosen from their nests in the ducts of her eyes and escape. Father Allen would be in her life, at least for that day, at least for that moment.

  She removed her t-shirt and pants and walked into the warm and foaming water. She reclined back into the water and let the waves, like a stranger’s soft hands, carry her wherever they wanted to take her. The sea is always moving, always agitated, even when it seems calm, always rocking here and there, always moving things around, always adjusting and shifting. It was good to get used to it. It was good to let go.

  The sea is very different from the lakes and ponds she remembered seeing in Pennsylvania. The water was often motionless and the surface was an untouched, undisturbed, glossy sheen of balanced existence. She turned around and looked out at the horizon and dove toward it, curving her body so that she would sweep the bottom of the ocean and then rise again to the surface. She did this several times while keeping her eyes open so she could see the sand rocking with the water and particles floating in front of her.

  In a split second, she felt her body being violently whipped and twisted through the water. She had no control over her body. She didn’t know if she was being thrown farther out to sea or being thrown toward the shore. She needed air. She kept twisting and spinning so she kept her eyes closed. She took a breath, but it was all seawater. She saw the faces of her mother and father smiling at her from the end of a long driveway as they watched her ride her bike for the first time down an empty rural road. Father Allen’s face passed through her mind. And another face appeared to her that was familiar but different from what she remembered. It was Josh, but he looked older, and he was looking at her while leaning on the broad trunk of a maple tree. He started to walk toward her, and she saw his feet brush through uncut grass dotted with tiny yellow flowers. His complexion was warm as he approached her and fixed his gaze directly into her eyes as if that would tell her everything she needed to know. He was just getting ready to speak when suddenly, his face disappeared.

  As quickly as the rip current swept her away, it dumped her back near the beach a good distance down from where she had started swimming. She coughed and vomited the water from her lungs and stomach. She was dizzy from being caught in the whirling undercurrent so the world around her spun in circles when she tried to open her eyes.

  She kept her eyes closed and sat in the surf that was pushing her around and felt the sand moving over her legs as her body began to burrow into the sea floor. She had been caught in a narrow, high velocity belt of churning water. The current could have thrown her out to sea and left her there, taking her for its own, but she must have gotten swept up in another wave that pushed her back to shore. The sea didn’t want her, not today.

  But then there was Josh. In her mind, he was still looking at her as if something had been left undone. He was getting ready to say something to her, and she didn’t get to hear it. An old couple on the beach called out to her to see if she needed help, but she told them that she was all right. She stood up as the dizziness began to fade and walked back up the beach where her clothes were blowing a little in the wind and covered with sand. As she walked, she kept replaying it all over and over again in her mind as if the scene with Josh would continue and he would speak and she would get to hear what he wanted to say, but it always stopped right when he began to move his lips.

  She went home and took the letters from her desk drawer and read them again. They weren’t letters really, they were notes. He wasn’t the type to reveal his thoughts in a long letter. When they were younger and he wanted to talk to her, it always had to be in person, never on the phone, and he only talked when the time was right and the place was right. She admired this restraint in him.

  She remembered his hand that once held her still against the tremors under her skin that shook after hearing the terrible news of her father and mother. Her eyes burned and drained turbulently back into her ears, dampening her hair. The rapid flashes of quiet lightning that night kept her from screaming and hearing her own voice echo back to her as the boat, with its pattern of wet leaves on the floor, carried them across the Susquehanna. She closed her eyes and imagined the moon shining through lace curtains. She wanted to remember her father and mother, and she wanted to remember how Josh helped her.

  For the next several days after her encounter with the rip current, she had trouble eating and sleeping. Her body knew. The body often knows first. When falling in love or out of love, losing ground or transforming, the body knows first. She became aware of this other part of her that was smarter than her rational mind, an intuitive intelligence that if left unacknowledged, would aggravate the mind and body with a host of afflictions until it was answered. The energy inside of her had been building, preparing for the migration, and when it comes time to go, she would fly. Soon, she would go north. At some point, geese always return.

  In Adena, Josh always knew when there was going to be a full moon and he would tell everyone about it, but no one seemed to care as much as he did. If the night was clear, or even partly clear, and the moon could be seen sitting in the sky like the big paw of a polar bear, Josh was outside walking or sitting or sleeping. It didn’t matter as long as he was outside.

  But she knew what had to happen over the next several weeks. She needed to take this time to remember so that when she returned to Adena, the memories wouldn’t overwhelm and choke her or make her run. She needed to remember the fire and to remember her parents most of all, to remember Helena and to remember the river. She thought about Aunt Rosemary who she wanted to visit in Florida, and she thought about Mr. Pilner and wondered if he was still alive. He knew better than anyone how to survive.

  She felt a little confidence finally start to come to her. She had left Adena not feeling at all like a human being but rather like a fragmented bag of broken nerves. She had grown and come a long way since the day Father Allen woke her up on the beach and walked her to the nature sanctuary when she was still covered with sleep and sand.

  If it wasn’t for Josh, she could have stayed away from Adena for the rest of her life, but he was her friend, and she had wondered about him for years. She had wondered about Helena also, and why the postcard she sent with her new address had been returned. She had made the decision to let go of the pain from the past because it served no useful purpose for her, but Josh and Helena were a part of her. There were times when she thought she heard their laughter coming from the beach, but when she looked out over the sweep of sand in both directions, she only saw surf and seagulls.

  On her next work shift at the crab shack, she told her boss that she needed several days off from work to go to Pennsylvania. Then she went to the sanctuary to see Jimmie to let him know that she would be out of town for several days, that she would be visiting Adena, and to ask him if he would watch over Alexi and Shelly while she was gone. “Of course I’ll watch the kids while you are gone. Will you bring me back a bag of coal from Adena?” he said while laughing at himself. She grinned but didn’t say anything.

  “Really? You are going back to PA?” he asked as if he didn’t believe her the first time.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I’m really surprised.”

  “So am I, a little.”

  “What made you decide to go back?”

  “An old friend.”

  “Well, it must have been a good friend to persuade you to go back to the land of gas and sinkholes.”

  “You make it sound so alluring, but yes, he was a very good friend.”

  “Oh, I see,” he smiled.

  Jimmie wanted to know a little more about Pennsylvania’
s coal town, but Denver didn’t have much to tell him. She hadn’t followed the news about Adena so she had no idea what condition the town was in, if anyone still lived there, and if the fire was still burning.

  “I’ll fill you in when I get back,” she said.

  “Yes, please do. Part of me is glad to see a coal mining town die. Coal is dirty and coal companies are only interested in profit. They don’t care about the people who crawl into the dark holes every day and breathe in coal dust.” Denver got the sense that Jimmie was about ready to launch into one of his environmental expositions. It never bothered her because she was always interested in what he had to say.

  “Every year, a billion tons of coal is burned to serve our fuel consumption while at the same time rates of lung cancer, heart attacks, and asthma are increasing, especially in people who live anywhere near a coal-fired power plant. It’s a carbon intensive fossil fuel, so think about the CO2 emissions that are floating into the atmosphere around the world.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Denver.

  “And then you have the mercury issue. I think that is going to be one of the environmental challenges of the future, dealing with the mercury that is produced by these power plants and how the mercury is polluting the streams and causing all kinds of neurological health problems. Do you eat fish?”

  “Rarely,” Denver replied.

  Jimmie continued with his rant about coal mining by talking about mountaintop removal and how it has devastated landscapes in Kentucky, and how it clear-cuts native forests and dumps waste and debris into valley and streams, which in turn become polluted with toxic substances and infect the people living in the rural areas. “It’s the poor people who always end up paying the most.”

  While talking to Jimmie, she felt a fresh rush of anger race through her blood, not the destructive kind but the kind that would keep her from sitting on a sofa for too long, the kind that would keep her from worrying about her own problems, the kind of calculating anger that would give her the courage to take a stand and take action, like she did back in Adena. After their discussion, Jimmie told her that Father Allen would be released from the hospital in a few days. He had visited the hospital that morning and got the good news. They sat down together and planned a welcome home party for him. It was time to celebrate.

  Chapter 23

  Moon Phases

  The waxing crescent is a gentle slither, sheer moon slice, cradle of the stars. The sun’s light barely reflected on the moon’s face, prominent shortly after sunset. Denver watched it grow and thought of all the things that understand the pull of the moon. Alexi always looked for it, especially when it was full. She would sit on the windowsill and cast her eyes to the sky and then dart her eyes around a few tree branches and leaves until she found it.

  On the night of the full moon, she and Shelly wouldn’t sleep. Alexi would always start at Denver’s feet and walk the entire length up her body until she found Denver’s nose buried under a hood formed from the blanket, a purring wake-up call that came much too early. Jimmie once told Denver that emergency hospital visits for pets spiked dramatically during the full moon but that there was no apparent explanation for it, and more people went to emergency rooms for animal bites during the full moon. The waxing crescent was known for its sideways smile and for its bottom point where a child might hang a list of dreams. It was hope that the cycle was starting again. It was the time to take initiative, a call to action. Although there was less howling at night during the crescent moon, the wild pull of this spherical satellite was starting to stir.

  The first quarter moon brought the party for Father Allen. He was working in his office at the church in the early evening while preparations were underway in a nearby hotel conference room that was reserved for the occasion. Denver and Twyla decorated the large room with colorful ribbons and flowers while Jimmie appointed himself the host so he could greet everyone as they came in the door.

  As guests slowly filtered into the room, the large banquet table filled up with raw salads, pasta salads, egg salad sandwiches, two large dishes of vegetable lasagna, a mushroom casserole, chocolate cake, pecan pie, corn bread, potato chips, brownies, and large beverage containers that dispensed sweet tea, water, and lemonade. The party was scheduled to begin in half an hour, so Denver walked the several blocks over to the church in order to escort Father Allen to his party. He insisted on walking even though he was still tired from his illness.

  Denver entered the church through the front doors and stood in the foyer for a moment. Father Allen’s office was down the stairs to the left, but she decided to open the large double doors and walk into the church first. Small candles and an evening sun illuminated the stained glass windows and lighted the room as Denver gazed at its tall ceiling and rows and rows of pews. She had only been to the church a few times but was always surprised at how big it seemed on the inside.

  She walked forward up the aisle, sat down in one of the pews, picked up a hymnal and flipped through its pages, running her fingers down a page of the book and along its spine. She sat for a few minutes and noticed the silence in the room. She wondered if this was the reason why some people go to church, to listen . . . to listen to what someone else has to say about life and existence. To listen to the silence. To listen to one’s own internal voice, which some people believe is the voice of God or the voice of a spirit. If she sat there for a while and listened, what would she hear? But she couldn’t stay. It was time to get Father Allen. She walked down the stairs and found him writing in a notebook when she arrived.

  “Are you ready to go mingle with your fans?” she asked as she tapped on his office door.

  “I’m ready,” he said smiling.

  As they walked out the door, Father Allen inhaled deeply and tilted his head up toward the setting sun. Denver noticed that he was walking more slowly than what she was used to but that he looked well.

  “I hear you are returning to Pennsylvania for a visit,” Father Allen said looking inquisitively at her.

  “Yes. Are you surprised?”

  “No, I’m not surprised. You are ready.”

  “I’m looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time,” she said as two seagulls flew in front of them.

  “Be open to whatever you find there and try not to personally identify with it. You have my phone number. If you need anything, give me a call.”

  When they arrived at the party, Father Allen walked into the room and everyone cheered, some people from his parish cried, others gave him a hug, and even Iris had traveled back to North Carolina for his party. Music began to play and everyone helped themselves to the food.

  Later that evening, after dark, when Denver, Iris, Jimmie, and Twyla all walked Father Allen home, Denver noticed the first quarter moon sitting quietly in the sky, the half illuminated lunar disk radiating the sun and telling time. It was a sign that progress was being made. That night, she replayed the faces and sounds of the party in her dreams and felt happy that she could put Father Allen’s illness behind her.

  When the moon grew fuller to waxing gibbous, she packed her large duffel bag, bought a few snacks for the road, and looked at her map. Jimmie said that “Adena was a town that lived by the sword and died by the sword,” and might someday be removed from maps as if it never existed. A sword can cut a map into pieces. Her stomach gripped and rolled because she knew these days would pass quickly and she would soon be heading north. Waxing gibbous was a time of reflection, for self-analysis, for understanding, to discover one’s motivations. Illumination increased by small degrees every night. When she thought about why she was returning to Adena, she smiled a little because she discovered that she was no longer motivated by fear, but she was still anxious, not knowing what she would find, not knowing if she and Josh would know what to say to each other after all these years.

  She tried to do what she could to take he
r mind off of the trip. She didn’t sleep well at night as the moon grew wider and created a silver world. One sleepless night inspired her to go rummaging through a box that she had declared junk but never took the time to dump into the recycle bin.

  She pulled the box from the dark cob-webbed corner of her bedroom closet and tipped the box over on its side so that all of the contents would spill onto the floor. Alexi woke up and began burying her nose under the papers and chewing on the corners of magazines. The box was partially filled with junk mail that she never threw away, but she also found magazines that Twyla used to pass on if she found an article that she thought would be of interest to Denver. Twyla meant well, but she didn’t understand Denver’s desire to mentally dispossess of all things related to coal, so when she handed Denver articles or magazines devoted to the subject, the publications were promptly filed into this junk box that had only seen the light of day a few times in the last year.

  She flipped through the glossy pages of a few National Geographic magazines and an environmental magazine that was entirely devoted to energy consumption. She glanced through the first few pages and came across the letters section where a short piece called “Keep the Coal” was written by a man named Daniel from Harlan County, Kentucky. Daniel described himself as a fourth generation, small coal mine operator who was heartbroken that his family business, which had been in existence for more than one hundred years, was being threatened by government regulation and explorations into alternative energy.