by Fred DeVecca
To hell with it. I jumped in, bells and ribbons and hankies and all. The river swept me along like I was a twig flying in a hurricane, like I might vanish, like I was nothing. I was totally out of control, but it was taking me directly toward the blanched face with the lifeless eyes and the sopping red hair.
It pushed me right into her, bumping her motionless frame with a painless thump, and I grabbed her around the waist. I had no idea which one she was. We were both rammed against the flashboard on the dam, and I held on to that with one hand and the girl with the other. A few feet to our right, Frick was in a similarly helpless position.
The three of us clung there desperately and it took all my strength to not let go of the girl or the flashboard. The power of the river was mightier and more profound than I had ever given it credit for, and I was ready to die, or pass out, but I would never let go.
I did not die. I did not let go.
An orange polypropylene rope appeared and then I let go. I let go of the dam and grabbed the rope. At the same time, a small green boat began to approach, as tossed around by the waters as we were, with two hooded souls aboard. Somehow the rope—powered by several extremely strong people or more likely a winch—began to pull us sideways toward shore, even as the boat approached from the rear. I could see Frick also receiving a rope.
We were pulled onto the shore. I saw yellow-clad firemen, Chief Loomis, some earnest young people, gently handling us, stretchers, a white ambulance. The ambulance had probably already been in position in case it was needed for the movie.
Cold, wet, tired, scared, empty, drained, I was still conscious, but barely. My face was buried in the green grass on the shore but I was thrilled to see its blades in front of me, parting gently as my breath blew upon them, and to feel my heart beat.
I woke some time later in an antiseptic-smelling hospital room with Frick in the bed next to mine.
Who knew how much time had passed? There was no nurse, no doctor. Just a TV set playing MSNBC soundlessly and Frick asleep, or unconscious, or dead. I had no idea which.
I had tubes in my arms. I gathered them up and left the room, and in my flimsy hospital gown, walked into the hallway. I saw the nurse’s station at its end, but no nurse had as yet spotted me. I wandered to the room to my left in which I saw two older men on two beds. One eyed me with curiosity, the other slept.
I walked into the adjoining room to my right, where one redheaded young woman lay quietly and motionlessly in a bed identical to the one I had just risen from.
One. Only one.
The bed next to hers was empty.
Her head was tilted away from me, but I could tell by the color of her hair who it was.
In her unconscious state, she groggily rolled over until I could see her face and be absolutely positive that indeed it was Sarah.
I was relieved but also stunned. Stunned at the empty bed. Stunned by there being only one of them. Stunned that a really, really bad thing had happened, and happened on my watch. I had been hired to protect the most famous girl in the world, and I had failed. She was gone.
I stood there and saw Sarah toss and turn, her red hair winding around her neck, heard her breaths coming in and out, softly, weakly.
A nurse found me, took me by the arm, and said, “Mr. Raven, you’re awake. You have to stay in bed. Come on.”
She tried to lead me back to my room, but I resisted. I had little strength, and my resistance was for naught. As she led me out of the room, I twisted my torso and looked back at the girl on the bed. She looked startlingly peaceful.
But I was not peaceful. I did not take failing lightly.
At this moment the nurse was stronger than I was. She forced me out of the room, even as I tried take in one more minute of the breathing, living Sarah.
But it was just one. One girl.
A tune began playing in the back of my head. I tried to shut it off but I failed. It droned on.
It was a dirge for Our Julie of the Deerfield.
Part Two
where there is darkness, light
where there is sadness, joy
Chapter Seventeen
She Was My Friend
Juliana Velvet Norcross, our Nutting Girl, VelCro, was gone—by all appearances, swept away by the angry river.
Sarah and I, and Frick too, paid only a small price for having tried to save her. We were treated for hypothermia and shock and some not serious abrasions and were out of the hospital in a few days. By then, the town was insane. If we had paparazzi before, now we had become ground zero for a ravenous and gluttonous media orgy that made our little village unrecognizable.
They were everywhere—networks, cable stations, bloggers, radio stations, commentators, analysts, medical experts, river experts. And police of every stripe—local, state, federal, private. With dogs, helicopters, boats, high-tech thermal-imaging equipment, and divers.
They were everywhere, but VelCro was nowhere.
It was universally agreed that, barring a miracle, no one could have survived that fall into the river and subsequent flushing downstream. The river was raging furiously, and beyond the dam, there was nothing but rocks and more fierce and turbulent waters. A tiny body like Julie’s would have no chance.
Still, no body was found. They searched for a mile down to the Gardner Falls dam, where they dredged and found nothing. They went another half-mile to Wilcox Hollow, where they found nothing. They went on and on, where they found nothing.
They gave up.
The spot across from McCusker’s where she went over became a spontaneous shrine. Flowers, poems, photos, stuffed animals, and DVDs of VelCro films appeared. Each evening, for a week, a crowd gathered right there on the sidewalk, spreading out in the parking spaces and into the street, with young people playing guitars and singing songs about dead young girls and anything else sad. The Morris guys joined them instead of attending our usual Tuesday night practice. We led the group in some dead baby songs, and everyone wept.
Then, after a week or so, it was over. The world moved on to its next zeitgeist, to something newer and sexier.
Untitled Nicholas Mooney Project was over, most likely forever. The film crew was gone and the streets of Shelburne Falls were once again empty and quiet and boring.
Things were not over for me, however. What hits you at a time like this is not despair, nor is it sadness. Way beyond sadness, it’s a gnawing feeling that the universe has been thrown off its course. This was wrong. The world was wrong.
There was no denial. Hell, she was gone. There wasn’t even any anger. There was no bargaining and certainly no acceptance. There was numbness and emptiness and that was about it.
Sarah was inconsolable. She was in a constant state of agitation. She obsessively walked the river every day, along its banks, onto its rocks, sometimes wading into it, waist deep. One day she did it all wearing Julie’s colorful peasant skirt.
She continued doing this for two weeks. I had moved back home but I was spending a lot of time at their house.
One day I was having lunch there with Clara when Sarah walked back through the door. She was clutching a six-inch swatch of orange silk that she had found on the banks of the river off of Bardwell Ferry Road in Conway, a good three miles from the spot where Julie had disappeared.
She went into her room and came back with her orange silk blouse from the day of the shoot and held the piece she had found against it. It was identical.
It was the only trace of VelCro anyone had found.“Take it to the police,” I said.
“No,” replied Sarah. “She was my friend, not theirs.”
“It might help them find her,” I said.
“No,” she said. “She was my friend. I’ll find her.”
“I’ll help,” I said.
“I don’t need your help. But you can if you want. I’ll find her.”
She went back into her room and did not come out for a long time.
Chapter Eighteen
Work to Do
She might very well be dead. Dead or alive, Juliana Velvet Norcross would be found.
What had happened to her? Did she jump? If so, why? Did someone push her? If so, who? And why? And how?
Sarah didn’t emerge from her room until the next morning. She was dressed in the orange silk blouse, in fact wearing the entire outfit they’d both had on the morning Julie disappeared: the short, tight purple skirt, black striped leggings, red sneakers, and orange bandana.
I was sipping my coffee. Sarah was making a bowl of oatmeal. Clara was reading the morning paper.
“How are you doing, Sarah?”
“I’m okay. I’m good.”
“Are you?”
“Yeah, Frankie, I am.”
“Sarah, I really think we should take that piece of cloth to the police.”
“I told you, no. I found it. It’s mine.”
“They can run tests on it. There’s all kinds of stuff they can find. They could find DNA on it indicating someone else was involved.”
“Nobody else was involved.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Frankie, I was right there. I was right next to her. Hell, I jumped in to save her. One second she was there, and the next, she was in the river. She jumped.”
“Were you watching her all the time? I mean all the time?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t turn away for a second?”
“No. I was watching her.”
“You weren’t watching the dancing?”
“No.”
“Not even for a few seconds?”
She answered with a more emphatic, “No.” Pausing for a few seconds, she said, “Well, I guess I did watch the dancing for a while. But she did too. We were both watching.”
“Could someone have come up and pushed her?”
“No way. I was right next to her. We were touching.”
“There were a million people around, Sarah. People were passing back and forth. Couldn’t someone have slipped in there quickly and pushed her?”
“No.”
“Well, okay.”
“Frankie, Jenna was right in front of us. Her whole job was to keep people away. And Frack was on the other side of her. No one was going to screw around with Frack right there.”
“Okay. But why would she jump? You knew her better than anyone. Did she ever talk about killing herself or anything like that?”
“No, never. And don’t talk about her in the past tense. She’s still alive.”
My heart broke. I wanted her to be alive. We all wanted her to be alive. But no one I talked to thought it was even remotely possible.
I touched Sarah on her arm.
She pulled away. “Don’t patronize me, Frankie,” she said. “I’m not a baby.”
“I’m sorry. I want her to be alive too.”
“I don’t want her to be alive, Frankie. I know she’s alive.”
She didn’t finish her oatmeal. She walked out the door. She was clutching the orange swatch of material.
“I have work to do,” she said.
Chapter Nineteen
Losing My Religion
The river was still. It was hard to believe it was the same body of water. Two weeks of dry weather, and it was low and lazy and lavish with hints of early summer warmth. People were swimming in the usual swimming holes. Recently it had swept away the world’s most famous girl; now it was gently hosting swimmers.
I walked its banks every day, not looking for clues or bodies or anything at all except newly sprouted green and pink buds and birds whose songs I could record. I was searching for signs of life.
And I was thinking. I was doing a lot of thinking.
The Shelburne Falls Morris Men’s season was over. We only dance out in the spring, and summer was almost here. We did have our usual cookout in someone’s yard.
The newly married Michael and Angela, whose wedding marked the beginning of all this, invited us to their recently purchased, rambling old fixer-upper on the Buckland side, right along the riverbank, with a spacious, fenced-in yard and a stone barbecue pit. We had lots of beer, hamburgers, soyburgers, hot dogs, pet dogs, tofu pups, buns, condiments, and chicken. A lot of wives, girlfriends, kids, friends, and former dancers showed up, and we were doing a good job of carrying on—telling funny stories, playing music, singing, eating, and drinking. There were about twenty-five of us. Clara and Sarah were my dates, and they were gamely playing along, as if life were normal.
And if you pretended hard enough, it was. Julie had not been a part of our lives until a very short while ago, so her absence did not create a big gap in existence as we knew it. Or at least, it shouldn’t have. I recorded the churr and buzz of a wren in the distance.
Off at the periphery of the party, sitting in a lawn chair facing the river, wearing the same Yankees cap as when I first met him at the wedding, was Harvey, Angela’s grandfather.
I told Michael that it was good to see the old dude. Harvey’s wife Emma had died shortly after the wedding. It was sudden, and Harvey took it hard. He started losing it a little more than before, and Michael and Angela had moved him into the tiny apartment in their new house. He could live independently, but they could keep an eye on him and help him as needed.
“He still does pretty good,” Michael told me. “He takes care of his own place. We never have to go in there. He comes over to visit, and he eats with us a lot. He’s still pretty sharp, but he has some blank moments. And, well, he wants to get out and see as many people as he can.
“He’s on his way out,” continued Michael. “Lung cancer. Terminal. He smoked Luckies for like eighty years. Go up and talk to him. He remembers you. He actually likes you, even if he thinks you’re some kind of hippie or something.”
I walked over to the river. With my back to it, I crouched down and faced Harvey. Thinking he was asleep, I sat there for a minute. He opened his eyes, blinked, and looked at me.
“You’re that cop. The one at Michael’s wedding. Or whatever. Some damn hippie.”
“Yeah. That’s me. I remember your wise words about chicken.”
“Hell, I don’t have wise words about anything. Screw it all, anyway.”
“Yeah. Sometimes I come around to your way of thinking. Screw it all. And I’m not a cop, by the way. I was once, but not now.”
“Or are you the priest? Somehow I thought you were a priest too. But you don’t have the collar.”
“No, I was never a priest. I was a monk.”
“Oh, right,” he said. “I think I remember that now. You withdrew from the world, or some damn thing.”
I ignored this and asked, “How are you doing?”
“I’m okay, I guess. I like sitting here, looking at the river. Michael lets me sit here all day some days. It just flows by. It never stops.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “That’s why we like them so much. They never get tired. They flow and they flow and they roll and they roll. But me, I get tired.”
“Not me. I’m sick but I’m not tired. I have lots of things I still want to do.”
“Like what?” I was curious.
“I’d like to find that missing girl,” Harvey replied. “That’s one of the reasons I sit here watching this damn river. She’s in there somewhere.”
“What’s she to you?” I asked.
“Not a damn thing. Just a pretty little girl. She used to walk along here with that other red-haired girl. They seemed nice. And it’s a damn shame what happened.” He paused, then added, “You’re a cop. You should find her.”
In my mind, I said I would. Out loud, I said nothing. Clearly his memory was going.
The river kept on chugging along
. Harvey was looking at it. I was looking at Harvey. I turned to stare at the river.
“That damn river,” said Harvey. “It never stops. It rolls and it rolls and it rolls. Can you get me some chicken? And a beer. Get me a beer.”
I got Harvey a paper plate with a big, slightly burnt and crispy chicken breast. I piled potato salad on there too. And brought him one of those monster twenty-two ounce Berkshire Traditional Pale Ales.
The first thing he did was sip the beer.
“Mmm, that’s good,” he said. “You want some?”
“No. I don’t drink.”
Harvey was sipping thirstily, stopping just short of gulping. The river was mesmerizing as it flowed by over the mossy rocks.
“Yep. ‘Ol’ Man River.’ That was a good song,” he said. “Funny how much those words can mean.”
“I know. That’s why we all sing so much.”
“I heard you guys singing before. All you sing about is dead babies and dead dogs. That’s for the birds. Rivers make more sense.”
“We sang those dead songs when I was in the monastery. That’s where I learned them.”
“You’re not in the monastery now?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I was losing my religion.”
Harvey laughed. “That’s a song too.”
“You know that song?”
“Yeah. Emma and I saw REM play at Amherst in the late eighties. What was it—eighty-six, maybe? Eighty-seven? We were the oldest people there. It was fucking great.”
“I thought you hated hippies.”
“They weren’t hippies. That was alt rock. I hate that hippie shit—Grateful Dead, Phish. That shit totally sucks. Self-indulgent bullshit is what it is.”
Harvey was turning out to be an even more remarkable guy than I had imagined. He was downing the beer quickly and working hard on the chicken and potato salad.
“So you lost your religion. Me … I watch the river flow.”