Deep River Burning (5 page)

Chapter 8

Orphans

One by one like a line of candles extinguishing in a sudden breeze, the houses of Adena were left abandoned and desolate. The uncertainty of the future living on top of an unstoppable mine fire became a risk that was too high. The murder of Ted and Savannah Oakley sent a shockwave through the town that altered its character and provided the impetus for relocation for many of the townspeople. Some Adena residents still had an obsession with staying in town even under the insistence of the state that they move. Denver thought that it was just like those people who wouldn’t move away from the base of a volcano even though they had sufficient warning that it was going to erupt. Is it denial, loyalty, love, fear of change, or suicide that leads one to be so closely connected to their place that they would die for it? It might be something deeper than all those things, stirring the core of one’s scattered and neglected psychic rooms.

The investigation also intensified and the townspeople became further alienated from one another. Aunt Rosemary did everything she could to be a companion to Denver, but they didn’t know each other, mostly because of the vast miles between them. Florida is a long way from Pennsylvania and the communication between Rosemary and Savannah usually did not include Denver. The regular phone calls dwindled to a trickle and eventually disappeared entirely.

Rosemary tried to hold a conversation with Denver during dinner, but the usual bustle around the kitchen table was provoked by an overwhelming sense of quiet ritual. Without her parents and neighbors filling the kitchen with all the manners that make life human, dinner was a duty to Denver, a bodily motion necessary for survival. She answered Rosemary’s questions with detachment. After picking at her meal, she went to a peaceful place in the house and read books about environmental disasters that she found on her father’s bookshelves.

Outside her bedroom window were fields and trees and darkness. One night, a slight tap sounding like the rap of a small, sharp stone hit the window. Then there was a second, much louder rap on the window. She turned to the window but she couldn’t see into the darkness. As she strained to see, she saw a figure standing behind the largest oak tree in the back yard, just below her window. A flashlight turned on and there appeared a rather creepy illumination of Josh’s face with the light coming up from his chin. He was dressed in worn jeans and a tight old, white t-shirt, which was typical for him. He was barefoot, which she could never figure out. She declined and closed the window.

Josh turned off the flashlight and let his hand fall to his side. He thought that it was a perfect summer night. The crickets and tree frogs echoed off the hills, and the lightning bugs flashed all around him. He put the flashlight in his mouth and started to climb up to her window using whatever would support his foothold. He fell several times and chuckled to himself, but wouldn’t give up. He wanted to show Denver that life was not over for her. He wanted to be the one part of her life that did not change in the ongoing sea of turbulence that surrounded her. She was his best friend, and she knew he had always been driven to please her.

When he reached her window, he was hanging onto a sturdy drain pipe with his left foot clinging to the window sill like a petrified cat. He swung his foot forward and kicked the glass.

“What are you doing? Are you insane?” Denver asked.

“You know I am. This shouldn’t surprise you,” he replied out of breath. Denver opened the window and he climbed in, cutting his foot on a sharp edge of the sill.

“Hey, look at that,” Josh said looking at his foot in amazement.

“Shhh . . . if Aunt Rosemary hears you in here, she won’t like it.”

“Why? I’m harmless.”

“Now that I think about it, Josh. You could have just used the front door.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” he asked.

Denver went out of the room and brought back a damp cloth for his foot. She knew that he would hurt himself without wearing shoes, but the bare feet were part of Josh’s free-spirited frivolity that she found so endearing, so she didn’t say anything about it. He stared at her intently without speaking for a moment.

“Do you want to go night fishing?” he asked.

“I can’t go fishing anymore.”

“Why?”

She had her back to Josh pretending to be too busy for his question. “Because, everything is different now.”

“Orphans don’t go fishing?” he tried to joke.

“Not this orphan.”

“You’re not an orphan.”

An awkward silence passed between them as Josh tried to think of something appropriate to say, but failed.

“Did you hear about Ray Sinclair?” he asked.

“No, what happened?”

“Someone slashed his tires.”

“Why?” she inquired.

“Because he supports the relocation efforts.”

“This whole town is crazy. I wonder what will happen next.”

“It can’t be worse than what has already happened,” Josh said.

Denver turned from Josh to avoid the look on his face, and so he couldn’t see the hurt she wore on her own. There was no telling what might happen next. And for the first time, conversation between the two of them was difficult. It had always been easy for them. There was always something to say and although they didn’t always agree, it was easy for them to speak to one another and be honest.

“And how about you?” Josh asked, breaking the silence. “Have you gone crazy?”

“It wouldn’t be inconceivable. But what can they do to me now? I’m no threat. My father was the threat; my mother was the witness. I am merely the remaining living collateral damage.”

“Well, I think we are all collateral damage, we are all orphans,” Josh said, looking around her bedroom walls decorated with pressed autumn leaves and photographs of the river. “In some ways, we’re all alone in the world. Some people who have parents are still orphans. And others would be better off if they never had any parents at all. It’s much easier to say that you don’t have parents, than to say that you do but that they don’t give a rat’s ass about you and what you do.” Josh’s eyes were lowered to the floor as he spoke, but after a long pause, he looked up and smiled. “But, you know what I think, Denver? Adena is just a tiny dot on a grand fantastic map where we are all given directions to anywhere. Think of all the places you could go. The world is full of cities, farms, and quirky small towns. Where do you want to go, Denver?”

She pondered Josh’s question for a moment and resolved that she wanted to go everywhere. He loved that answer, and they stayed up until three in the morning making plans for all the places they wanted to go. They got out a map and charted a course for their first journey that would be to the US southwestern border. It was a wonderful, exciting dream they planned. He wanted to hike in Alaska and drive down the coast of California while she wanted to see the Grand Canyon, the Colorado mountains, and the salt flats in Utah. She always wanted to visit Denver because her father was from there. He loved the city so much, he had named his only child after it.

Hope has healing properties, she thought to herself. It can make the thickest wall, real or imagined, disintegrate like tissue paper over a candle flame. Hopelessness is the feeling of being drained of all the spirit and lightness that is the source of one’s energy. Denver was filled with a dream again, no matter how faint, a reason to go on, a hope for a better time, and a sense of the larger world to explore. She never really thought about how small Adena really was because she knew the town meant everything to the people who lived there. But still, there was an edge inside of her that wouldn’t allow her to simply abandon the town and its problems. She was her father’s daughter, but she wasn’t sure how he would have advised her. Would he have told her to get out or stay and fight? She imagined that he would have told her to live life with purpose. What would her mother have said? She would have told her to live her life with grace and integrity, to manage her anger, and to follow her heart.

As Josh was leaving, he instinctively went for the window to climb down the drain pipe.

“No, Josh. I can walk you downstairs. Aunt Rosemary won’t care that you are here. She might wonder how you got in, but she won’t care that you are here.”

“Where’s the fun in that? Besides, I made a grand entrance and for the sake of maintaining balance, I need to make a grand exit.”

“You’re going to hurt yourself again.”

“That’s too bad because going out the front door would entirely ruin the sense of adventure that got me up here. Someday I’ll be old and the thought of climbing a drain pipe will be out of the question. So, I might as well act reckless and silly now.”

“It is truly a gift how you can be so adult one moment and a playful child the next,” she said, laughing as quietly as possible.

“Who knows? As long as I’m not stricken with arthritis, maybe I’ll be climbing up drain pipes when I’m fifty years old if it makes you smile. You will never get rid of me, Denver. I’m like mold. I will keep growing on you until you realize that Joshua Bleu is the only cheese for you.”

“Who is Joshua Bleu? Do you want a rope or something?”

“All I want is a safe walk home without a mine emission blowing up my shorts.”

“Goodnight, Josh.” She laughed and watched him descend quickly down the side of the house and run like a fugitive with his small flashlight waving back at her like a lighthouse from a distant wave on a tremulous sea. She looked up at the sky, and even though there were so many stars, the loneliness was as unbearable and unfathomable as the vast distance of the solar system that glistened its way through time.

The truth was, she didn’t want to be alive. Not when the beauty had become so painful. She felt raw and exposed. She felt that everything around her was too big, too close, too loud, too chaotic, and too sharp. She heard the voice of reason speaking to her of suffering and strength and moving on. She wanted to fly. She wanted to fly far away. When she was a little girl, she had dreams of flying that relaxed her body so entirely she thought that the sensation must have been what it felt like to be on some sort of drug, the kind that makes every cell and neuron feel sweet and buzzing with warmth. In her dream, the air was always warm. The wind was always soft, and she was lighter and stronger than she had ever thought possible.

That night after Josh left, she went to bed and closed her eyes and thought of flying. She imagined a downy white glow around her that lifted her up and took her away. She felt the wave of comfort and swirling sleepiness pass over her like a warm sea current. But she didn’t dream of flying. Instead she dreamed of terror. She dreamed that she was lying there, that night, in her bed, with the white light around her, but it didn’t protect her and lift her to a softer world. It swung her over her bed violently, as if to mock her like some out-of-body experience of horror. She felt the weight of her body increase its velocity as she swung so quickly she couldn’t focus on the room around her.

She woke up terrified like so many nights when she tried desperately to sleep, to have just a few moments of peace. She told herself over and over that it was only a nightmare even though she had woken up dizzy and nauseous from the swinging. She ran to the window to see if Josh was still there, but she knew he wasn’t. She had seen him run away like a white sail torn from the mast blowing out to sea. She gripped the windowsill and looked up at the intolerable sky where at each moment, particles collided to create another universe that went deeper into the unknown. There must have been thousands of them by now, and there was she, feeling overwhelmed in a cosmos that seemed to only acknowledge her with a blank stare.

Chapter 9

Rosemary

Denver peered into the guest bedroom where Aunt Rosemary was staying for her extended visit. The room smelled good to her, like dried flowers and herbs, and on the night stand there was a book with words on the cover in a language Denver did not recognize and a picture of a man sitting in a meditation posture. Next to the book was a small cross necklace stacked in a little gold ball. She wondered if there was a knot in the chain. One evening, after Rosemary came home from the farmer’s market with fresh vegetables, Denver posed the question in a rather forthright and unexpected way to her aunt.

“Are you Christian?” Denver asked while sitting at the kitchen table leafing through the mail. Rosemary looked up from the colander where she put the clean vegetables and asked, “Where did that question come from?”

“I was snooping in your room a few days ago and saw a gold necklace with a cross on it.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I don’t call myself a Christian.”

“Really? I’m not sure, but I think that makes you a heathen in this part of the world.”

“Was that not the answer you were expecting?” Rosemary asked.

“I guess I don’t expect people to be so honest about their religious views. A lot of times I hear a person say one thing, but then do another, or they just don’t say anything at all. So, why do you wear a cross necklace?”

“Because I like cross necklaces. A cross can be a symbol for many things, not just the teachings of Christ. But I have noticed that people in this area don’t like to talk about their religious views, among other things. Perhaps maintaining the status quo is the religion. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t open the can of worms. Sweep the problems under the rug. Maybe it’s a way of avoiding change. Ritual is a way of life for many people.”

“Are you atheist?’ Denver asked.

“No, I’m definitely not atheist.”

“What do you believe?”

Rosemary picked up a box of green tea from the counter. “Would you like a cup?” Denver declined. Rosemary put water in the tea kettle, reached into the cupboard for a coffee mug. She found one that said “Delaware Water Gap” on the side with a picture of a green landscape and a gorge. She placed her tea bag in the mug and sat down next to Denver at the table.

“I believe in the evolution of the soul,” she replied.

“Reincarnation?”

“Yes.”

“What about heaven and hell?” Denver inquired.

“Well, sometimes I think when we try to contemplate the meaning of life and death, it’s like an ant trying to contemplate the purpose and functions of a bicycle. But if you pressed me for an answer, I would say heaven and hell are right here on earth depending on what you do and what you think. But I do believe there is a place, the other side, where souls wait until the right time and place to be reborn. I don’t think there is anything to be afraid of because it is a place where there is no concept of good and bad, just experiences, and all these experiences help the soul to evolve. Here on earth, we tend to judge everything and create dichotomies and dualisms so that we often have two sides that are at war with one another. But I think we all choose. We choose when we are born, where we are born, we choose our parents and our friends. We choose our experiences, and on a soul level, we have already chosen when we are going to die.”

“With those beliefs it sounds like you really don’t have to worry about much if everything is already figured out,” Denver said as the tea kettle began to whistle. Rosemary got up from the table with her mug, poured the hot water, and sat down again.

“In a way that’s true. We worry too much when we should just have faith that everything is as it should be, but it’s also important to learn your lessons and evolve. Otherwise you will continue to create suffering for yourself and others. You will continue to experience the same challenges until you learn what your soul needs to learn.”

“What happens when you learn everything and you are fully evolved?”

“You break the cycle of rebirth and work from the other side,” Rosemary replied.

“If what you are saying is true, then mom and dad chose to die. I don’t understand why they would want to die now,” Denver said as tears began to gather in her eyes. “They weren’t that old. They seemed happy. They mattered to people, especially to me.”

“It’s not for us to know, Denver. Maybe they were ready to move on. They learned what they needed to learn in this lifetime. But I want to tell you one more thing that may not make sense to you right now, but I hope you will think about it.”

“What is that?”

“It is your choice to grieve over the death of your parents.”

“What do you mean it is my choice? What am I supposed to do, throw a party?”

“I’m not saying that it is wrong to be sad about it, I’m just saying that it is a choice. Think about why you are grieving. Your parents are not hurting. They are just fine. You’re not doing them any favors by suffering. Maybe you are feeling sorry for yourself, but you don’t need to. You are a smart, resourceful young woman. You will be fine and you will always be surrounded by people who love you. You told me once that you would never want to live in Florida because you love having the four seasons, but it’s the same cycle. And in the winter, nature isn’t really dead, it’s only asleep waiting to be reborn.”

As Denver listened to her Aunt Rosemary talk, it dawned on her that she never saw Rosemary upset about the death of her own sister and brother-in-law. She was beyond it. Even at the funeral, she was emotionally poised, not hard or cold or stoic, but a placid lake in the middle of a rolling rainstorm of sighs and cries.

The next morning, Aunt Rosemary went into Denver’s bedroom to tell her of an accident on south Highway 61, just outside of Adena. “Was anyone hurt?” Denver asked. Rosemary said that she didn’t know but that she heard on the news that the accident was related to the mine fire. Denver got up, dressed herself quickly, and went to see the accident. Aunt Rosemary went with her. When they arrived at the scene, they saw a lot of smoke up ahead in the distance. There were cars parked everywhere and orange tape blocking off the area to keep everyone out. One of the police officers who was also investigating the murder of her parents recognized Denver and walked over to speak to her.

“Hello Ms. Oakley,” he said politely.

“What happened?” Denver asked without saying hello.

“Well, there was a subsidence underneath the road and at this time Highway 61 may have to be closed down. But there’s no cause for alarm.”

“What kind of subsidence?”

“Runnin’ ’bout ten feet in length, two feet wide. The temperature just taken reads seven hundred seventy degrees Fahrenheit.”

“Isn’t there a natural gas pipeline along this highway adjacent to the subsidence?” Denver asked, knowing there was a pipeline from studying her father’s maps.

“If there is, you shouldn’t be concerned about it. We’ll take care of everything,” he said with an air of condescension.

“Are the people who were driving hurt?” Aunt Rosemary asked.

“They’re going to be just fine. Like I said, it is best for you two little ladies to get home and not worry ‘bout what’s going on here. I know you’re still upset about your parents and all, Denver, but—”

“Officer,” Denver began. “It’s going to cost at least three hundred thousand dollars for a hole like that to be filled with fly ash that is not going to solve the problem anyway. You’re over there staring into the hole in disbelief as if a burning mine, where the coal pillars have been robbed, is actually supposed to hold up a highway while my parents are dead, my best friend nearly died in a sink hole, most of my friends have moved, and many other people’s lives are in danger or are being torn apart by this disaster that no one wants to take responsibility for. I also know that crucial information about the status of the fire is being kept hidden in a private file in the governor’s office and that it is no doubt
your
job to keep people like me from knowing about it and causing trouble. Do you care about the welfare of this town, or is being a police officer here a spectator sport for you?”

The police officer opened his mouth to speak and said, “Now listen—” but Denver quickly interrupted him.

“No, you listen,” Denver said calmly. “Officer Frick, tonight on the local news, if I don’t hear
all
the information about this subsidence
and
the gas pipeline, tomorrow the information is going to spread across town like wildfire.”

As she walked away from the scene, she turned back and looked once again at the severed highway that looked like a gaping war wound with vaporous blood pouring from it. There was no question in her mind anymore about what needed to be done. That evening she hung signs all over Adena calling for an emergency mine fire meeting to take place the following evening in the town hall. Some of the people who saw her put up the signs looked at her with suspicion or as if they weren’t taking her the least bit serious. But she didn’t care. Someone would show up, and she was going to cause enough of a scene so that those who didn’t attend would hear about it.