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  DOWN

  BY THE

  RIVERSIDE

  JACKIE LYNN

  ST. MARTIN’S MINOTAUR

  NEW YORK

  DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE.

  Copyright © 2006 by Jackie Lynn.

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  For information, address

  St. Martin’s Press,

  175 Fifth Avenue,

  New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lynn, Jackie.

  Down by the riverside : a Shady Grove book /

  Jackie Lynn.—1st St. Martin’s Minotaur ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-312-35230-1

  ISBN-10: 0-312-35230-1

  1. Camp sites, facilities, etc.—Fiction.

  2. North Carolina—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3612.Y547D69 2006

  813'.6—dc22

  2005033985

  First Edition: June 2006

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  IN LOVING MEMORY OF

  LAWRENCE MAURICE FRANKS

  JULY 19, 1942—JUNE 12, 2004

  AND HE SHALL BE LIKE A TREE

  PLANTED BY THE STREAMS OF WATER

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  The First Day One

  The Second Day Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  The Third Day Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  The Fourth Day Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Another Day Twenty-Three

  Acknowledgments

  DOWN

  BY THE

  RIVERSIDE

  I Love all Things which Flow

  —attributed to Edward Abbey

  Gonna lay down my burden

  Down by the riverside

  Down by the riverside

  Down by the riverside.

  Gonna lay down my burden

  Down by the riverside

  Gonna study war no more.

  THE

  FIRST

  DAY

  Trouble don’t come always

  That’s what the preachers say

  But I’ve seen so much trouble

  I’m weary every day.

  I think I’ll sail to kinder ports

  I think I may be free

  I think maybe today’s the day

  Love’s gonna come to me.

  ONE

  Three days before I arrived in West Memphis, Arkansas, just before dawn, it was said that Lawrence Franklin V, the undertaker from the south side of town, dressed in his finest black suit, cut a small sprig of a purple flower—lilac from his mother’s garden—placed it in the narrow slit sewed in the corner of his lapel, got into his car, drove down to the Mississippi River, walked past her muddy banks, and drowned.

  He was fifty-six years old, a confirmed bachelor, the son of Lawrence Franklin IV, grandson of Lawrence Franklin III, great-grandson of Lawrence Franklin, Jr., great great-grandson of Lawrence Franklin, Sr. Across generations and at consecutive intervals, each one of the Franklin men had served as the director and owner of Franklin’s Family Funerals.

  They had buried slaves, former slaves, children and grandchildren of slaves, and many more who had lived their lives in freedom. Like most of us, Lawrence Franklin V bore out his fifty-six years somewhere between the two states of human existence. He was never somebody else’s chattel, but more often than not, his dreams and memories were bound by old and indelible chains.

  Of course, at the time of my arrival I knew nothing of a dead man bearing the same last name as my mother, the same name I would claim for myself. I knew nothing of Lawrence Franklin V or of the watery details of his suicide. I knew nothing at all of life and death in West Memphis, Arkansas. I was a woman swimming through my own muddy currents, trying to keep from drowning in my own undertakings. I had no knowledge of a funeral director whose lungs filled with river water and whose heart had just been satisfied.

  I was not planning to stay in West Memphis. I was on my way southwest, to New Mexico or Arizona, to work as a traveling nurse or maybe even something completely out of my profession like a museum director or a manicurist. I was on my way to somewhere far and fast from Rocky Mount, North Carolina. I was on my way to anything other than life familiar.

  Arkansas was supposed to be only a gas stop. Maybe time enough for lunch or a good walk. I was not expecting to stay. But my 1987 Ford Bronco, pulling my travel trailer, sputtered and skipped down the interstate, finally stalling at the Chevron station at Exit 280, just across the Memphis Bridge.

  It was a man by the name of Ledford Pickering who told me about the Shady Grove Campground, down past the oil rigs and the horse pastures, across the railroad tracks and out into the tree-lined path that opened out on the river like the dreams of some boat captain.

  He told me about the campground after he heard the station manager say he couldn’t get to my problem until later in the afternoon, that he wasn’t sure the Bronco would be fixed by morning. Ledford Pickering was standing close enough to weigh out the details of my situation and was interested enough to think of some solution.

  Ledford, a career trucker who had just finished his shift and had driven his old Ford pickup over to the station to fill up before heading out for a few hours of late-day fishing, offered to hook my camper up to the back of his truck and take me to the site. He was set up to pull his boat and trailer, but since he had brought only his truck to the station and since he lived near the campground, he didn’t think there was any problem driving me over.

  The mechanic at the station winked at Ledford like he had seen this before, smiled, and turned his head aside so as not to watch me as I made up my mind. And even though my mama was sure to sit up in her grave making a face wide with shame and Rip would have never believed I would do such a thing, I jumped in the truck with a man I didn’t know, hooked my camper up to his trailer hitch, and let him take me to a campground that may or may not have existed. I was at a time and place in my life where I was ripe for adventure.

  It was just after the intersection with Highway 55, at the stop sign next to the Mexican restaurant, that we heard all the sirens and stopped while the police cars and and the fire truck hurried past us and headed in the direction we were going.

  “Must be something awful,” I said to Ledford, who rolled down his window and waved at the men in the fire truck.

  “Nah, around here, doesn’t have to be anything to get that much attention. Probably a fight in the trailer park or a horse stuck in the electric fence. If it were bigger than that, the Tennessee patrollers would be crossing over.”

  He turned up the volume on his radio. It was a country music station, a song about a woman leaving town with her daughter. Ledford knew all the words.

  “Lucas Boyd and his wife, Rhonda, own the campground, but they got an Asian woman running it. Her and Rhonda’s mama. Lucas likes to run up and down the river. They’re gone a lot.”

  Another police car sped past us as Ledford slowly pulled back onto the road and turned left at the signs f
or the campground.

  “It’s a nice place out here. Some developer from Nashville wanted to buy it last year, but Lucas wouldn’t sell. He thinks campers ought to have a good place to vacation, too. Not just the rich people.”

  With all the fancy campers and trailer homes I had seen in the magazines and on the interstate, I wondered why Lucas Boyd and Ledford seemed to think that it wasn’t rich people staying in campgrounds; but I guess they were right. Camping is a poor man’s holiday. Or for me, a poor woman’s life.

  My travel trailer is a seventeen-foot Casita, a simple laid-up fiberglass design with a double-size bed, a table with captain chairs, a small bathroom, and a kitchen that has a two-eyed stove, a sink, a microwave, and a nice-sized refrigerator. Rip and I drove to Rice, Texas, to the manufacturing and distribution center about five years ago when we dreamed of weekends at the beach and when I still slept curved within his warm body, perfectly still, perfectly at ease with the place where I lay.

  Over the five years of motor-home ownership, we went camping only four times, including the two nights in Texas after we bought the camper. That time we stayed at Grapevine Lake, near the airport, outside of Dallas. I cooked fish on the propane stove while he signed all the warranty cards and walked around and around the rig, trying to figure out where you attach the sewer hose. Both nights we crawled into bed, laughing at how uncomfortable it was without a good mattress and how he bumped his head every time he rolled over.

  I had taken an extra job on the weekends working a shift in the emergency room and sold some of our furniture to buy our little vacation house on wheels. And even though I was entitled to more than what I got from the divorce settlement, after the long year of fighting and losing and after almost twenty years of marriage, all I wanted was that camper.

  All I wanted was a chance to get away and belong to something that I could think of as mine. In spite of the fact there were a few memories lodged in the carpeted corners of that little trailer, tucked inside the tiny compartments and folded in the stacks of towels under the bed, it was the one place, the one thing that we both knew he never really wanted. It was the one thing we both agreed was completely mine.

  The other things—the house, a newly remodeled ranch-style built in a clearing off the main road from Rocky Mount to Battleboro, oak wood paneling and new ceramic tile in the kitchen; the dining-room table and chairs, dark cherry, smooth as skin; the hideaway bed we kept for the company that never came; even the lawn furniture that I picked out from some fancy catalog I found at the beauty parlor and had delivered while he was away at a business conference—everything we had was all somehow ours, belonging to the two of us, shared property, combined ownership.

  After seeing him sitting in that restaurant, all leaned over across the table, holding that girl’s long delicate hands, whispering something that made her blush and drop her face away from him, her blond hair cascading down her shoulders and draped over her pink cheeks, the grin unbroken and spread across his splendid face, after seeing all that played out before me like some bigger-than-life Technicolor movie, I desired nothing that bore resemblance to who I thought we were.

  The trailer that he considered too small for the marriage, too small for the two of us together, was all I said I wanted.

  As we got ready to take the turn into the campground, where a big wooden sign marked the entrance to Shady Grove, an ambulance pulled around us and suddenly it seemed as if Ledford had become interested in all the commotion.

  “You want to go see?” he asked as if we were old friends out for an afternoon ride.

  I shrugged because at that point I was in no hurry, and he turned off his signal and followed the vehicle down the paved road that twisted and curved into gravel and finally ended right at the banks of the Mississippi River.

  When he stopped his truck and killed the engine, I got out, and without speaking to each other, we both started walking toward the police officers, the firemen, and the recently arrived emergency medical technicians.

  It seemed like I was on duty, as if I had been called from the hospital to assist some injured citizen. I felt the stares of a few policemen as Ledford walked over to the group standing near the squad car. I heard them greet one another as I inched a little closer to where the ambulance was parked. Once I saw what was happening, the recovery of a dead man from the water, I knew there wasn’t anything a nurse could do.

  I folded my arms across my chest and watched as the EMTs, a young muscular man and a woman, about twenty-five, got out of the vehicle and walked over to the body. It was completely out of the river. As the woman knelt by the victim’s head, I noticed the way she turned and looked away. I assumed there was a stench.

  She stood up and tucked her head beside her shoulder, and the two paramedics returned to the ambulance. I figured they were going to get the black plastic body bag.

  One of the policemen, the sheriff, I think, walked over, placed a handkerchief across his face, and appeared to make a positive identity. He said something to one of the deputies who had joined him, and the two of them laughed quietly while they glanced around nervously.

  I saw the dead man as he lay on the bank. He was wearing a suit or what was left of one, the jacket ripped, the pants torn, his feet bare, the current of the river probably yanking off his shoes and socks. I couldn’t make out his features, only noticed that he was dark-skinned.

  It was easy to say, however, even from as far away as I stood, even as a group of policemen and firemen gathered around the victim, just from how the body lay upon that riverbank, crumpled and still, that he was dead.

  The two emergency medical technicians were standing at the ambulance taking out what they needed when Ledford walked over to where I was waiting. We watched as a few of the men went to the vehicle and stood talking to the two paramedics as they unfolded the body bag.

  “Drowning,” the truck driver said, as if I needed an explanation.

  I nodded.

  “Anybody you know?” I asked.

  “Funeral director,” he answered. “From south side,” he added, as if I should know what that meant. “Been missing a couple of days.”

  He shook his head and looked out across the river. “We find a lot of ’em out here,” he said, and although I wasn’t sure I knew what he meant, I nodded my head as if I understood exactly what he was saying.

  “Well, I guess we’ve seen enough,” he noted.

  We both turned and walked back to his truck and got in.

  He whipped around the large grassy lot, waved at the policemen, and as we passed him, I noticed the stare of the sheriff in my direction. Ledford pulled out onto the paved road and turned down the entrance to the campground. We drove a couple hundred yards and he stopped.

  “Here’s the office,” he said, pointing with his chin over to a small log cabin situated on the left side.

  There was a narrow porch with one chair in the middle and an ice machine pushed against the back wall. The OPEN sign was swinging across the window in the door and a hummingbird darted along the top ledge from one feeder to the next.

  “Tell her you want a river view,” he said as he pulled a pack of gum from his front pocket and held it out to me as an offer. “The sites in the woods are cooler, but the bugs are bad.”

  I smiled and declined the gum. I stepped out of his truck and walked inside. A small Asian woman was talking on the phone. She quickly ended her conversation and put the receiver down in its cradle. She glanced up at me and then out the window at the camper.

  “Dead man,” she said, shaking her head. “Found him washed up about a half a mile upriver.”

  I nodded, but didn’t explain that I had just seen the body. I figured it would sound odd that we had stopped up the river to watch them pull the man out before I checked in.

  “Bad luck for campground,” she added.

  She looked out the window again and noticed Ledford driving the truck. She waved at him. He nodded in recognition. Then she turned back to me as if
trying to size up the situation.

  “Two adults?” she asked.

  “No, he’s just brought me out here.” I thought this sounded suspicious so I explained. “My car broke down. It’s at the gas station on I-Forty. This gentleman was kind enough to tow me out here.”

  She studied me. “How many nights?”

  “I’m not sure,” I answered. “I guess just one.”

  “Jimmy Novack?” she asked.

  I didn’t know what she meant. She waited.

  “The gas station. It a Chevron? Jimmy Novack’s station?”

  “Oh,” I replied. “Yes, it was a Chevron station.”

  “Three nights, four days at least,” she said, reaching across the desk and handing me a form. “Just fill out the top part.”

  “Four days? Really?” I asked. “I don’t think it’s that much of a problem, just a hose or belt of some kind. I’ve never had to leave my vehicle for three nights with a mechanic.”

  “Four days,” she responded. “Jimmy Novack always take four days.”

  I sighed, figuring there was no reason to argue with her, filled out the form, and handed her my Visa credit card. She slid it through the machine and I watched nervously to see if it still worked.

  I had asked Rip not to cancel that card until I could get settled. It was the one credit card I kept, thinking I might need it after I decided to leave North Carolina. It was also the only card that I had been using for more than six years since I was trying to earn points toward a trip to Paris for the two of us to share on our twentieth anniversary. It was going to be a surprise.

  We were only 9,000 points short when I noticed on a monthly statement that we had received a bonus of 1,500 points when we stayed at the Marriott Hotel in Raleigh, a special offer for Visa card members. I knew I had never stayed at the Marriott Hotel in Raleigh, and I knew that the date recorded on the statement was the weekend Rip was supposed to be in Florida, at some car race with his brother.