Something Rich and Strange

by Ron Rash

  Even so the diver did not hurry to put on his wet suit and air tanks. He smoked a cigarette and between puffs talked to the sheriff about the high school’s baseball team. They had worked together before and knew death punched no time clock.

  When the diver was ready, a length of nylon rope was clasped tight under his arms. The older, stronger brother held the other end. The diver waded into the river, the rope trailing behind him like a leash. He dipped his mask in the water, put it on, and leaned forward. The three men onshore watched as the black fins propelled the diver into the hydraulic’s ceaseless blizzard of whitewater. The men on the bank sat on rocks and waited. With his free hand, the older brother pointed upstream to a bend where he’d caught a five-pound trout last fall. The sheriff asked what he’d used for bait but didn’t hear the answer because the mask bobbed up in the headwater’s foam.

  The brother tightened the slack and pulled but nothing gave until the others grabbed hold as well. They pulled the diver into the shallows and helped him onto shore. Between watery coughs he told them he’d found her in the undercut behind the hydraulic. She had been upright, her head and back and legs pressed against a rock slab. Only her hair moved, its long strands streaming upward. As the diver had drifted closer, he saw that her eyes were open. Their faces were inches apart when he slipped an arm around her waist. Then the hydraulic ripped free the mask and mouthpiece, grabbed the dive light, spiraling it toward the darkness.

  The diver told the men kneeling beside him that the girl’s blue eyes had life in them. He could feel her heart beating against his chest and hear her whispering. Before or after your mask was torn off, the sheriff asked. The diver did not know, but swore that he’d never enter the river again.

  The younger brother scoffed, while the older spoke of narcosis though the pool was no more than twenty feet deep. But the sheriff did not dismiss what the diver said. He too had seen strange and inexplicable things involving the dead but had never mentioned them to others and did not choose to now. We’ll find another way, he said, but that river has to lower some before I allow anyone else in there.

  The diver had trouble sleeping afterward. Every night when he closed his eyes, he saw the girl’s wide blue eyes, the flowing golden hair. His wife slept beside him, her body curled into his chest. They had no children and now he was glad for that. He had seen a picture of the parents in the local paper. They had been on the shore, within thirty feet of the undercut that held their daughter, the expressions on their faces beyond grief.

  On the third night, the diver fell into a deeper sleep and the girl came with him. They were in the undercut again but now the river was tepid and he could breathe. As he embraced her, she whispered that this world was better than the one above and she should never have been afraid.

  He emerged in his wife’s embrace. It’s just a bad dream, she kept saying until he quit gasping. His wife closed her eyes and was quickly asleep, but he could not so went into the kitchen and graded lab tests until dawn.

  The girl remained in the river. Volunteers cast grappling hooks from the banks and worked them like lures through the pool or stood in shallows or on rocks and jabbed with long metal poles. Some of the old-timers suggested dynamite but the girl’s parents would not hear of it. The sheriff said what they needed was a week without rain.

  The diver slept little the next few nights. In class he placed the students in small groups and had them discuss assigned chapters among themselves. He knew they talked about the prom instead of pupae and chrysalides, but he didn’t care. On the third afternoon, he skipped the teacher’s meeting and sat alone in his classroom. The school, emptied of students, was quiet, the only sound the gurgle of the aquarium. He would never speak to anyone, not even his wife, about what happened in the classroom’s stillness, but that evening he told the sheriff he’d dive for the girl again.

  Days passed. Rain came often, long rains that made every fold of ridge land a tributary and merged earth and water into a deep orange-yellow rush. Banks disappeared as the river reached out and dragged them under. But that was only surface. In the undercut all remained quiet and still, the girl’s transformation unrushed, gentle. Crayfish and minnows unknitted flesh from bone, attentive to loosed threads.

  Then the rains stopped and the river ran clear again. Boulders vanished for weeks reappeared. Sandbars and stick jams regathered in new configurations. The water warmed and caddis flies broke through the river’s skin to make their brief flights before falling back into their element.

  The sheriff called the diver and told him the river was low enough to try again. The next day they walked the half mile down the path to the falls. There were five of them this time, the sheriff, his deputy, the two brothers, and the diver.

  The sheriff insisted on two ropes, making sure they stayed taut. The water was clearer than last time and offered less resistance. The diver entered the abeyance as though parting a curtain, the river suddenly muted.

  She was less of what she had been, the blue rubbed from her eyes, flesh freed from the chandelier of bone. He touched what once had been a hand. The river whispered to him that it would not be long now.

  When he returned to shore, he told them her body was gone, not even a scrap of clothing or bone. He told them the last hard rain must have swept her downstream. The younger brother said the diver should go back and search the left and right sides of the falls. He argued the body could still be there. The deputy suggested they lower an underwater camera into the pool.

  The sheriff shook his head and said to let her be. The men walked up the trail, back toward their vehicles, their lives. The midday sun leaned close and dazzling. Dogwoods bloomed small white stars. The diver knew in the coming days the petals would find their way into the river, drifting onto sandbars and gilding the backs of pools, and the diver knew some would drift through the rapids and over the falls into the hydraulic. They would furl amid the last bones and like the last bones they would finally slip free.

  The DOWRY

  After Mrs. Newell took away his plate and coffee cup, Pastor Boone lingered at the table and watched the thick flakes fall. The garden angel’s wings were submerged, the redbud’s dark branches damasked white. Be grateful it’s not stinging sleet, Parson Boone told himself as Mrs. Newell returned to the rectory’s dining room.

  “You’ll catch the ague if you go out in such weather,” the housekeeper said, and nodded at his bible. “Instead of hearing yourself read the Good Book, you’ll be hearing it read over your coffin.”

  “Hear it, Mrs. Newell?” Pastor Boone smiled. “Do you dispute church doctrine that the dead remain so until Christ’s return?”

  “Pshaw,” the housekeeper said. “You know my meaning.”

  Parson Boone nodded.

  “Yes, we could wish for a better day, but I promised I would come.”

  “Another week won’t matter,” the housekeeper said. “Youthful folk have all the time in the world.”

  “It’s been eight months, Mrs. Newell,” he reminded her, “and, alas, they are not so youthful, especially Ethan. Two years of war took much of his youth from him, perhaps all.”

  “I still say they can wait another week,” the housekeeper said. “Maybe by then the colonel will die of spite and cap a snuffer on all this fuss.”

  “I worry more that in a week Ethan will be the one harmed,” Pastor Boone replied, “and by his own volition.”

  The housekeeper let out an exasperated sigh.

  “Let me fetch Mr. Newell to hitch the horse and drive you out there.”

  “No, it’s Sunday,” Pastor Boone said. “If he’ll ready the buggy, that’s enough. The solitude will allow me to reflect on next week’s sermon.”

  The snow showed no signs of letting up as he released the brake handle, but the buggy’s canvas roof kept him dry, and the overcoat’s thick wool provided enough warmth. The wheels shushed through the town’s trodden snow. There were no other sounds, the storefronts shuttered and yards and porches empty. The o
nly signs of habitation were windows lambent with hearth light. He passed Noah Andrews’s house. The physician would scold him for being out in such inhospitable weather, but Noah, also in his seventies, would do the same if summoned. Above, a low sky dulled to the color of lead. An appropriateness in that, Pastor Boone thought.

  When the war had begun five years ago, he had watched as families who’d lived as good neighbors, many kin somewhere in their lineage, became implacable enemies. Fistfights occurred and men carried rifles to church services, though at least, unlike in other parts of the county, no killing had occurred within the community. Instead, local men died at Cold Harbor and Stones River and Shiloh, which in Hebrew, he’d told Noah Andrews, meant “place of peace.” The majority of the church’s congregants sided with the Union, those men riding west to join Lincoln’s army in Tennessee, but some, including the Davidsons, joined the Secessionists. Pastor Boone’s sympathies were with the Union as well, though no one other than Noah Andrews knew so. To hold together what frayed benevolence remained in the church, a pastor need appear neutral, he’d told himself. Yet there were times he suspected his silence had been mere cowardice.

  Now Ethan Burke, who fought for the Union, wanted to marry Colonel Davidson’s daughter, Helen. The couple had come to him before last week’s service, once again pleading for his help. They had known each other all their lives, been baptized in the French Broad by Pastor Boone on the same spring Sunday. When Ethan and Helen were twelve, they’d asked if he’d marry them when they came of age. The adults had been amused. Since the war’s end last spring, Pastor Boone had watched them talking together before and after church, seen their quick touches. But when Ethan called on Helen at the Davidsons’ farm, the Colonel met him at the door, a Colt pistol in his remaining hand. You’ll not step on this porch again and live, he’d vowed. Ethan and Helen had taken Colonel Davidson at his word. Every Sunday afternoon for eight months Ethan, whose family owned only a swaybacked mule, walked three miles to the Davidson farm and did the chores most vexing for a one-handed man. While Helen watched from the porch, Ethan replaced the barn’s warped boards and rotting shingles, cleaned out the well, and stacked hay bales in the loft. Afterward, he stood on the steps and talked to Helen until darkness began settling over the valley. Then he’d walk back to the farmhouse where his widowed mother and younger siblings awaited him.

  The congregants who’d fought Union seemed ready to leave the war behind them, even Reece Triplett, who’d lost two brothers at Cold Harbor, but not Colonel Davidson, nor his nephew and cousin, who’d served under the Colonel in the North Carolina Fifty-Fifth. Easier for the victors than the vanquished to forgive, Pastor Boone knew. Colonel Davidson sat stone-faced through the sermons, and unlike Ethan and the other veterans, including his own kinsmen, the colonel wore his butternut field coat to every service. When Pastor Boone suggested that it was time to put the uniform away, Colonel Davidson nodded at the empty sleeve. Some things don’t let you forget, Pastor, he had replied brusquely. Give me back a hand and I’ll be ready to forgive, as your bible says.

  Ethan had been there that Sunday, and knew, just as Pastor Boone knew, that the man was serious. Even before the war, Colonel Davidson had been a hard man, quick to take offense at the least slight. Once a peddler quipped that Davidson’s stallion looked better suited for plowing and it took the sheriff and two other man to keep him from thrashing the fellow. A hard man made harder by four years of watching men die all around him, and, of course, the hand cleaved by grapeshot. But others had suffered too. Pastor Boone had seen it in the faces of old and young alike. He had witnessed families grieving, sometimes brought news of the death himself. Those who didn’t have men in the war endured their share of fear and deprivation as well. Hardships he himself had been spared. Even in the war’s brutal last winter, he had never lacked firewood and food, and, childless, no son to fear for.

  The horse’s nostrils exhaled white plumes, its hooves gaining cautious purchase on the slopes. A breeze came up and the snow slanted. Cold slipped under the pastor’s collar, between buttons. Faint boot prints appeared in the snow. As the prints deepened, Pastor Boone made out where hobnails secured a heel, newspaper replaced worn-out leather. The youth had endured this trek while Davidson sat inside his warm farmhouse. Pastor Boone reconsidered next Sunday’s sermon. Instead of a chapter from Acts on mercy, he pondered the opening verse in Obadiah, The pride of thine own heart hath deceived thee.

  The boot prints continued to deepen, and the horse followed them toward a smudge of chimney smoke. As the buggy crossed a creek, ice crackled beneath the wheels. An elopement to Texas would have been what many other couples would do, but Ethan, whose father had died of smallpox in the war’s final year, would not countenance being so far from his mother and siblings. The land bottomed out and the woods fell away. Parson Boone passed corn and hay fields drowsing under the snow.

  Ethan was leaving the woodshed with an armload of kindling. He came to the porch edge, set the kindling beside three thick hearth logs, and returned to the shed. Helen stood on the porch, bundled in a woolen cloak and scarf. When she saw the buggy, Helen called out toward the shed. Ethan emerged, an axe gripped in his right hand. As the buggy halted in the yard, Colonel Davidson’s stern visage appeared at the window, withdrew. Ethan leaned the axe against the shed and tethered the horse to a fence post. He helped Pastor Boone down from the seat, then fetched water for the horse as Pastor Boone went up on the porch. Helen took his free hand with one equally cold.

  “We didn’t know if you would come,” she said, “what with the weather so bad.”

  The door opened and Mrs. Davidson appeared with a cup of coffee.

  “Welcome, Pastor,” Mrs. Davidson said, and turned to Helen. “Give this to Ethan, Daughter.”

  Helen took the cup and handed it to Ethan, who waited on the steps.

  “Come in, Pastor Boone,” Mrs. Davidson said, “and you, Daughter, you should come in as well, at least a few minutes.”

  “Unless Ethan comes, I’m staying on the porch,” Helen replied, “but we will hear what is said.”

  As Pastor Boone stepped inside, Helen’s firm hand on the jamb ensured the door remained ajar. Mrs. Davidson took his overcoat and disappeared into a back room. Dim as the afternoon was outside, the parlor was gloamier. What light the fireplace offered slowly unshrouded the room—a painting of a hunter and his dog, a burgundy rug, a settee and bookshelf, last, in the far corner, a Windsor armchair occupied by the Colonel. The patriarch gave the slightest acknowledgment and remained seated. Brown yet lingered in the gray swept-back hair. Though Davidson was a decade younger, Pastor Boone never felt older in his presence.

  Mrs. Davidson returned from the back room with a cup of coffee.

  “Here, Pastor.”

  Pastor Boone took it gratefully because the cold sliced through the half-open door, tamped what heat the fire offered. He raised the cup to his mouth, blew slowly so the moist warmth glazed his cheeks and brow. He sipped and nodded approvingly.

  “It’s ever a blessing to drink real coffee again,” Mrs. Davidson said. “We were long enough without it.”

  The Colonel shifted in his chair, his gaze locking on Pastor Boone’s bible.

  “Am I to assume your visit is in an official capacity?”

  “I come at the request of your daughter and Ethan,” Pastor Boone replied, “but I also come as a friend to everyone here, including you.”

  “That door needs to be shut,” Colonel Davidson told his wife.

  “Don’t do it, Mother,” Helen said from the porch. “We’ll hear what is said.”

  Pastor Boone allowed himself a slight smile. He was tempted to speak of Helen being much her father’s child, decided it prudent not to. Mrs. Davidson stared at the floor.

  “Very well,” Colonel Davidson said. “The chill can hasten us past civilities. Have your say, Pastor.”

  “It is time for all of us to heal, Leland,” Pastor Boone said.

  “Heal,�
� Colonel Davidson answered, and lifted his left arm. “As your friend Doctor Andrews can inform you, there are things that cannot be healed.”

  “Not by man perhaps,” Pastor Boone said, raising the bible, “but by God, by his grace. Colossians says Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

  “So you have come to bandy verses,” the Colonel said, tugging back the sleeve so firelight reddened the stubbed wrist. “Life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, thus hand for a hand.”

  “Luke says love your enemies, do good to them.”

  “Leviticus says to chase our enemies,” Colonel Davidson countered, “and they shall fall before you by the sword.”

  “You quote overly from the Old Testament,” Pastor Boone said. “Therein lies more retribution than forgiveness.”

  “Yet they are cleaved together as one book,” Colonel Davidson answered. “Thus we choose which verses to live by.”

  “Ethan has suffered as well,” Pastor Boone said. “You have lost a hand, he has lost his youth. What you saw on the battlefield, he saw. What anger, what hatred you felt toward the enemy, he felt also.”

  “I accept his hatred now no less than then.”

  “But he doesn’t hate you,” Pastor Boone replied. “Moreover, he loves that which is part of you, and Helen loves him. You have seen his devotion to your daughter, to your whole family. He has put his uniform away. Ethan will burn it to appease you, he has told me so, and promised never to speak of the war in your presence. What more can you ask?”

  The Colonel nodded at the missing hand.

  “I’ve answered that,” he said, “nothing more or less.”