Rivers: A Novel (40 page)

A denim jacket lay across the bag and Mariposa wore a sleeveless shirt with ruffles around the neck. The late spring was muggy and windy and there was little need for a jacket during the day but the nights remained cool. She uncrossed her legs and set the magazine on the bench. The magazine cover was a photograph of a man in a suit standing on a sun-soaked podium, red, white, and blue flags flapping in the wind behind him. He made a fist with his right hand, seemed to speak with indignation. She picked up the magazine and turned it over and slid it to the end of the bench.

She looked at the round clock on the wall behind the counter and
there was another ten minutes to wait if the bus was on time but no one was certain of the chances of that happening.

She moved her jacket from the bag and opened it. She took out a folded sheet of paper and counted the places she had been. Huntsville, Birmingham, Roswell, Augusta, Athens. The names of thirteen more towns and the addresses of thirteen more shelters remained on the list and she was making her way east for the first time, heading for Winston-Salem. The shelters on her list held thousands of people and stretched from Alabama across to North Carolina, up into Kentucky and Virginia. There were more across on the other side of the Floodlands, over into Texas and Arkansas, but that would have to wait and hopefully she wouldn’t need to get across. The shelters functioned out of high school gymnasiums or National Guard armories and served as a way of living for most. Children went to school at these shelters, job training was provided at these shelters, mail was delivered to these shelters. And she was going to go to each one on her list until she found someone that she knew. Somewhere she had a mother and cousins and aunts and she was ready to find them.

She looked out of the glass doors at Evan and Brisco. Thought of the place where they had buried Cohen, somewhere off the road in northeast Mississippi, after they had driven almost three hours with him dead against the door, nobody in the truck wanting to let him go. The rain had eased the farther north they had gone, and they turned off the highway and drove along a side road where there were no lights and they went out into a field.

In the truck bed, Evan found a shovel and he used it to dig a grave while Mariposa sat on the ground with Cohen lying across her lap. Brisco stood strangely quiet and watched his brother dig. When Evan was done, with the truck lights shining on them, they lifted and carried Cohen to the grave and set him down gently. Then they stood there in silence until Mariposa turned and walked away and Evan and Brisco covered him with the dirt. After Cohen was buried, Evan turned to look for Mariposa but she had walked out into the dark and he let her
be. He sat with Brisco on the tailgate and they were chilled by the wind but it felt different than the chilled wind of down below. He and Brisco talked and Evan heard her crying out there in the dark but when Brisco asked is that Mariposa, Evan said no. It’s only the wind.

After an hour she returned from the dark and they began again.

They had driven east until noon and wound up in Asheville at a shelter that occupied an old department store. A group of women were standing outside the front doors smoking when the three of them got out of the truck. Filthy, exhausted, hungry, skinny. Bullet holes and dents in the truck. Bloodstained clothes. The fragile gait of the weary. One woman had dropped her cigarette at the sight of them. Another said what in God’s name is this.

Mariposa folded the paper with the list of towns and stuck it back in her bag.

She rested her hands on her stomach and hoped for a kick. The little kicks helped the day go by and kept her spirit alive and she pushed some to see if that would get them going and it did. A handful of kicks and she talked to him as they came and went, and then he settled again.

The woman at the counter hung up the telephone and she announced to Mariposa and the two men that, believe it or not, the bus would arrive any second.

Mariposa got up from the wooden bench and as she rose the baby kicked again and made her oooh. Her eyes got big and she put her hands on the sides of her stomach and said, “Easy, little man.” She took a deep breath and walked to the glass doors and went outside. Brisco and Evan were arguing over the score of whatever game it was they were playing.

There was another kick and she thought of Cohen and the dream that she had in Ellisville about him leaving and not coming back. Thought of the way that he assured her that it wasn’t going to happen.
I’m not going to leave you, and you have to promise not to leave me.

It was the only dream left to focus on as she had stopped having them altogether, her subconscious nights replaced by sleeplessness, lying on her back, staring at the exposed metal beams of the shelter
ceiling, trying to figure out what had been real. She had conjured up his life based on the remnants of it—the trinkets and tokens and letters and his expressions when he was forced to talk about it. But then the illusion she had created succumbed to the intensity of the real man. She had talked with the real man and slept with him and bled with him and she wondered how far he had come toward her. All the way?

She couldn’t decide.

Mariposa arched her back and felt the breeze. She was ready for the bus. Ready to go and look again. She folded her arms across her stomach and looked into the passive sky, tangled between all that had been lost and all that had been found.

I would like to thank my good friends Andrew Kelly and Steven Woods for their feedback and encouragement through the early stages of this manuscript. Thanks to Kendall Dunkelberg and Bridget Smith Pieschel for supporting me in the neighborhood. The Mississippi Arts Commission and Alabama Arts Council have been instrumental in supporting my artistic endeavors and I am very grateful to both organizations. Thanks to Nicki Kennedy, Sam Edenborough, and everyone at the Intercontinental Literary Agency for their enthusiasm, and to Stefanie Broesigke at Heyne Publishing for getting on board so early. I’d like to say thank you to Matthew Snyder at Creative Artists Agency for his vision and hard work. Thanks to Edward Graham of the Steinberg Agency, whose sharp eye was instrumental in the revision stages. Peter Steinberg, my literary agent, possesses creative vision and the ability to inspire, among many other immeasurable qualities. Thanks, Peter. I want to thank Sarah Knight, my editor at Simon & Schuster, who helped drive this manuscript to its highest level, and then held it up proudly for all to see. Thanks also to Molly Lindley, Michael Accordino, and the team at Simon & Schuster. To my blue-eyed Mississippi girls, thank you for every day. And, finally, my gracious thank you to Sabrea, who has come to my rescue more times than I can count.

Simon & Schuster

Reading Group Guide

Rivers

M
ICHAEL
F
ARRIS
S
MITH

Devastating storms have pummeled the already eroded coastline of the American Southeast and the federal government has drawn a boundary, known as the Line, declaring everything below it uninhabitable. This is the setting for
Rivers
, a land of lawlessness and desperation, where no one has electricity or resources and no one and nothing is safe from looters, vandals, and violent storms that surge without warning, destroying everything in their path.

Having lost his wife and unborn child during a mandatory evacuation, Cohen has decided to stay behind, rebuilding his house over and over again as an altar to his deceased family. On his way back from buying supplies one day, Cohen picks up two teenage hitchhikers, a boy and a Creole girl, who attack and nearly kill him, stealing his Jeep, all his supplies, and the last precious mementos he had of his wife and child. His will to survive becomes bound to finding and punishing his attackers, who are themselves prisoners in a commune run by a nefarious preacher with dangerous and twisted plans. He is now faced with the decision to escape the treacherous and sordid existence of life below the Line, including the Creole girl—who he finds himself drawn to—or to try to help them all escape the horrible future that awaits.

1. The preface for the novel is a verse from the Bible: “When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally gave up all hope of being saved.”
Acts
27:20. What tone does this set for the opening of the first chapter? Is this tone sustained throughout the novel? If so, how?

2. How is religion dealt with in the novel? Do you see Cohen as a religious person? Mariposa? Aggie? What does the author’s treatment of religion suggest about his own views?

3. The novel offers the close third-person perspectives of a number of different characters. How do you think this contributes to the overall story? Are there some perspectives that you relate to or trust more than others?

4. How do you think the author’s style of prose affects the story? What are the distinctive features of his prose?

5. Aside from Cohen, we learn very little about the characters appearances and lives outside of the present moment. How do you think this absence of detail affects the way in which readers relate to the characters?

6. How does Smith instill a sense of darkness and fear in the novel? Are there particular passages that stand out as especially apocalyptic? What aspects of life below the Line stand out as the most disturbing to you?

7. In Chapter 8, Cohen leaves a note at his ransacked house that reads:
“To whom it may concern—he is not dead he is risen.”
What do you think he meant by this? What does it help us learn about the characters’ relationship to religion?

8. The weather plays a significant role in the novel, from its part in the characters’ current circumstances to the continued effect it has on their lives. What attitudes are conveyed by the author’s portrayal of the storms and our defenselessness against them?

9. Do good and evil exist in Smith’s world? Is Aggie good or evil? What about the other characters?

10. What were Aggie’s plans for the commune? What kind of person do you think Aggie was before the storms and flooding?

11. Many dystopian novels portray a nightmarish world that turns ordinary humans into murderers and thieves. Could you imagine a world like this? How do you think you would react if you had to endure such circumstances?

12. Mariposa and Evan are introduced as thieves and murderers, but by the end of the book they have transformed. What do you think is their true character? What did meeting Cohen have to do with their transformation? What do you suspect would have become of them had they not met him?

13. What circumstances made it possible for a relationship to form between Cohen and Mariposa? What makes their relationship so poignant? What purpose did their relationship serve, both for the novel and for each of them independently?

14. The novel revolves around each characters’ struggle to survive in spite of the horrifying conditions they must endure. What have Cohen and Mariposa gained by the end of the book? What have they lost?

1. Smith is a native of Mississippi and was clearly very affected by the impacts of Hurricane Katrina on the Southeastern American coast. How closely did the storms described in Rivers and the government’s treatment of certain areas reflect the actual devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina?

2. Hurricanes continue to strike all over the world, slowly eroding the coastline with their powerful force. Do some research into meteorological predictions to find out how much of the coastline is under threat of hurricane destruction—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a good place to start.

3. The commune formed by Aggie was seen as sinister by all but Ava, yet he was still able to hold them all captive and, in some sense, maintain their allegiance. Learn more about well-known cults of the past and the specific characteristics of a cult and its leader:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult
. Can you see some of these traits in Aggie?

4. Have a dystopian movie night! Watch classics, like
Fahrenheit 451
and
Clockwork Orange
, or modern adaptations like
The Road
and
Blindness
. Read the books first, if you like. Discuss how they compare to
Rivers
.

Michael Farris Smith is a native Mississippian who has spent considerable time living abroad in France and Switzerland. He has been awarded the Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowship, the
Transatlantic Review
Award for Fiction, the Alabama Arts Council Fellowship Award for Literature, and the Brick Streets Press Short Story Award. His short fiction has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous literary reviews and anthologies. He attended Mississippi State University and later the Center for Writers at Southern Miss, and he now lives in Columbus, Mississippi, with his wife and two daughters.