Deep River Burning

WiDō Publishing
Salt Lake City, Utah
www.widopublishing.com

Copyright © 2015 by Donelle Dreese

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Cover Design by Steven Novak
Book Design by Marny K. Parkin

Print ISBN: 978-1-937178-62-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014952308
Printed in the United States of America

For Chris

Chapter 1

Desert Ring Island

Rivers hold stories that sometimes lie beaded on the feathers of wild geese. Denver listened to the geese speak to one another in a language of deep throated murmurings as they bathed and fluffed themselves like peacocks on the surface of the water. She couldn’t help thinking how envious she was of those geese. They know where their home is, and they know where to stop and rest until they get there.

If her journal had been tucked away in the soft, blue folds of her pocket, she may have settled herself on the log of a fallen water oak and written about her fear of the future, how very little felt right to her, even on this shimmering afternoon meant for lovers on blankets or fishermen quietly casting their lines from their anchored boats. She would have written about the narrow trail she created through a grove of thorned raspberry bushes without cracking a stem or bearing a scratch. But all she had with her was a small stone, the piece of bloodstone that her mother told her would bring her strength and courage.

Had it not been for Josh, Denver would have never gone to Desert Ring Island. She had been warned against it for as long as she could remember, but Josh assured her that on this island in the middle of the wide river, she would only find sleeping deer, poison ivy, and hungry crows. She had heard the stories about an old man named Pilner who roamed the island forest and was known for doing horrific things. People said that Pilner dangled dozens of dead squirrels from tree limbs in order to keep people away, but she was eighteen now and didn’t believe the stories anymore, knowing they were only told to discourage a young girl from roaming. And even though Josh had come with her to the island, he was down at the riverbank and would not hear her if she called out for him.

She walked toward the smoke-colored door of an old, abandoned cabin that she had been eyeing and circling for a good part of the afternoon. The wood around the entrance was faded and peeling off at places, and the door handle was warm and rusted from summer rain.

She opened the door slowly and stepped inside. In one corner was an old chair and a table that had been scratched and carved with a small knife, and in another corner there was a small bed and mattress, still made but crumpled, and a rifle propped up against the wall. What she couldn’t make sense of was the smell, an odor that bore a resemblance to the pith and aromatic resin of caves. Faint and humid, but a little sulfuric.

It suddenly occurred to her that Pilner was far removed from the concerns that hovered over her at the cabin. Even upon reflection, it was difficult for her to describe the sensation of being engulfed in a cloud of musty air while a mixture of noises swirled around her. There were voices, some speaking, some arguing, some muffled, some whispering. The voices and sounds spun a terrible web inside the cabin, and she could make no sense of them. She saw her mother and father and a man standing in front of her for a moment, like motionless apparitions, and then they were gone.

She ran from the cabin and tripped on the log she had been sitting on, and then fumbled down the path at full speed until she reached the edge of the forest and saw Josh. She could never understand why he thought she was so brave.

She sat down against a tree and watched his tall stature as he fished. At first, she dismissed what she had seen as a strange and superstitious hallucination brought on by the heat of the afternoon, or perhaps by the sadness lurking deep inside of her, but both of those explanations would be a lie. Something had happened to her in that cabin. She would have to decide how to think about it, and she wondered why her parents were part of it. Were they in danger? Should she warn them? She didn’t know if she would ever tell anyone. Who would believe her? The feeling settled in her chest like a hot stone, the feeling that a sudden, single event can change your life like molten lava searing over a field of wildflowers.

Chapter 2

Bonfire

Adena had only one main road for coming and going, and that road bisected the town like a holy cross. Denver thought about the broad, sweeping farms and golden wheat fields, the rolling hills, and her mother buying corn and tomatoes at a roadside stall. Josh used to say the fields were lakes filled with honey when Denver asked why the air smelled sweet. It was the fragrance of the yellow and white honeysuckle bushes, but Josh wanted her to believe anything was possible, and sometimes, when a dark orange sunset of autumn drenched layers of copper glow over the fields, she believed him, that magic was possible in this place.

But it wasn’t autumn yet. It was late spring 1980, when dusk closed in on the flames of a small bonfire that could be heard crackling in a rural part of town. The darkness of night had arrived like a silk veil when several men and some older boys had gathered some trash and put it in an open pit to burn. The men smelled of beer and cigarettes as the boys threw pine cones, paper bags, and newspapers into the fire to see how well they would burn, and then the men penetrated the surrounding woods while the boys stayed behind.

Josh sat on the ground staring at the fire. The smell of burning leaves permeated his nostrils as the smoke filtered through his hair and clothes. He used to go camping for days by himself, build fires from the wood he found, and spend many hours engrossed in gathering wood and kindling. In a pack would be a meal that he would prepare over the fire when it reached the desired intensity, and then, he would sit and watch the flames for hours, listening to the fire hum and hiss as it dwindled into a round, red lump of smoldering ash.

Some of the boys brought copies of magazines rolled in their back pockets to show to the others. These were the boys who carried stashes of magic mushroom in their socks and slipped away into the corn fields when they thought no one was watching. Josh hated these boys. He hated the way they mistook their illegal acts for bravery, and how they thought the world owed them something it could never repay. When one of the boys turned his back, Josh grabbed a magazine from a pocket, threw it into the reddest side of the fire, and watched the cover photo of a partially naked woman go up in flames. The angry boys chased him through the shadowy night woods for a half an hour. They were in his territory, and Josh could fly through the thicket like a gust of wind. There were three of them, and Josh knew that the older boy, named Gabe, had a small handgun tucked under his belt.

Josh sat down at the base of a tree to catch his breath. The boys were likely stronger than him, but he would always be faster. He would make certain of it. He would find a way to stay ahead of them, even though there were times when he thought his loneliness would crush every corridor of hope from his existence, but then a narrow beam of clarity shooting across his consciousness would change his mind, and he would go on.

As Gabe and his buddies drew closer, Josh rolled himself down a small hill and into a dry creek bed. Amidst the chorus of singing crickets, he could hear their footsteps jumping over fallen trees and stumbling on rocks. He heard them stop and try to talk while out of breath. He wasn’t sure where they were exactly, but he heard them spit tobacco saliva from their mouths and talk to one another while keeping their hoarse voices low.

“Where is that asshole?” Then Gabe began to yell, his voice echoing into the tree canopy. “Joshua McClaren! Now I appreciate your ability to hide out in this forest like a fugitive, but the fact of the matter is, you owe my friend here an apology and the money he paid for that magazine. I hope you’re planning on paying that money back because wouldn’t it be a shame if you got shot in the leg and couldn’t run away from all your problems like you do now.”

There was a pause. Josh heard some whispering while a bead of sweat trickled down his nose and dropped into a small pool of sweat that was forming under his chin. He heard movement in the leaves just above him. Then Gabe spoke again.

“Since you insist on not taking proper responsibility for your actions, we are going to leave you sweating in whatever hole you crawled into. But you better watch your back, my friend. I don’t have much patience for thieves.”

Josh looked up and saw one of the boys standing over the creek bed, looking directly at him. It wasn’t the one who owned the magazine, but the other boy, the one they called Cook. Josh braced himself for a beating, but Cook turned away and never said a word. After a few minutes, they were gone. The forest grew quiet except for a fox that trotted on a deer trail and tree frogs just beginning to chirp.

Josh stood up and picked the leaves and twigs from his jeans. In the distance, he heard Helena and Denver walking and talking on a back road that skirted the woods and eventually led into town. The three had been the closest of friends for as long as they could remember, and since they lived within a rural mile of each other, hardly a calendar day passed when they didn’t see one another.

Helena was a farmer’s daughter who slept through most of high school because of a four o’clock in the morning wakeup call to start her chores. Josh got all As in school, but never had to study. He didn’t like to spend time at home, but rarely talked about why, although everyone knew his dad was a drunk who worked at the paper mill in Roaring Spring. Denver was the girl with the “Oakley eyes,” inherited from her father, Ted Oakley. Her eyes were a deep forest green that turned pale in the sunlight, like sea green or lime. People asked her if she could see things no one else could with her luminous and unusual eyes, but she never knew how to answer.

Josh ran hard to catch up to them, and together, they walked to a place by the Susquehanna River where trees closely outlined the water’s edge and their long heavy branches hung over the surface casting leafy shadows in the moonlight. Denver’s father had told her a story about a fisherman who called this place Waterfowl Landing because of the wide, smooth mud path formed by the geese that led down to the water. Her mother used to tell people that “the trail hasn’t seen a blade of grass growing on it in fifty years.” But her mother rarely went to the river. Every time she placed a foot near the water, the mosquitoes would leave welts on her skin the size of quarters.

They arrived at the river where the current had once left large rocks to rest. They sat quietly looking out at the dark expanse in front of them for a while until Helena broke the silence.

“Josh, you smell like a chimney,” she said.

“You would tell me I stink like a dirty chimney if you saw the kind of magazine I threw into the bonfire,” he replied.

“Really?” Helena said with a look of surprise. “If I would have known the bonfire was going to be a pervert party, I would’ve crashed it,” she said smiling at herself.

“You wouldn’t have had any fun crashing this party,” Josh replied.

“Maybe so . . . but I’m pretty good at turning a wet blanket into a flying carpet.”

“That’s true,” Josh smiled and conceded.

“The bonfire doesn’t matter. This is nice enough,” Helena said as she gazed up at the stars sparkling through the tree branches.

“Yes, it is,” Denver said. “It’s too bad it won’t last.”

“What do you mean?” Helena asked.

“Life is going to change,” answered Denver. “It always does. It has to. Like the river. It keeps moving whether we want it to or not.”

“Well, I know one thing that won’t change,” Helena said.

“What is that?” Josh asked.

“The three of us, being together. No matter what happens we can still promise to always be friends. We have control over that at least, don’t we?” Helena asked.

“Yeah,” Denver responded while looking out into the black river. “We’ll always be friends.”

“Denver, you sound almost like you don’t believe it,” Helena responded.

“I’m just in a strange mood tonight.”

“Well, all I know is that the world would be a better place if people spent more time sitting by a river,” Helena said.

“What if there is a flood?” Josh asked.

“Then you go sit on a mountain,” she replied sweetly.

Helena kicked off her shoes and allowed her warm feet to press firmly into the mud on the riverbank. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and sighed as if the moist earth was imparting something into her being that made her feel calm. Her feet tentatively moved forward and entered the edge of the river water where three bodies came to meet—the river’s long flowing body, the solid body of the earth, and her own soft, longing body.

“Are you fools going to join me or are you going to be spectators the rest of your life?”

“I’ll be a spectator, thank you,” said Denver.

Josh quickly took off his shoes and walked out into the river until the water was up to his knees. He looked to the right and to the left and saw very little in the darkness except for the silhouettes of the trees trying to reveal themselves in the light of the moon. Helena bent over and swished her fingers around in the water.

“I don’t think I could ever leave this place,” she said. “I want to wade in this river surrounded by my grandchildren when I’m an old lady. I want my husband to propose to me some cool morning in May while floating down this river in a canoe.”

Josh looked at Helena with a confused expression.

“I can’t wait to get away from here,” he said.

“That’s because you think what you want is way off somewhere in the distance, off in some vast wilderness or on the streets of some sparkling city, when maybe everything you are looking for is right here.”

Josh did not respond, but after a long while of stargazing by the river, he and Helena went home. Denver skimmed her eyes over the dark river a little while longer, and when she finally arrived home, she didn’t go into her house right away. She sat on the front porch steps and thought about the evening and the meaning of promises. She always thought of promises as seashells with the ocean wind blowing through them, hollow, born from current circumstances guaranteed to change.

She looked up into the sky and onto the hills. There were dozens of tall, narrow row houses built on a hillside whose lighted windows at night looked like the eyes of a hundred silent deer in a field. In winter, Adena was a bowl-shaped basin of white hill and valley, and sometimes the people’s faces looked old before their time, and their hands cracked and bled under the burden of work, and in the spring, their frozen souls were reborn alongside the crocuses and dandelion. In the summer, the older boys in town were often building tree houses in their back yards or setting off firecrackers for excitement. The warm, yellow sparks that darted through the night sky, cracked in the dark and made them feel powerful, but that night of the bonfire, change was hanging in the air like a thunderstorm. Not the turbulence of it, but the stillness before. It didn’t matter. When Denver had a nagging feeling that everything was on the brink of ruin and hanging on the rim of unreason, the river made her feel as if something in her life was constant, as if she was connected to something larger than herself, larger than Josh or Helena, like the molten magma that forms the continents and holds the bonds of people in its gritty veins. That night, she dreamed of fire.