Down by the Riverside

by Jackie Lynn

  He prayed like a brother, like a friend; I knew that I had been wrong about Lucas. He was not at all how he looked, not at all as his history made him seem. And once we were off the interstate and headed in the direction of Shady Grove, I was actually hopeful about the man and his prayer. I considered the possibility that somebody had heard him.

  He took the exit, drove down the paved road to the cutoff to the campground and then drove along the path to Tom’s trailer, where I had asked him to take me first. When we got there, the front door was open and I knew we were seeing the fruits of trouble.

  “Call the sheriff,” I said as I ran inside to see if Tom was still there. I knew Lucas had a cell phone because I had seen it strapped to his belt.

  The trailer had been ransacked. Books down from the shelves, drawers pulled out and emptied. Every room had been searched and turned inside out. Deputy Fisk had already gotten there, and then I was sure that Thomas was in great peril.

  “Did you call the sheriff?” I asked frantically as Lucas walked up the steps to the trailer.

  He stood at the door, examining the front room. “Lord Jesus,” he said. “What has happened?”

  “Lucas!” I yelled at him. “Did you call the sheriff?”

  He stood shaking his head in disbelief.

  “He’s not in,” he reported. “I just left a message.”

  Then he stammered a bit, “I didn’t know this had happened.”

  “Call him again,” I said. “Call him again and tell him there’s been a murder.”

  “A murder?” Lucas asked. “Dear little sister, why would anybody murder Thomas?”

  “Just call him!” I screamed.

  He pulled out his phone and dialed a number.

  I realized that he had called 911 when he said that he had an emergency to report.

  “No!” I yelled. “Not nine-one-one!” I remembered what the deputy had said about one scanner, that everyone heard the incoming calls. I was worried that he could get to us first.

  Lucas stopped the call and threw up his hands, like he didn’t know what to do. He was shaking.

  “Call his direct line,” I said, trying to act calm. “Call him at home; just don’t call nine-one-one.”

  He shook his head at me. Then I thought of something, thought of where Thomas might be.

  “Do you have the key to the lock on the quarry fence?”

  The big man was still staring at the mess in the trailer.

  “Lord Jesus,” he kept saying, sucking his teeth.

  “Lucas!” I yelled, “Do you have the key?”

  “Yes, sister, it’s on my ring.” He reached in his pocket and took out his keys. He stopped for a minute.

  “No, wait, I gave it to somebody”—he stopped as if he was thinking—“I loaned it to Lawrence Franklin. I never got it back. I’ll have to get the master from the office.”

  “Then, hurry, go get it and meet me there,” I said, because now I knew Thomas would be at the quarry.

  I pushed him out of the trailer and off the steps.

  Lucas jumped into his truck and drove off to Shady Grove. I ran as fast as my legs could take me down the path and over to the far side of the pond.

  I ran first to the chair that was hidden at the edge of the woods. Nothing had changed around there since I had first noticed it. Then I ran over to the fence that wrapped around the quarry. I could see tire tracks near the gate and I tried to wiggle my way through a couple of openings. I was too big. I ran around the fence, calling out for Tom. I heard nothing but noises from the river. I moved out in the tall weeds.

  Finally, as I turned a corner, following the fence as it neared the banks of the Mississippi, still calling out Tom’s name, I saw a place at the bottom that had been bent, an opening forced beneath it. It was just big enough that I was able to crawl through.

  The sun was full and high in the morning sky. The temperature was already rising. I felt the sweat bead across my forehead as I pulled myself up from the ground where I had rolled under the fence and into the quarry grounds. I stood up, shook the dust from my clothes and without knowing where to go, headed on a narrow path that led between two mounds of rock.

  There were three bulldozers parked near one of the hills. I walked around them and headed to the giant hole where the rock was being excavated. It was about twenty-feet wide and I couldn’t see from the spot where I was standing how deep it was cut.

  So I walked closer. Just as I neared the edge, something caught my eye and I glanced over my right shoulder and noticed an area that appeared to be freshly dug. There was a stake with a red ribbon, just like the ribbon in Lawrence’s pocket, tied around it, marking the location.

  As I moved over toward it, I saw a small stack of bones next to a mound of dirt and then a pair of feet roped together, sticking out from the other side. I hurried around the hill and there was Tom, roughed-up, tied-up, and looking very anxious.

  “Oh, Lord, Thomas.” I hurried to him and checked his wounds.

  He had been beaten pretty badly around his eyes and nose. A large knot was on the back of his head. There was a little blood and a lot of swelling. I yanked off the tape that was wrapped around his mouth.

  “Hurry,” he said as the tape pulled off. “Hurry, they’re on the way back by now.”

  I tried untying the rope around his arms, but the knot was too tight.

  “Where are they gone?” I asked. And then, “I’m so sorry,” I kept saying, “this is all my fault.”

  “Rose.” His voice was raised, sharp. “Just help me up, there’s a shovel and a hoe behind that hill of dirt, get it and try to cut the rope around my feet. I told them the gold was at the funeral home. They’ve been gone for more than an hour, they’ll be back soon.”

  I turned to the hill.

  “Hurry!” he repeated. “We don’t have a lot of time.” He tried to pull himself up.

  But before I could get the shovel or find the hoe, before I could see a means of getting Thomas untied, someone else had already gotten to it.

  I turned just in time to see a woman holding the tool above her head, aiming it right in my direction. She was straining as she brought it down.

  The last thing I remember thinking was, This was the kind of morning my father loved.

  Thomas called out my name and I fell into a pile of old bones.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I crossed the Jordan River by walking. There was no boat or skiff or captain to lead me across. I stepped in the water and the water held me up, like mountain rock and desert sand and hard dirt surfaces. I glided across. The water shimmered in the light of a perfect sun. The blue below and the blue above were one and the same, indistinguishable, only a faint silver line dividing one from the other.

  I walked because I knew I was being called. And I did not hurry because I understood that I had all the time I would ever need. The other side, the one where I was heading, was green and rolling. It was the prettiest land I had ever seen and the only reason I picked up my pace as I moved across the flat blue plain of water was just to lay myself down in that carpet of rich, emerald green.

  I was halfway across when people starting coming over the hills, watching as I headed in their direction. Families of people were dressed in long white robes, as if candidates for baptism waiting in line, some holding hands, others waving at me, welcoming me to the banks of their still, blue river, the edge of the land of dark rolling green.

  I saw people I recognized, but could not name. Children and old women who looked familiar, who seemed to know me, and whom I seemed to know; as I neared the shore I grew more and more eager to get to them, to find out who they were and how we had gone missing from one another.

  They lined the banks. So many to greet me. So many waiting for me. And as I scanned the crowd, I saw the small group gathered in front, the chosen few, the ones whom I knew without consideration. Jolie Miller. Lawrence Franklin. Grandma Freeman. Papa Burns. And her.

  Long, thick hair, sturdy brown eyes, thi
n nose, and wide, reaching arms; she was the one I hurried for, the one I lifted my feet faster and faster for and raced toward. She was the one who had been calling me and I would not be turned away. She was the pearl of great price, the treasure in the field. I would have sold everything I own to get to her.

  She had not changed since I last remembered, and when she smiled the sky opened itself in flashes of light. And I hurried. Ran, flew, jumped. And just as I reached out to her, she blew a kiss, nodded her approval at who I had become, and a ribbon of color, red as dark as blood, pulled me away. The kiss still wet upon my cheek.

  I awoke to a room of eager faces.

  “Praise the Lord,” sounded a familiar booming voice. “Little sister has opened her eyes.”

  Lucas Boyd stood the closest. His bald white head reflecting the light above the bed. His wife stood beside him. The lines of worry softened across their faces.

  Mary was there. Janice Miller was there. A red-faced sheriff stood near the door, and a nurse, Maria, was bent across me, pulling at the sleeve of a blood pressure cuff that was wrapped across my left arm.

  My head ached. My fingers tingled. And as I tried to move from one riverbank to another, from side to side, the thoughts and the memories drifted in slow, confusing lines.

  “Tom Sawyer?” I asked, the words thundering in my head, but falling from my lips apparently in just a whisper because Lucas bent very near my face to hear me say the name again.

  “Tom Sawyer?”

  “Oh, little sister, he’s just fine,” the big man answered. “He’s two doors down, with a lump on his head not much smaller than yours, a few cuts on his arms, and a big wide heart waiting to know you’re okay, too.”

  A tear fell from the corner of my eye. I couldn’t explain. It was like leaving home and finding home all in the same second. Losing love and falling right back into it. It was all of life in one dive down and deep into the arms of a blue-brown river and then a jump straight up into the white sky. It was more than I could hold in the space of my mind.

  “What happened?” I asked, trying not to move my head.

  “Pssst.” That sound was familiar.

  “You almost got yourself killed.” It was Mary. She was standing on the other side next to the nurse.

  “Rose, dear.” Ms. Lou Ellen was there somewhere in the room. I couldn’t find her, but I certainly recognized her voice.

  “You figured it out,” she said. “You led the sheriff right to the guilty party and you are a great hero.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” a gruff voice spoke from the door of the room. I took it to be that of the sheriff.

  “We just want to make sure you’re okay,” he said. He actually sounded concerned.

  “Mr. Kunar, the manager at the quarry, had told his family a couple of weeks ago that the undertaker was looking around, that it seemed he had uncovered some old historical site. That was when the deputy and his girlfriend started watching Mr. Lawrence because they thought he had found the gold.”

  Rhonda was recounting the events for me. I recalled being at the place with the marking, the place where I got hit on the head, and I knew then for sure that he had found the burial ground.

  “They saw him digging at the quarry a few times earlier in that week and decided that he had finally discovered Dalton’s treasure. They followed him the morning he disappeared. On his way to St. Louis, he had stopped off at the quarry just to mark the spot he had located, and then was on his way back to drop off the key with Lucas at the campground.”

  She waited a second to let me catch up.

  “He was marking the burial ground, not the hidden gold,” I said, trying to put everything together. “He used red ribbon.”

  “Right,” Rhonda answered. “There’s no reason to think he knew anything about gold.” She added, “But Fisk didn’t know that.”

  “Apparently, after he had marked his spot that morning, he went down to the river, we think maybe to wash his hands before heading out of town. When he returned to the quarry he saw the deputy and the paramedic digging where he had marked his findings. When he surprised them and asked them what they were doing, the deputy knocked him on the head, kinda like you.” She smiled. “But unfortunately, he fell and landed in the quarry and drowned.”

  “The girl confessed,” the sheriff said. “She tampered with the dead body and with the autopsy. Fisk was the main one. He just wanted to get rich. I don’t think they meant to kill Mr. Franklin, but it’s murder just the same.”

  I could see his red face fall. “Damn shame,” he added.

  “Anyway, you’re fine now. You’re okay.” Lucas had reached down and taken my hand.

  “What about the gold?” I asked.

  “Thomas was returned his coin,” Ms. Lou Ellen reported. I finally saw her sitting in a wheelchair near Mary.

  “The rest of it was never lost,” Lucas added.

  “Tom said he tried to tell you about it yesterday afternoon before you came over to the hospital. He had heard about some old slave papers that had been found at the courthouse in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and he had somebody make copies and send them to the courthouse here.

  “Turns out they were old bills of sale of slaves from there. And just like he hoped, there were three of them written for Daltons. One woman, Lavender, and her two children Percy, Jr., and Lydia. The Quaker must have made it because the Daltons got their freedom. They were reunited after all.”

  The room was spinning. I remembered how Thomas had something he had wanted to tell me, but I wouldn’t let him. I was filled with guilt for not being truthful to him, for not trusting him, and I was glad that I would be able to apologize, that I had the chance to tell him I was sorry. Then I recalled where I had just come from, who and what I had seen.

  I looked around the room for Janice. She was standing at the foot of the bed.

  “I saw Jolie,” I said to the young woman.

  She smiled and took hold of my leg.

  “She’s happy,” I said. “She’s not alone, not at all.”

  The young mother nodded. “Clara sends her love,” she said. “She’s back at the camper, but still a little sore from the procedure.”

  I was glad to know that she was okay. “Lawrence Franklin,” I said to those standing around me.

  “He’s okay, too.” I squeezed Lucas’s hand. “Tell Ms. Eulene, Lucas, Lawrence is okay, too.”

  He nodded. And I glanced around the room at those who had gathered there to be with me and I remembered how I felt when I stood outside Ms. Lou Ellen’s door after her surgery and I realized that I now rested in my own circle of grace, that I had family, that I wasn’t alone any longer. I closed my eyes to rest.

  And then I fell asleep.

  Deeply, peacefully. No rivers to cross, no mysteries to solve. No leaving and no arriving.

  Just sleep.

  ANOTHER

  DAY

  My bones are weary, long to sleep

  If only there is room to keep

  These thoughts, these dreams, this flesh, this heart

  A resting ground I need not depart

  A place where familiar souls abide

  Here, down by the riverside.

  TWENTY-THREE

  They say that death changes a person, but I wouldn’t say that it was dying that did it to me. I’d say it was love.

  I attended two funerals in the same afternoon in West Memphis, Arkansas. Both of them at the side of Thomas Sawyer, who forgave me my misjudgment of his character and for the way in which I chose not to trust him.

  “Sword and shield,” is what he said as he reached over and took me by the hand when I told him I was sorry.

  “It’s much too burdensome to try and carry around all that weight of unforgiveness.” And we walked along the path out of Shady Grove and over to the Antioch Holiness Church to Lawrence Franklin’s service.

  I guess the deacon and the Franklin family forgave their preacher for his erroneous w
ays, too, because he preached like a man who recognized and received grace. He spoke about Lawrence Franklin as the heartbeat of the southside community, as the one who drew them together, not just with those living on this shore of the river, but also with those who had long crossed over.

  He said that Lawrence Franklin made sure every deceased person found a resting place in West Memphis and that because his life had been so intricately tied to goodness, so completely connected to finding lost souls a home, that he was sure to have found his own path of righteousness out of the valley of the shadow of death and into the light of everlasting life.

  He said that the church and the Boyds were sponsoring the Memorial Grounds out by Shady Grove where Mr. Franklin had indeed found the burial site of a boatload of slaves, that in Lawrence’s honor it would be recognized by the community and the town and that it would be a place of rest for both the living and the dead.

  I smiled at the thought of that, knowing that dedicating that place, laying claim to those lost lives, was the only thing the undertaker really ever wanted. I thought about him placing that piece of red ribbon in his pocket, sealing the promise he made to those who had died. And I was sure he was pleased and that somewhere on the banks of the Jordan, he was celebrating what had finally come to pass.

  The church service was beautiful and fitting; and even though I received a fair number of sideway glances and stares, I accepted Ms. Eulene Franklin’s offer and sat with her as family in the very front row. She said that Lawrence would have wanted it that way, that he would have welcomed me as kin and that because of her son’s kind witness to how we treat family, she could do no less. I was honored and I wept as if I knew him because in an unspoken way, I did.

  The entire funeral procession left the church and the Franklins’ gathering and walked in a long shifting line to Shady Grove, down to the river. We walked carrying bowls of fresh peas, pots of greens, fried chicken, and pitchers of tea.