Nature Noir by Jordan Smith (romantic books to read .TXT) 📗

could she? Right ahead of you now; that's where his body lay after he was pulled out, during CPR. I walked down to stand next to her. There on the beach in the bright sun, in her fitted white blouse and navy blue polyester slacks, with her flat, pale, pretty face, she looked so young that I could hardly believe her son was all grown up and going into the Army National Guard.

She had a little camera in her hand. She took some pictures of the river.

After a while she looked at me, her eyes imploring, "Where—?"

I pointed to our left. "He was sitting on the beach with the girl, his friend, there." Then, turning and pointing upstream, I told her, "They had been floating through that rapid all afternoon. They would ride it down to here, and then they'd walk back up the riverbank and ride it down again. They were all tired. Maybe he was more tired because, as his companions put it, he was 'playing lifeguard.' They said he was pulling each of them out of the fast water at the lower end before it swept them into that turn, where the river stacks up on that cliff before entering the lake. He must have sensed the danger there. That's where he later disappeared."

I looked at her, she nodded slightly, and I continued. "So they were about to go home, and Early and the girl were sitting over there to our left on the beach, across from the turn where the river collides with that wall. Early saw the young boy coming down toward them, struggling in fast water. Early yelled to him, 'Do you need help?' but didn't wait for a reply. He stood up and tossed his car keys to the girl. She said he didn't say anything, just left her, ran to the water's edge, dived in, and swam hard for the boy. When he got within reach Early grabbed the ten-year-old and towed him toward the beach. The little boy later told me that when they got close to shore, Early pushed him toward several other people who had waded in to help. Now all the attention was on the rescued boy, as the people on the beach bundled him up and took him to his father. No one saw what happened to Early, who was still in the water. A few seconds later the girl he'd been sitting with noticed he was missing and began looking for him. For a moment she saw the top of his head come up over there, just downstream of where the current hits that wall. Then he disappeared, and she said he came up once more, about over there, in the lake inlet. That was the last she saw of him until they pulled him out, right here."

She walked closer, not to the place where her son had laid dead but past it, down to the river's edge. There she stood perfectly still, staring fixedly across the water toward the place I had shown her where her son had last been seen alive.

She seemed far away. She looked hard at the water, not crying, but as if she was trying to see something, as if she could peer across the months and the change in the water level since July and see him there, alone in his last moments. I felt helpless for her. I didn't know what to do. So I left her and walked back up the beach to where her husband and son-in-law still stood. Why had the husband stayed so high on the beach? I searched his face. There was no sign of anything there but a sort of stoic kindness.

I asked him how he was doing. He began telling me about his work. He and the son-in-law had been forming the foundations for an addition to the house, he said, so between that and his job he was working seven days a week. And I thought, Yes, that's how it is with us men, isn't it? Our work is our salvation at times like this.

But now he was looking hard at his wife and his face changed. He looked very worried. She was still facing away from us, as if in a trance. Her toes were almost touching the water; she leaned forward. I thought, He's afraid he will lose her. She will walk around in the land of the living, but really she will be living with the boy forever at the bottom of the river, drowning in cold grief.

The husband took one step toward his wife and called to her, urgently, in Lao.

She didn't answer and didn't give any sign she'd heard him. He called to her again, louder, his voice commanding. Again she didn't respond. He walked swiftly down to the water's edge and led her back up, firmly but ever so tenderly, by the arm. He seemed uncomfortable now. He seemed ready to leave.

"There's no rush, really. I've got all afternoon," I told him.

But he wanted to go. They both thanked me. I followed them and the son-in-law back to their car. At the car door the woman turned to face me. "On the twenty-fifth, we have food. Priests come to our house. It is a thing we must do for Early. We give food to his spirit, in case he is hungry."

Her eyes filled with tears again, and she opened the door and got in. I saw how it was with the mother—this practical kind of sorrow in which one prepared food to feed a child beyond the edge of life. As her husband started the engine, she rolled down her window and said to me, "You bring your children, you come. We have lot of food."

I thanked her and waved as they pulled away. I heard their gearbox whine up the canyon side and saw the cloud of dust behind them spread into the brush. The boy who stood in the shallows fishing and the