Deep River Burning

by Donelle Dreese

  Adena was still a news story. It was a place where a fire continued to burn, a place where fear and fascination continued to rage. They walked along the downtown streets and were not particularly surprised at what they saw. There was trash everywhere, as if the town had become a dumping ground. There were spots where weeds were growing up through the cracks in the road and other spots where it was hard to find a single blade of vegetation. A piping braid of steam was rising by the cemetery, and in some places the steam hung stagnant in the air when the breeze was still. Denver knew now that the fog she saw the night before while driving was fire fog.

  They walked by the Veterans Memorial Bell and passed the houses that were still standing but had been abandoned. They came close to one of the iron vents constructed by the State Department of Environmental Protection. “If you touch that pipe, you will probably get a third-degree burn,” Denver said.

  They found twisted and heat-contorted pieces of bottle and curious yellow growths on the ground that resembled some kind of moss. “Are those sulfur crystals?” Josh asked.

  “It looks like it, and smells like it,” Denver replied. As they continued down the street, Denver crossed to the left side of the road and picked up a bright orange piece of paper that blew onto the shoulder of the road. It was a flyer from the year before advertising a bus tour of Adena on Halloween.

  “Do you think they saw any ghosts?” Josh asked with a grin on his face.

  “One person’s pain is another person’s pleasure,” Denver replied.

  They left downtown and kept walking until they arrived at the front door of Denver’s old house. The grass was overgrown and the yard and the front porch was littered with small tree branches as if a thunderstorm had passed through, but no one was home to sweep away the debris. Denver felt a little sick but strong, a little tired but alert, a little sad but resigned. She walked up to the front door and tried to open it. The door was locked.

  They went around to the back of the house to a window that was always left unlocked. It was harder to open than she remembered, but the two of them were able to force open the window and they crawled inside. It was the window to her father’s office. The house was empty, except for dust and the images of people she knew well who lived their lives the best they knew how. Her body was stiff and she felt herself shaking. She stood in the spot where her father used to keep his desk and tenderly lowered herself to the floor until she was laying on her side with her head resting on her right arm. She ran her hand lightly across the floor and found a small paper clip, a tiny memorial that someone once lived there, that someone once worked there, that someone once had papers to bind. She put the paper clip in the front pocket of her jeans next to the piece of bloodstone she still carried with her for courage.

  After a while, she finally pulled herself up from the floor and walked around the rest of the house. She stopped in the middle of the kitchen where the dining table used to rest. The endless series of memories passed through her mind like a string of pearls. The kitchen table was the place where ideas were born, where plans were made, where battles were fought, where love was shared. She left the house with Josh and a paper clip, pulled some raspberries from the bushes in the back yard, checked the mail for the last time, and walked onto the road. “Do you want to go see your old house?” she asked Josh. He shook his head no, but didn’t say anything.

  Before Josh and Denver left Adena, they found a few houses deep in the surrounding hillsides where it looked as if people still lived. The houses were lonely and isolated at the ends of dirt roads or buried up in the trees. They stopped at one house. Weeds had grown up high around the mailbox, but there were cars parked in the long stone driveway and a dog chained in the back yard. When Josh got out of his truck and slammed the door, the chained dog went wild with barking. Promptly, a man wearing a hat pulled down to barely above his eyes, came out of a side door of the house holding a shotgun. He pointed the gun and yelled, “Git away from here!”

  Apologetically, Josh said, “Sir, we just wanted to talk to you a little about Adena.”

  The man replied, “Well, I don’t wanna talk to you so git back to wherever you came from.” The man with his gun still pointed toward Josh took slow methodical steps down the driveway.

  “But sir, we’re from Adena. We used to live here,” Josh replied.

  In a tone beginning to grate with anger and impatience, the man replied, “Then you should know there’s nothing here to talk about.” He fired a shot into the trees behind them as another man, much younger, came out of the house also carrying a shotgun. Josh recognized the younger man as Gabe Winston, the same Gabe who chased him through the forest with a handgun some time ago and threatened him.

  Josh and Denver got into the truck and slowly drove away without saying a word. They went back to the river. Summer was buzzing richly in the trees and shrubs on the riverbank. She took a glance over the expanse of the river into the trees of Desert Ring Island. There was a figure moving about. It must have been Mr. Pilner making his morning rounds. She would have waved to him, but he always had his back to Adena. She imagined that he understood Adena better than anyone. Eventually the land had had enough and found a means to drive everyone away. It would take care of itself with or without human interference. Relationships had been ruined, families had been fractured, and there she was standing on the riverbank of the Susquehanna thinking how compassionate the earth is to teach its lessons without utterly destroying them all.

  “Where are you going now, Josh?”

  “I’d like to go wherever you are going,” he said earnestly.

  “It’s a long drive to North Carolina.”

  “Then I guess we should hit the road.”

  They both checked out of their hotels and met at Buddy’s Place for dinner. They drove all night under the unobstructed light of the waning gibbous moon and arrived at Isabel Beach, North Carolina just in time for Josh to see his first sunrise over the Atlantic. She couldn’t wait to introduce him to Father Allen and Jimmie, to show him everything she had seen. The Susquehanna River empties into the Chesapeake Bay, she remembered, so Helena was out there somewhere, perhaps everywhere.

  Denver felt calm. It was early morning and the horizon line on the Atlantic was blurred by a morning fog that she knew would soon burn away. She watched Josh walk across the beach and into that alluring line where water bubbles in and then pulls away in a most natural and rhythmic fashion. He ran his hand through the foaming surf and smiled, first to himself, and then at Denver. If she ever dealt with fire again, she would remember the water, the way the ignited sun is tempered by the cool spray of a cresting sea. She would remember the sunrise of that morning and how it traced the edges of Josh’s body like a gold cord. She was tired and happy, but she had things to do. She needed to get Josh settled into her apartment. Later, she would visit the beach again and say a prayer to her parents, thanking them for leading her to this place. She saw no great difference between the living and the dead. Everyone follows a path that leads to a boundless and bewildering love.

  Acknowledgments

  For their support and contributions to this book, I owe a warm debt of gratitude to Amie McCracken, Allie Maldonado, and Karen Gowen. I would also like to thank members of my writing community for sharing their passion and insights—Karen George, Nancy Jentsch, Taunja Thomson, and Blaise Weller. I extend my deepest gratitude to my husband Christopher for his unwavering courage, love and support.

  About the Author

  Originally from Pennsylvania, Donelle Dreese is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Northern Kentucky University where she teaches Multicultural and Environmental Literature, American Women Poets, and writing courses. Her creative work has appeared in journals such as Quiddity International, Appalachian Heritage, Roanoke Review, Connotation Press, ISLE, and Conclave: A Journal of Character.

  Her
books include a YA vignette novella, Dragonflies in the Cowburbs (Anaphora Literary Press), A Wild Turn (Finishing Line), Looking for a Sunday Afternoon (Pudding House), and America’s Natural Places, East and Northeast (ABC-CLIO). Her most recent book is a collection of poetry, Sophrosyne, forthcoming from Aldrich Press.

  Donelle holds a Ph.D in Literature and Criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and serves as Assistant Editor for the Journal of Kentucky Studies. You can learn more about Donelle at donelledreese.com, or follow her on Twitter (@donelledreese).