Burning Bright - By Ron Rash Page 0,35

was here by five thirty.”

“How are you so sure of that?”

“The five-thirty news had just come on when he pulled up.”

The sheriff said nothing.

“You need me to sign something I will,” Marcie said.

“No, Marcie. That’s not needed. I’m just checking off folks with black pickups. It’s a long list.”

“I bet you came here first, though, didn’t you,” Marcie said. “Because Carl’s not from around here.”

“I came here first, but I had cause,” Sheriff Beasley said. “When you and Carl started getting involved, Preacher Carter asked me to check up on him, just to make sure he was on the up and up. I called the sheriff down there. Turns out that when Carl was fifteen he and another boy got arrested for burning some woods behind a ball field. They claimed it an accident, but the judge didn’t buy that. They almost got sent to juvenile detention.”

“There’ve been boys do that kind of thing around here.”

“Yes, there have,” the sheriff said. “And that was the only thing in Carl’s file, not even a speeding ticket. Still, his being here last evening when it happened, that’s a good thing for him.”

Marcie waited for the sheriff to leave, but he lingered. He took out a soiled handkerchief and wiped his brow. Probably wanting a glass of iced tea, she suspected, but she wasn’t going to offer him one. The sheriff put up his handkerchief and glanced at the sky.

“You’d think we’d at least get an afternoon thunderstorm.”

“I’ve got things to do,” she said, and reached for the screen door handle.

“Marcie,” the sheriff said, his voice so soft that she turned. He raised his right hand, palm open as if to offer her something, then let it fall. “You’re right. We should have done more for you after Arthur died. I regret that.”

Marcie opened the screen door and went inside.

When Carl got home she said nothing about the sheriff’s visit, and that night in bed when Carl turned and kissed her, Marcie met his lips and raised her hand to his cheek. She pressed her free hand against the small of his back, guiding his body as it shifted, settled over her. Afterward, she lay awake, feeling Carl’s breath on the back of her neck, his arm cinched around her ribs and stomach. She listened for a first far-off rumble, but there was only the dry raspy sound of insects striking the window screen. Marcie had not been to church in months, had not prayed for even longer than that. But she did now. She shut her closed eyes tighter, trying to open a space inside herself that might offer up all of what she feared and hoped for, brought forth with such fervor it could not help but be heard. She prayed for rain.

II

RETURN

(In Memory of Robert Holder)

It had been raining that morning in Charlotte. Only when the bus groaned and sputtered into the high mountains above Lenoir did the first snowflakes flutter against the windshield, stick a moment before being swept away by the wipers. But here it has snowed for hours, with no sign of letting up. He swings the duffel bag across his back, wincing when the helmet’s hard curve bangs his shoulder blade. The bus shudders into first gear and heads on to Boone. Then the only sound is water. He steps onto the bridge and lingers a few moments above the middle fork of the New River. The snow on the banks makes the water look dark and still, like water in a well. A few yards farther downstream Holder Branch, the creek that begins on his family’s land, enters the larger stream. His right hand clasps the jacket lapels tight against his neck as he steps off the bridge and begins the two-mile walk up Goshen Mountain.

He wonders how many times he has made this walk in his head the last two years. Six hundred, maybe more? All those nights he’d lain awake in his tent, bare chest covered with sweat as sporadic sniper fire and mortar rounds broke through the whir and drone of insects. Because he knew oceans had currents the same way creeks and rivers did, he’d imagine one drop of water making its way from his home in North Carolina to the green waters of the South Pacific. He would follow that drop of water back to its source—first across the Pacific and on through the Panama Canal, then across the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi to the Ohio River,