Down by the Riverside Read online

  It wasn’t long after that, that I spotted him in the restaurant with that girl. Me staring through the window like some hungry orphan. The waiter suddenly looking up from the table at me as if he recognized my disappointment. The slow motion acknowledgment of a lie. After that, I quit counting the points and I never read the statements.

  A few months later the UPS man delivered a new set of luggage, that expensive kind with thick brown leather, the kind with the name embroidered on the strip beneath the handle. Rip had ordered three pieces as a reward for using that Visa card. He said that he thought he could use them on his business trips, that he saw them in the magazine and ordered them for us.

  I never told him about the surprise vacation I was planning or the way I had been using that card so carefully, counting the points like a child adding up her coins, day after day. I never told him that I expected that he would love me for twenty years and that I thought we’d order wine and cheese using the French words I had learned from cassette tapes and dance beneath summer stars all alone on one of the little bridges that passed over the Seine.

  I never told him anything about what I knew or didn’t know. I just asked him to let me use the card until I could open up my own line of credit.

  The machine hummed and spat out the receipt and the woman behind the counter yanked it out and placed it in front of me to sign. Then she took out a map and pointed to the site she had chosen for me. It was a nice pull-through, with full hookup, 30 amp, water, sewer, even cable for the television. It was the last site on the river row, number 76.

  “Pets on leash,” she added as I turned toward the door, “and leave your garbage on the picnic table. I pick it up every morning.”

  I opened the door. “Thank you,” I said as I walked out onto the porch.

  “Ledford will show you everything.” I heard the laughter in her voice.

  I closed the door behind me. The phone had started to ring. I got back into the truck and pulled the door closed.

  “You get a river site?” he asked as he turned down the volume on the radio.

  “Number Seventy-six,” I replied.

  “Oh, that’s a good one,” he said as he pulled his truck into gear. “You got a whole side to yourself.”

  He drove ahead on the gravel road and then turned right on a dirt path toward the Mississippi River. There was a long row of campers only about fifty feet from the bank. He turned left and drove to the end of the row. He was right. It was a nice spot.

  He pulled through and stopped and we both got out. As he started to unhook the camper from the hitch, I stood outside and stared across the river. It was brown and moving fast. Pieces of driftwood hurried by as water swirled and capped in small white waves.

  A barge was stopped and docked across the river at a long, sandy island. To the right, downstream, around a curve, I could still see flashing lights and small groups of people huddled together. I thought about what I had just seen, a dead man lifted from the arms of the muddy water.

  “You know how to get everything connected?” Ledford asked as he unchained the final hitch that held us together. He was in a squatted position, bent over the connection between his vehicle and my travel trailer.

  I turned around and walked to the rear of his truck. I nodded. I learned everything about hooking and unhooking before I left North Carolina.

  I watched as Ledford slowly cranked and released the ball of his trailer hitch from the attachment on the camper. He pushed my camper slightly away from his truck and tightened the chain around the long silver bar and then reattached the lock, pulling the two ends together.

  “There,” he said and stood up admiring his work, sliding his hands down the front of his pants. “You’re all disconnected.”

  He looked at his watch. “You sure you don’t need any more help?” he asked, eyeing me to see if I really knew how to set up camp.

  “No, I’m good,” I answered.

  I figured he wanted to get out of there and go fishing and I suddenly thought that maybe I should offer him some money for the service he had provided. I went back around to the truck and retrieved my purse. Ledford walked to the river and stared down toward the spot where everyone had gathered, the spot where we had just been, the scene of the recovery.

  “Dang,” he said, as if he had just thought about it. “I bet that means they close Parker’s Road.”

  He walked to where I was standing.

  “I really appreciate you helping me.” I reached inside my purse for my wallet. “I’d be happy to pay you for your trouble.”

  I knew my cash was low, and even though I was sincere in my offer, I was hopeful he’d decline.

  He did.

  “Nah,” he answered as he opened his door and got in. “No trouble.” And he started his engine.

  “By the way,” he said as he shifted into gear and stepped on the brake. “I never asked you what your name is or where you were going.”

  He turned to face me as I stood just a few feet from his truck.

  I waited a minute, watching the river run past.

  “Rose Franklin,” I said, using only my first and middle name, my mother’s maiden name, just trying it out to see how it sounded. “And here,” I added, just like I knew it was meant to be. “I was going here.”

  He grinned and raised his chin at me. “Well, then, Ms. Rose Franklin, I’m glad I was able to get you where you needed to be.”

  He stuck his arm out the window, his elbow bent and resting on the frame of the door. “This is a good place.”

  And he held up his hand in a wave of good-bye, pulled away from my trailer, cut the corner, and drove out of the campground.

  I watched the dust lift and settle behind him, and then I turned back around to study the narrow stretch of muddy water that a man I never knew, a man who shared the same name as my mother, a man by the name of Lawrence Franklin V, had chosen as his place to die.

  THE

  SECOND

  DAY

  Roll on down, Sister

  Roll on down.

  Judgment Day here

  The lost been found.

  Roll on down, Sister

  Roll on down.

  Freedom’s for sale

  We Gloryland bound

  Roll on down, Sister

  Roll on down.

  Bring my love

  To the resting ground.

  Roll on down, Sister

  Roll on down.

  TWO

  The sun was high and bright by the time I awoke the next morning. I rolled out of bed and immediately thought of food.

  It had taken me longer than I had expected to get my travel trailer set up after being delivered to the site by Ledford. By the time the sun went down I had everything completed, but I was tired and fell asleep immediately, getting up only once during the night sometime just after a storm had rolled through.

  I had filled up my refrigerator with food in North Carolina, but I had not eaten since breakfast on the day of my arrival to West Memphis. I was hungry.

  I went quickly to relieve myself in my little toilet, brushed my teeth, splashed water on my face, and then fixed a peanut butter sandwich, sliced an apple, poured a glass of milk, opened the blinds by the table, and sat down to eat.

  A few folks were walking along the path by the river. Two little girls were playing near an old landing, a small patch of ground with a single tree fixed upon it. One girl was bent down, near the tree, picking up rocks or pieces of trash and placing them near the other one who sat on the bench, swinging a long, crooked branch from the tree.

  Outside my window, straight ahead at the motor home next to mine, a police officer was talking to a couple standing near the gravel drive. I couldn’t hear the conversation. I could only see that the man was shaking his head while the woman shielded her eyes with her hand, watching the two girls. The officer was taking notes.

  I finished my sandwich, cleaned up after myself, changed into shorts and a T-shirt, and was making the be
d when I heard a knock at my door. I peeked out the window and saw that it was the policeman I had just seen who was talking to the people staying next to me. I opened the door.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, pulling out the word ma’am with a long drawl. “Don’t mean to bother you.”

  I smiled. “No bother.”

  I stepped out from the doorway and landed in front of the officer, who moved a few steps back, giving me room.

  I was glad I was dressed, glad I had eaten and managed to appear prepared for the day, for visitors, for questions. As I moved outside, I noticed that the couple from next door was now watching me and that the two little girls had stopped playing and were looking in my direction.

  Suddenly, I felt guilty and began to sense the race in my pulse that seemed to happen any time I encountered a policeman.

  The officer was young, maybe mid-twenties, tanned and muscular. His navy blue uniform was freshly ironed, starched, and a perfect fit. He spoke politely, professionally. I assumed he was new in this line of work, that he was just learning how to conduct himself in an interview, that he was clearly following protocol, going completely by the book.

  As I tried masking all signs of guilt, reminding myself that I had done nothing wrong, I wondered if he would be different in five or ten years. If he would still iron and starch his uniform, if he would continue using such politeness when he spoke. If the things he had been taught in the beginning about courtesy and the goodness in human nature, if these things would continue to matter to him, if he would still hold them as true.

  I studied the young man in front of me, slowed my breathing, and decided I had nothing to be afraid of. I had no reason to be nervous.

  “I’m Deputy Fisk,” he said as he pulled out a business card and handed it to me. “I’m interviewing everybody staying at the campground to find out who was here this weekend.”

  He glanced over my shoulder, examining the side of my camper. He seemed to be making notes in his mind.

  “Yes, sir,” I answered, even though he was at least fifteen years younger than I. Old habits are hard to break. “I just arrived yesterday.”

  He took off his sunglasses and placed them in his front pocket and took out a small notepad. His eyes were dark brown, kind, unassuming.

  “Okay.” He clicked his pen and began to write. “Do you mind if I ask your name and where you’re from?”

  I shook my head.

  “Rose Franklin,” I said, not knowing why, but feeling comfortable now in my choice to drop my husband’s name and my father’s as well. “And I’m from North Carolina.”

  He kept writing. Then he stopped and looked up at me. His whole face a question mark.

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  He shook his head and wrote another note or two in his pad.

  “This about the drowned man?” I asked. I didn’t remember the deputy from the group of officers I had seen the day before, but I assumed the death had prompted the questioning of everyone near the scene.

  He nodded. “Apparent suicide. But we need to ask around, you know, just to be sure—” He stopped. “You know, since it happened at the river and everything.”

  I didn’t know.

  “I drove over and saw all the commotion yesterday.” I turned toward where I had seen the cars and lights below the campground.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He followed my eyes. “That’s where we found the body, but the sheriff thinks he went in somewhere upriver.”

  He turned, glancing to his left, his eyes facing all the way to Memphis. “It was farther up than here.”

  It was as if he were talking to himself, making his presumption out loud, so I didn’t respond.

  “Well.” He turned again to me. “It doesn’t sound like you could know anything since you just got to town.” He hesitated a moment, perhaps making sure that he shouldn’t ask me anything else.

  “Thanks for your time.” He put his sunglasses on and put the little notebook and the pen in his pocket.

  I waited.

  “What makes you figure it was suicide?” I asked, not sure he would tell me, not sure he should tell me since I had no real business in asking the question.

  He folded his arms across his chest, relaxed slightly.

  “Just the usual signs,” he said easily. “Depression, the victim had just started some medication. Drew up a new will, wrote a letter, visited his loved ones, gave away all his stuff.”

  Right then, I thought about my last week in Rocky Mount and how, except for the medication part, my last few days in North Carolina looked exactly like the dead man’s in West Memphis.

  I recalled how I had made a special trip to Wilson to see a lawyer, one the divorce attorney told me about, and how I changed my will to take Rip out of it. I named my niece, Teensy, as the beneficiary of my insurance policy and then I just decided to make it simple and leave her everything, not that I had that much anyway. But the meager bit I had, I left to her because she’s twenty and a little lost, reminds me of myself. I figured she needed the money more than anybody.

  Then later I wrote a letter, but never delivered it. It was the story of how Rip and I fell away, how I felt wronged and broken, how I couldn’t stay in the same town with him and his new wife. It wasn’t written to anybody in particular, just a means to say what was in my heart, a way to tell my truth. I don’t know why I did it and afterward, I felt silly and exposed, so I tore it up and threw it away in the last bag of garbage that I left at the curb for pickup.

  Then I saw my brother and his wife, shared a meal with them, and told them I was leaving town for a while. I went to the nursing home to visit my dad. I told him who I was three or four times, tried to make him understand that I wouldn’t be coming back, that I wasn’t his wife or his mother, but his daughter, and that I couldn’t stay around anymore. He fell asleep while I tried to explain, so finally, I just kissed him on the forehead and walked away.

  And I took two carloads of junk, clothes and knickknacks, records and picture frames, pillows and books, lamps, bowls, and plates to Goodwill. I sorted and saved and then sorted again, ending up giving or throwing away most of everything.

  The truth is, I realized after listening to Deputy Fisk, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider taking my own life, too. I’d be lying if I didn’t confess that in the packing and the good-byes and the leaving and the sorting and the writing and the emptying, I didn’t think it might all be better if instead of driving somewhere far away, I just took a handful of those pills that I had in my medicine cabinet or borrowed my brother’s shotgun from his garage or just drove my car straight into the path of an eighteen-wheeler. Because the truth is, I did think about it. I did consider ending my own life, since I already felt dead inside anyway.

  I almost killed myself like the drowned man. I almost decided that dying was easier than living, that suddenly nothing was very interesting to me except what might lie on the other side, what might await me after I took my last breath. Didn’t even concern me that it might be judgment or darkness or punishment.

  I still don’t know what kept me from going ahead with it, how it was I got saved from myself and my brokenness. I’m convinced that it wasn’t any of my own doing. And it caused me to think about the dead man and why it was he went ahead and did the thing I could not.

  I cleared my mind of the thoughts of what I’d almost done.

  “Why did you say what you did about the river?” I asked, recalling something he had mentioned earlier in the conversation.

  He raised his eyebrows, tilted his head a bit as if he didn’t know what I was asking.

  I explained. “Why does it seem like it might not be suicide because of where it happened? Because of the river?”

  “Oh, that.” He understood then why I asked. He remembered his previous comment.

  He dropped his arms to his side, stepped back, and pitched one foot against the picnic table behind him.

  “Just a lot of past sins in that river,” he sai
d, like somebody who had read all the books or heard all the stories, somebody who lived here and knew everybody, everything, by name.

  “This end of it runs pretty fast all the way to the Gulf.” He smiled and then added, “You can bury a lot in that muddy water,” as if that somehow cleared up the intentions of what he had said.

  I didn’t say anything, but I knew what he meant. I had seen enough mob stories on television to know about dumping bodies in lakes and rivers.

  “You didn’t know the man, did you?”

  He stood up, straight and at attention, and seemed to be studying me, but it was hard to tell with him wearing those dark sunglasses.

  I was surprised by the question, shaking my head before I spoke. “No, I didn’t know him. I told you I’m not from here,” I added, suspicious of his query.

  And then I had to ask. “Why do you think I would know him?”

  He shifted his weight from side to side, watching me, sizing me up.

  “Your last name,” he answered, not realizing that it was my middle name, my mother’s name. “It’s the same as his.”

  He pulled at his belt, his chest widened. “Franklin,” he said. “His name was Lawrence Franklin.”

  And somehow the news both stunned me and made me sad, kept me from telling the man that it wasn’t even really my last name. I just shook my head as if I were making some confession, like the sound of my denial could make his death even harder.

  “No,” I replied in earnest. “I didn’t know him.”

  Just then a golf cart swung around the corner and stopped right in front of us. It was the Asian woman I had met at the office the day before, when I checked in, the manager. She had been picking up trash.

  “You bother my guests?” she asked Deputy Fisk and smiled, though it hardly seemed pleasant or real.