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Above the Waterfall: A Novel
Above the Waterfall: A Novel
Above the Waterfall: A Novel
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Above the Waterfall: A Novel

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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In this poetic and haunting tale set in contemporary Appalachia, New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash illuminates lives shaped by violence and a powerful connection to the land.

Les, a long-time sheriff just three-weeks from retirement, contends with the ravages of crystal meth and his own duplicity in his small Appalachian town.

Becky, a park ranger with a harrowing past, finds solace amid the lyrical beauty of this patch of North Carolina.

Enduring the mistakes and tragedies that have indelibly marked them, they are drawn together by a reverence for the natural world. When an irascible elderly local is accused of poisoning a trout stream, Les and Becky are plunged into deep and dangerous waters, forced to navigate currents of disillusionment and betrayal that will force them to question themselves and test their tentative bond—and threaten to carry them over the edge.

Echoing the heartbreaking beauty of William Faulkner and the spiritual isolation of Carson McCullers, Above the Waterfall demonstrates once again the prodigious talent of “a gorgeous, brutal writer” (Richard Price) hailed as “one of the great American authors at work today” (Janet Maslin, New York Times).

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateSep 8, 2015
ISBN9780062349330
Author

Ron Rash

Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestseller Serena and Above the Waterfall, in addition to four prizewinning novels, including The Cove, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; four collections of poems; and six collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.

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Rating: 3.6594202318840576 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

138 ratings22 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This felt like two books. One was a moderately gritty rural mystery, with some interesting characters, like Gerald, an old man clinging to the past, and C.J, who tried to escape his past and didn't quite make it. The other book had sentences like: "Morning's fawnlight yokes inside dew beads, each hued like a rainbow's hatchling." I never want to read a sentence like that again. The part of the book I liked involved Les, who was retiring as sheriff of a small North Carolina town where the chief businesses are a fishing resort for tourists and drug dealing. There's a mystery involving dead fish and poaching and it could have made a good book. The part of the book I disliked intensely involved Becky, a park ranger, who has a profound, but unexplained, attachment to Gerald. Becky is burdened with not one, but two, traumas in her past. These traumas have absolutely nothing to do with the rural noir part of the book, yet they take up nearly 50% of the book. The Becky parts of the book feature sentences like the one I quoted above and other over-written, pretentious language. I eventually started to skip most of the Becky chapters entirely. This book could have been much better and loses a star (it probably should have lost two stars) because of the Becky chapters. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ron Rash has always been one of my favorite writers.....no.2 after Kent Haruf and I would rate his books high no matter what, but this book just wasn't up to his usual great writing. . The book jumped from one subject and one person to another and at the beginning of every chapter you had to stop and figure out which character it was. I liked the book but just not as good as Serena or Saints at the River. Still great writing and would recommend it highly.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It’s difficult to describe how thoughtful, subtle, intricate and compelling this story is. All the characters have their problems and past wounds that contribute to their actions. I won’t summarize, but nature clashes with the messy reality of greed, drug abuse and poor choices. Despite that, Rash writes of a chance for redemption for those that seek it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is an extraordinary novel, and defies cogent definition. At times it edges towards poetry, yet at other points it plums the depths of small town corruption and the squalor encountered in society’s hidden hinterlands.As the book opens, Les, the sheriff of the unnamed Appalachian town, is due to take his early retirement in the next three weeks, and spends much of his time thinking about his new life to come. Meanwhile Becky, his close friend, is a forest ranger, dedicated to protecting the wild from human encroachment. Both of them have shadows across their past. Becky is also a poet, composing elegiac verse about the wonders of nature that she encounters every day. Les is waging war against the local crystal meth dealers, and each new raid is a further foray into the fringes of hell.Against all this, Gerald Blackwelder, an aging local farmer, finds himself in an increasingly bitter feud with a local resort. Gerald, like Becky, loves all aspects of nature, and is particularly enthralled by the beauty of the trout to be found above a waterfall on the resort’s estate. The resort’s owner is concerned that Gerald’s grizzled countenance has alarmed some of his more urbane guests. Gerald has his own emotional and psychological baggage.Rash’s language is amazing, allowing him to render poetic even the most mundane of actions. His characters are beautifully drawn, and all have their respective failings. Yet Rash does not allow the beauty of his prose to prevent the action fairly fizzing along. This was one of those novels that I was enchanted by, and while I was eager to discover how the plotlines would be resolved, I regretted having finished it as reading it had been simply so enjoyable. Scarcely a paragraph goes by without a beautiful image.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Well. This was readable but not up to the hype which other writers give Ron. Perhaps they were too rash.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This story is told in the alternating voices of Les, a longtime sheriff who is about to retire, and Becky, a park ranger. In Les's last few days on the job, he is faced with a meth bust and the poisoning of a local river, and through flashbacks, we learn much about Les and Becky's pasts that shed light on their reactions to current events. The writing is so beautiful that I almost wished I had read this one instead of listening, but the two narrators were excellent.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    There is some undeniably beautiful writing by Ron Rash in 'Above the Waterfall'. Some passages, in particular the ones narrated by the main female character, are downright poetic. I've become a big fan of Mr. Rush's use of the language in the course of one relatively short novel.

    On the other hand, the plot wasn't, at least to me, significant enough to carry the book. I understand there are bigger issues that are touched upon, but the main story line just isn't very deep and the action moves too slowly.

    I'm a fan of great writing, and 'Above the Waterfall' certainly has that. It was just a bit slow for my taste.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5

    Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash is a very highly recommended novel set in a small Appalachian town about two lonely people struggling to live with their haunted pasts. It is an eloquently written, poetic novel that is both a tribute to the healing power of nature and a mystery.

    Becky is a park ranger at Locust Creek Park who finds solace in the beauty of the North Carolina mountains. Becky carries many scars from her childhood when she survived a school shooting, and in her recent past when she believed in the wrong man. She finds comfort and peace in nature and needs the natural world to survive. She references heavily the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins who found beauty in nature as well as the cave paintings of Lascaux.

    Les is a sheriff on the verge of retirement. He is having a cabin built where he plans to retire and paint. He just has a few things to clear up before he goes, like another meth bust (and you never know how things can go wrong with meth-heads) and the truth behind the tension between Gerald Blackwelder, an irascible old farmer, and a new fishing resort. Les has some regrets in his past too that he is trying to deal with, as well as a debt that has never been repaid.

    The novel alternates between the voices of Les and Becky. They are both wounded souls who take strength from observing and being in nature. They are also close friends and are able to speak about their past with each other. They seemingly want to have a closer relationship with each other, and have taken steps in that direction, but they are still reticent to make any real commitment.

    While both voices propel the story forward, Becky's chapters are poetic and lyrical while Les's are written in a more traditional manner. The frank descriptions of meth addiction are brutal. Both Les and Becky have to "navigate currents of disillusionment and betrayal that will force them to question themselves and test their tentative bond..." when dealing with the dispute between the fishing resort and Gerald. Becky is a staunch supporter of Gerald and perhaps his only friend now. Les was friends with an employee for the fishing resort and, as a longtime resident of the town, he knows all the people involved, their past actions, and where to look for answers.

    Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of HarperCollins for review purposes.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Ron Rash is a masterful writer and this book did not disappoint. His characters are so real and not some Hollywood dressed up characters that would never exist in the real world. The story was very believable and the compelling. Found it hard to but the book down.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was a quick and easy read, despite some difficult subject matter (domestic terrorism, corporate greed, meth raids, school shootings) and what I felt was a less than successful handling of one character's point of view. Les is the Sheriff of a rural Appalachian community, and he's just a couple weeks away from retirement. He has little time for introspection as he tries to tidy a few things up for his successor, but he is forced to do some soul-searching before he hands in his badge. A man who probably saved his life when they were both teenagers may be losing his job, and it may be partly Les's fault. Becky, a park ranger he has an ill-defined relationship with, is struggling with her own past and with local suspicions about an elderly man she has taken under her wing. Someone has poisoned a creek on the property of a local resort, killing the trout so many people come there to catch; the owner is convinced that Becky's elderly friend is responsible. The story is told in alternating chapters, from Les's point of view, and from Becky's. Becky, in addition to ongoing processing of a childhood trauma, has an affinity with nature and with the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. For an extended period the child Becky did not speak, and she spent a lot of time inside herself, so her thoughts may naturally be more abstract than ours, but there was a disconnect between how she thinks and how she speaks as an adult that was too much for me. I recognized bits of Hopkins poems in some of her thought passages, but it all felt like the author was trying too hard. As an interactive character Becky worked very well. But her back story seemed irrelevant to her presence in the story, unlike Les's reflections on his own youth and character. Her part also felt a bit underdeveloped, as though she really deserved a story in which she was the main character. I rather wish Rash had played her as a simpler secondary character in this one, and let her take center stage in another novel, or that he had made this a longer, fuller novel for her sake.January 2016
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This has been my first book by Ron Rash so I didn’t really know what was to expect from it. In spite of that, I feel a bit disappointed because the beginning looked quite promising, but as I went on reading I found myself losing some interest in the story.Les, a rural sheriff, and Becky, a park ranger with a traumatic past, are the two main characters in this novel, and although most of the chapters are from Les’s point of view, there quite a few in which we change to Becky’s point of view (much more poetical, even including some pieces of poetry, and full of musings about the beautiful surrounding nature), and I’m afraid the latter didn’t work for me. In any case, there were aspects of this short novel I enjoyed enough as to make it a pleasant reading.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I'm giving this book a 3.5. Ordinarily I probably would have rated this higher but Ron Rash is one of those authors that I expect more from. It just seemed rather lightweight for an author of his talents. This is no Serena that will stay with me for years to come.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Once again Ron Rash has provided a riveting read that pulls the reader into the story with poetic language and strong characterization with an unsettling plot set in contemporary town in the Appalachian region of North Carolina. While the action takes place over a couple of days before the local sheriff retires, the flashbacks, the dialogue and landscape makes the reader feel like they know this time and place. Contrasting the beauty of the landscape and the harsh reality of surviving in a close-knit community where the past and present often live uneasily with each other. Most poignant to me is the exploration of crystal meth on this small community. While we often hear about drugs in an urban environment, much less is noted about meth in rural communities.I have enjoyed all of the author’s books and his gritty storytelling of the Appalachian landscape.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I have never read a book by this author before, but wow what writing. Poetry in motion combined with the best storytelling results in a fantastic book. A story of bent and broken people making their way through life, with all of the beauty of their surrounding and the ugliness of humanity. This is an exceptional book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Ron Rash is currently my favorite writer, and "Serena" is still his best work. However, in this fine novel, he moves the reader with even more of the peace and violence and the abundant mystery of Appalachian life. Les is a sheriff, weeks from retirement, and tired of drowning in meth and its victims. Becky is a park ranger who moved to the same small town after a childhood tragedy. Les has suffered his own as well:"More than once I'd imagined a listing on an internet dating site: Man who encouraged clinically depressed wife to kill herself seeks woman, traumatized by school shooting, who later lived with ecoterrorist bomber."Les and Becky are surrounded by mountain beauty and by human frailty and kindness. All the townspeople and their situations ring true. With Ron Rash, there are no false notes ever, just lyrical writing and a strong story."In a country this rural, everyone's connected, if not by blood, then in some other way. In the worst times, the country was like a huge web. The spider stirred and many linked strands vibrated."
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The best retiring sheriff's lament since _No Country For Old Men_. Uncorrected proof copy from Powell's Indiespensibles. Well worth the time, if at times a bit overwrought. An example:"I sit on ground cooling, soon dew-damp. Near me a moldboard plow long left. Honeysuckle vines twine green cords, white flowers attached like Christmas lights. I touch a handle slick from wrist shifts and sweaty grips. Memory of my grandfather's hands, calluses round and smooth as worn coins."This book shifts between several characters, all written in first person. Several times I had to re-read (short) chapters to figure out who 'I' was.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A rather simple plot compared to many of Rash's other books but filled with memorable characters nevertheless. Becky, her story is written in a kind of surreal style. She has had a tragic past, but is now the ranger at the National Forest and is the friend of an old landowner. C. J. came back to town to take a job and now finds that the job has disappeared, leaving him without support for his wife and sons. Barry, a young police officer who quits after a nasty meth bust. Can no longer bear to look at the damage and the worst that people can do to each other. And a sheriff, good friends with Becky, due to retire in a matter of days. Rash's real genius, however, is in painting a picture of the landscape that is both beautiful and poignant. Every little detail, nothing too small escapes his notice. The love of land that he imparts to many of his characters. Simply wonderful. Alternately he wrote one of the most in your face view of a meth addict, how they live, how little they care about anything but the drug. Such a stark contrast to the beautiful setting of the Blue Ridge Mountains. So many great quotes I could copy but this small line just touched me. "As the storm moves on, rain trickles off the leaves like an afterthought." Simple but lovely.ARC from publisher
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    One story my grandfather told me about his days as a sandhog had seemed a tall tale, even to a kid, but later I'd found out it was true. In the years before electricity, what light burned inside the underwater caissons came from candles. At the greatest depths, the pressure was such that the candles wouldn't blow out. The flame would sail off the wick, ricochet around the metal, then resettle on the wick. What my grandfather hadn't told me was that sometimes cables broke and a man would be trapped down there. He'd know the candle was burning up oxygen, and he'd know the flame would not go out, but he'd keep blowing anyway, even with his last breaths, still hoping against hope that, somehow, it might. (Les)I received this uncorrected proof as part of Powell's Indiespensable box this quarter. The story alternates between the perspectives of Les, a retiring sheriff, and his on-and-off-again lady friend Becky, a park superintendent with a dark past. Les has a few loose ends to tie up in the last couple of weeks before his retirement. The mystery of a poisoned trout stream is the case that dominates most of his remaining time. It is a complicated case for Les because the main suspect is Gerald, an elderly man with whom Becky has a deep bond.This is a quiet, slow-moving novel, that suddenly picks up the pace in the second half. The first part of the book is more of a character story, but it becomes a standard whodunit halfway through when the river is poisoned. I greatly preferred Les's chapters over Becky's. Most of her chapters are poetic nature descriptions or flashbacks into her traumatic past. I never really felt like I got a full grasp of her character. The character background stories (Becky with the school shooting and ecoterrorist ex-boyfriend and Les's depressed ex-wife) were threads that weren't completely weaved in and it left me wanting more or even less. I know that the ecoterrorist boyfriend was meant to make the reader and Les doubt Becky as a great judge of character, but I didn't fully get the school shooting connection. It explained her eccentricities, but her strangeness wasn't really integral to the story. I didn't fully grasp the deep connection between Gerald and Becky. I think he may have reminded her of her grandparents, which made her feel a sense of duty towards him. I don't think it was really fully explored or connected. We only see Gerald through the eyes of Les and Becky, but I think he was really well-drawn as as strong, stoic man who has watched the world leave him behind. "That gun was aimed at you a full minute," Jarvis told me later. Your life flashes before you, I've always heard, but it hadn't for me. It was as if I stood in the corner, not so much observing as performing a methodical self-autopsy, not of my body but of my life. I had not been frightened. Instead, I'd felt a calm clarity. Everything inside me, including my heart, seemed suspended, except one thought. What will you miss? A full minute and I'd had no answer. Then the gun was lowered, and I slowly, reluctantly, came back into myself. (Les)Les is a conflicted, flawed person and I felt that he was more well-developed than Becky. Les's main motivation is to set things right before his retirement and to finally be able to answer the question "In the very core of my being, who am I?" in a satisfactory way.Like the pot bribes, Jarvis was letting me know things would be different with him in charge. That was a good thing, but he would learn in time that a sheriff could bend the law for no other reason than what was law and what was right sometimes differed.(Les)The writing itself is very lovely to read. I think it is a credit to the author that I didn't think "Wait, what is this even about?", until I suddenly noticed half of the pages were in my left hand! I really liked the bleak setting and Ron Rash is truly a master at creating the atmosphere of Appalachia. I liked the contrast of the ugliness of man against the serene beauty of nature. The parts about methheads and the river poisoning were the strongest parts for me. The mystery elements were tied up in a satisfying way.I loved the writing and the setting, so I would definitely read another book by this author! I did like this one, it just isn't one of my favorites.Above me that night tiny lights brightened and dimmed, brightened and dimmed. Photinus carolinus. Fireflies synchronized to make a single meadow-wide flash, then all dark between. Like being inside the earth's pulsing heart. I'd slowed my blood-beat to that rhythm. So much in the world that night. (Becky)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    ABOVE THE WATERFALL is a literary mystery, above all, literary. It is a character-driven novel with plot. It is poetic, especially in its descriptions of the natural setting in which most of the story takes place.Les, a sheriff, and Becky, a park ranger, are the two main characters in ABOVE THE WATERFALL. They share a love for the natural world they work and live in. But Les also sees the scum of the earth, including methadone addicts and their "labs." Les’s and Becky‘s first-person accounts are in alternating chapters throughout the book.The mystery: who dumped kerosene in a stream, killing trout important to the livelihoods of a resort owner and his employees?This is a beautiful novel. Ron Rash's writing is gorgeous. Although he emphasizes character, he also gives the reader an intriguing mystery his characters deal with, each with their own baggage.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    UPDATE: Okay, so I forced my eyes to stay open to finish this book last night, and wrote the review while VERY tired. So I was a little harsh. It was good, just not as good as I expected based on his other books. I've edited my review a little in the light of day.

    Mr. Rash, I'm still going to read more of your books!

    ------------
    This book was not nearly as good as The Cove or Serena. The first thing I didn't care for was that the chapters narrated by Becky were so rambling and nonsensical that they were hard to read.

    But maybe Becky's rambling was to show her mixed-up state of mind, even after so many years. Second thing: what was the book's theme, anyway -- that it's okay to be a little corrupt if your heart is in the right place? That each man who wears the sheriff's badge gets to decide where the line sits? I couldn't decide whether to like Les or not. But -- in the light of day -- I guess every good guy's hat is a little bit grayed and worn.

    Still don't feel it is Rash's best work.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is my favorite Ron Rash novel!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Lovely, poetic prose with excellent descriptions of nature and a good feel for current life in the Appalachian country. The characters are interesting but the plot is a bit predictable.

Book preview

Above the Waterfall - Ron Rash

One

Where does any story really begin? One thing can’t happen unless other things happened earlier. I could say this story began with an art class I took in ninth grade, or broken promises, one by Becky Shytle and one by me, or that it began when a shirtsleeve got caught by a hay baler’s tines. Instead, I’ll say it began on the Monday I first saw the blue cell phone, the same phone I held, briefly, in my hand the following Friday.

This all happened three weeks before I retired as county sheriff. There would be a meth bust on Tuesday, but otherwise I figured it to be an easy week—tie up some more loose ends, do a few more final favors, get my retirement paperwork done. I’d already quit coming in before midmorning, letting Jarvis Crowe, my replacement, get used to running things on his own. An easy week, but when I got to the office on Monday, Ruby, our day-shift dispatcher, let me know it would be otherwise.

"C.J. Gant called a few minutes ago, Sheriff. He’s coming to see you. It’s important, he said. Of course we know it’s always important if it involves him or that resort."

We do, I agreed. Where are Jarvis and Barry?

Jarvis is checking out a break-in and Barry’s serving a bench warrant.

Anything else?

Not any crime, Ruby said. Bobbi Moffitt was being her usual nosy self over at the café this morning. Said to me it didn’t seem right for a man to retire at fifty-one. I told her thirty years for a lawman was like aging forty years for regular folks. And it is.

I suppose so, I said. I’m closing my door so I can try to figure out how to download these damn retirement forms.

My grandson can come over and help you.

I’ll figure it out. I’d like to retire without some sixteen-year-old making me feel like an idiot.

What about C.J. Gant?

Send him on in when he gets here.

The red light flickered on my office phone. The message was from Pat Newton, who owned the paper mill outside town. He’d offered me a part-time night watchman job, two twelve-hour shifts, one on Saturday and one on Sunday, starting next month. I need an answer by next week, Les, Pat’s voice said.

Clearing out my office. That was something else I needed to do, though that would be mainly filling trash cans, shredding old files. All I’d take with me would be some books off the shelf, a few things stashed in my desk. And the three paintings on the wall, two framed watercolors I’d done, each with a ribbon proclaiming BEST IN COUNTY, and the print of Edward Hopper’s Freight Car at Truro.

Even Hopper’s boxcars are alone.

That was the first thing Becky had said when she’d entered my office two years ago. Not how most people would start a conversation, but as soon as Becky said it I saw it too—the freight car hitched to no other. Not a single shadow other than its own. The sky empty.

Yes, it seems so, I’d answered that morning, our first exchange like passwords in a Masonic ritual.

I checked my e-mails from Becky, the first from last night.

I wish you could have seen the black-eyed susans Friday night. They were transcendent, Les. Maybe another time you can go. There’s something else, but it’s not good. Darby took Gerald’s lawn mower two weeks ago and still hasn’t returned it. Can you help get it back?

I’ll go see Darby this afternoon, I typed, but it’s Gerald’s fault letting Darby take it in the first place.

Becky wouldn’t see it that way, though. In her eyes Gerald could do no wrong, even though I’d cautioned her that Gerald wasn’t quite the lovable old man that she thought.

Becky’s second e-mail was from 9:06 today.

There was a school shooting in Atlanta this morning.

Anywhere a school shooting happens, not just around here, I want to take extra precautions at the park. Becky had told me that during her first office visit. By then I’d heard the scuttlebutt around town that Locust Creek Park’s new superintendent was a bit quair, as the older folks put it—that she didn’t own her own vehicle, just a bike, and no TV or phone. Not easy to talk to either, people said, some claiming Becky was autistic. I’m not autistic, she’d told me later, I just spent a lot of my life trying to be. New on the job, so overzealous, I’d thought at first. Then Becky had brought up an elementary school shooting in Emory, Virginia, in 1984. Two students and a teacher had been killed. She’d given enough details that I’d asked if someone she knew had been there. I was there, Becky had answered. I’d been curious enough afterward to Google Becky Shytle, but instead of something about the shooting, I’d found a newspaper photo of her and Richard Pelfrey, a terrorist who, had his timer worked right, would have killed more people than Ted Kaczynski and Eric Rudolph combined.

Two years and I still didn’t know what word to use for our relationship. A few dates, a few kisses. But more than anything, a wary out-of-step dance. Except for the first time I’d been in Becky’s cabin. On that evening it had almost become more. I’d brought a bottle of wine and as Becky got us glasses, I’d sat on the couch and surveyed the cabin’s front room, curious to see what it might reveal about her. There was a shelf of books, most connected to nature, but also some poetry and art books, including one I’d borrowed about the cave art in Lascaux. On the fireboard was a crumbling hornet’s nest, a gold pocket watch, and a single photograph. In one corner a butter churn, in another corner a chair, a table, and a lamp. Except for the couch, that was it—no TV or CD player, no clock or radio or computer, no rug. Nothing on the walls, not even a calendar. The photograph of two old people, sun streaked and in an oval frame, seemed, like the rest of the room’s contents, remnants left in a house long abandoned.

That night, for the first time, our kisses were the kind that led to a bed. But our talk was even more intimate, as if the room’s feeling of time turned back allowed us to speak more freely of our pasts. Becky talked about her months with Richard Pelfrey, and I’d told her about my ex-wife Sarah, sharing things I’d never told anyone. Becky had also talked about her childhood, the shooting at her elementary school and what had happened in the months afterward. We spoke of promises.

But with the late hour and empty wine bottle came the feeling that we’d revealed too much, violated something within ourselves, the very thing that had attracted us to each other in the first place. So we had left it there for six months. More than once I’d imagined a listing on an Internet dating site:

Man who encouraged clinically depressed wife to kill herself seeks woman, traumatized by school shooting, who later lived with ecoterrorist bomber.

Sorry to hear about the school shooting, I typed, then remembered I needed to collect my monthly stipend from Jink Hampton. I may be out and about later today. Will try to come by the park. Les

Ruby once asked what sort of relationship Becky and I had. I’d answered that I didn’t know the word for it, but a word came to me now.

Accomplices. Maybe that was what we were.

Two

Somewhere in Arizona a jaguar roams. On this day of another school shooting, such news is so needed. Scat and paw prints confirm the sighting. Gone forever from the United States since the 1940s, many had believed. What more wonder might yet be: ivorybill, bachman’s warbler, even the parakeet once here in these mountains. When I see them in dreams, they are not extinct, just asleep, and I believe if I rouse them from their slumber, we will all awake in the world together.

A fisherman is in the meadow, each backcast and cast a bowstring pulled and released. I walk upstream to check his license. As always, my chest tightens, so hard just to speak, especially the day of a shooting.

The streams are about as low as I’ve seen them in a while, the fisherman says when I hand the license back. I was thinking that I might play golf this morning, and I probably should have. I’ve only had one strike.

He cradles the fly rod in the crook of his arm. I’m about to head back but he points upstream beyond the meadow and the road that leads past Locust Creek Resort to Gerald’s farmhouse.

I bet I’d get plenty of strikes over there, the fisherman says. I heard they’ve stocked so many trout those fish line up like they’re getting served at a cafeteria. You can throw in a bare hook and the trout will hit it. Anyway . . . The man pauses and I raise my eyes. He’s frowning now. Pardon me for holding you up, Ranger. I was just trying to be sociable.

I . . . I’m sorry, I stammer. You aren’t holding me up.

He nods and wades on upstream. It’s almost noon so I return to the park office. I eat lunch at my desk, then pedal out to the Parkway. Bright-colored car tags pass like flashcards. Land levels and I ride slow, a clock-winding pedal and pause. A pickup from Virginia sweeps past, leads me back thirty years to my grandparents’ farm. There, old license plates were a scarecrow’s loud jewelry. Wind set the tin clinking and clanking. But the straw-stuffed flour-sack face stayed silent. Those first months after my parents gave up and sent me to the farm, I’d sometimes stand beside the scarecrow, hoe handle balanced behind my neck, arms draped over. Both of us watchful and silent as the passing days raised a green curtain around us. Soon all we could see was the sky, that and tall barn planks the color of rain.

I had not spoken since the morning of the shooting. Then one day in July my grandparents’ neighbor nodded at the ridge gap and said watershed. I’d followed the creek upstream, thinking wood and tin over a spring, found instead a granite rock face shedding water. I’d touched the wet slow slide, touched the word itself, like the girl named Helen that Ms. Abernathy told us about, whose first word gushed from a well pump. I’d closed my eyes and felt the stone tears. That evening, my grandfather had filled my glass with milk and handed it to me. Thank you, I said. A shared smile between them, from my grandmother’s eyes a few tears. After that, more words each day, then whole sentences, enough to reenter school in September, though I’d stayed on the farm until Christmas.

The Parkway ascends, soon peers over landfall. No one is at the pull-off so I stop. Mountains accordion into Tennessee. Beyond the second ripple, a meadow where I’d camped in June. Just a sleeping bag, no tent. Above me that night tiny lights brightened and dimmed, brightened and dimmed. Photinus carolinus. Fireflies synchronized to make a single meadow-wide flash, then all dark between. Like being inside the earth’s pulsing heart. I’d slowed my blood-beat to that rhythm. So much in the world that night. The next morning as I’d hiked out, I started to step over a log but my foot jerked back. When I looked on the other side, a copperhead lay coiled. Part of me not sight knew it was there. The atavistic like flint rock sparked. Amazon tribes see Venus in daylight. My grandfather needed no watch to tell time. What more might we recover if open to it? Perhaps even God.

I leave my bike at the pull-off. As I enter the woods, the wide, clean smell of balsam firs. Deeper, the odor of shadow-steeped mold. In canopy gaps, the sky through straws of sunlight sips damp leaf meal dry. For a minute, no sound. I gather in the silence, place it inside me for the afternoon. I coast back down the Parkway, the upward buffeting what a kite must feel. I pass a wheat field, its tall gold-gleaming a hurrahing in harvest. Soon Gerald and I will sit on his porch, a tin pan tapping as snapped beans fall. You got no more family than me, Gerald said when he learned my parents were dead and that I had no siblings. He’d told me about his son and his wife and his sister, all younger than him but now gone. I’m tired of being left behind, he’d said one day, eyes misting.

But will be left never by me. Never by me. Never.

Three

C.J. Gant’s daddy had been a decent farmer but bad to drink. He’d show up in town with fifty dollars in his pocket and wake the next day without a nickel. During elementary school, C.J. and his sister wore clothes that would shame a hobo, then had to hand the cashier a ticket to get the welfare lunch. In fourth grade, though, C.J. quit eating the cafeteria’s meal, instead bringing lunches that were nothing more than a slab of fatback in a biscuit. He’d set the brown paper sack in front of him, trying to hide what he ate. Taunts about his father, shoves and trips, books knocked out of

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