Deep River Burning (3 page)

“Just down the hall.”

“What’s wrong?” Helena asked. “You look a little spooked.”

“I don’t like hospitals.”

“Tell me about it. There’s too much gauze in this place,” said Helena. Josh and Denver laughed.

“Why don’t you file a complaint?” Josh added with a smile.

“I would, but I’m afraid they wouldn’t listen to me. I don’t carry much influence here.” Helena pretended to be serious.

“Well, you have influence with me and I say, let all of the gauze be gone!”

“Problem solved!”

“Speaking of influence, has your dad finally convinced the cold side of town that Adena is on fire?” Josh asked Denver.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“It looks like someone is going to have to die before they figure out what to do,” said Josh.

“No one is going to die,” Helena replied. “Maybe it will just burn itself out.”

“When pigs fly,” Josh said smiling.

“They will have to change,” said Denver. “The people in town will have to learn to work together.”

“People in this town would rather die than change,” Josh said without hesitation.

It rang true. She didn’t want to admit it, but she was afraid that Josh was right.

Denver and Helena stayed with Josh until later that night when he was released. They carried armfuls of flowers that had begun pouring in only a few hours after his admittance that afternoon. Some of the flowers were from members of the Adena Coalition, a grassroots organization that had formed with the purpose of creating awareness and promoting activism about the mine fire.

Denver went home feeling anxious. She knew this event would only further escalate the already explosive controversy burning in people’s homes concerning the fire. The Adena Coalition felt more justified than ever in their pursuits. The coalition, which was once working with her father and the town council, soon disintegrated the partnership claiming that the council simply wasn’t living up to its responsibility to eliminate the mine problem. Despite his efforts, Ted gathered disapproval from both sides in what had become the Adena civil war. The serpentine coal shaft below the earth was not the only thing that had begun to fall in on itself.

Chapter 5

Fever Pitch

In January, Denver decided to attend classes at a small university near her home and work part time in the Adena community library where sometimes it seemed like there were more people in the building than books. But her life had some direction, and being a college student seemed to suit her. She wrote the words “Psychology” and “Religion” in her notebook and circled them, but she couldn’t decide what she wanted to know more about, her mind or her soul. It had something to do with vision. She wanted to learn how to see through the fog in the darkness, to use her instincts. She was tired of feeling so lost and uncertain, tired of blundering through life looking for the switch that would turn the world on.

She spent more time than necessary at school to avoid talk of the mine at home and began taking classes in environmental science at college to seek her own answers. She realized how much she had taken for granted about her hometown, how the small details of a place can become so familiar that you don’t see the curiosity in them anymore, if you notice them at all. 

Adena and its war continued like an ongoing bad dream from which she couldn’t wake up, or like a dark presence no one caught a glimpse of long enough to catch. The mine fire had not been stopped despite efforts to extinguish what was being called “the tunneling inferno.” The federal government and the Office of Surface Mining had made attempts to put the fire out by digging boreholes and dumping a noncombustible fly ash substance into the mine. According to Denver’s father, the amount of money spent to save Adena was being eaten up as fast as the earth underground, and now no one wanted to take responsibility for the town that was turning into a tragedy. On the outskirts of town a sign read: “
PUBLIC ALERT
: Area subject to mine subsidence and toxic gas emissions.” Millions of dollars were going into efforts to put the fire out, and still it raged on while distorted tales of its impact spread and penetrated people’s minds and homes to different degrees.

It had become widespread news that the fire was burning the coal pillars that were left standing to support the weight from aboveground, and mine subsidence was beginning to occur near the origins of the fire. The earth expanded and contracted under the intense pressure of heat until the earth cracked and fell in on itself. One story claimed that a long time ago, the mines were robbed of the coal columns left standing to support the world above ground, leaving large, unstable caves below. It was an ominous thought, that the ground beneath could fall in at any moment, that the foundation of Adena was slowly being cooked and consumed by an invisible, unmerciful monster. Denver shuddered when she heard that the gas stations near the east end of town closed because the gasoline had reached dangerously high temperatures.

Five more subsidence holes broke the surface, but no one directly suffered from them. The hole where Josh almost fell to his death was framed with a flimsy wood plank fence as were many of the vent pipes that spotted the south and east sides of town to relieve the pressure from the steaming hell beneath. As for Denver, she witnessed what seemed like a geological bloodletting, as if the earth had been struck by a vile, incurable fever that needed to be drained constantly of its fuming toxins. When there was no wind, and the smoke rose above the earth and tainted the atmosphere with its unholy breath like exhalations from dark shadows of an underworld, the night sky was starless.

There was a time when she used to walk after dark through Adena to wear down her hot emotions with every street she traveled, even during the frosted, clear nights of winter, but the days of feeling safe in her hometown had come to an end. Even if she explored the quiet avenues where no fire had been found, there were no guarantees she’d be safe from the eyes that would peer at her from their windows shooting looks with nails and daggers in them. Curtains would move in the windows as she walked by, and on occasion, a door would open and a man would stand behind a screen door and watch her every step until she was out of sight. That winter, even with all the talk of fire, Adena seemed to her to be the coldest place on Earth.

During her first week of classes, she returned home one cold but cloudless afternoon to find her father sitting at his desk gazing out a window into a deep yard that bordered a field. In the summer, the field grew tall, green stalks of corn with leaves that waved like a thousand arms in the wind. In the winter, the field was a quiet bed of soil that stretched into the hilly countryside.

“What’s wrong, Dad?”

Ted took a deep breath before he spoke. “Things don’t look good here, Denver. The state DEP had not expected the fire to burn so fast. The fire has access to a fair supply of oxygen, and if there are traces of oil underground, the fire will burn faster. Attempts to put it out involved locating the fire and digging deep holes on both sides that were filled with cement to prevent oxygen from getting to the fire, and to prevent it from spreading, but nothing has worked to stop it.”

“What is going to happen next?”

“I don’t know.”

That night, in a dream, a gray dog, maybe a wolf, chased Denver through tall, tangled, wet grass. He had snarling teeth, yellow and pointed, and hard eyes like black marbles. She opened her mouth, but the wolf took her voice, and she never got the chance to scream.

Chapter 6

Bootleggers

That winter, Denver, Josh, and Helena spent most of their evenings at a pool hall on the south side of Adena. The hall had ten pool tables and was connected to a small burger joint and a bowling alley so the sounds of balls rolling and pins cracking were always in the background. Nearby, the pool balls clicked every so often and the air was thick with cigarette smoke and country music.

Josh was the one who loved to play pool. Once when he was in an exceptionally good mood, he walked over to Denver and Helena and said, “Do you want to see me make some easy money? Watch this.” They watched as he went to the other side of the pool hall and initiated a quiet conversation with an older gentleman with slick, black hair and a cigarette just barely hanging from his lips. Josh and the other player casually approached an empty pool table. The older gentleman placed four quarters in the coin slot to release the balls. The gentleman was polite and asked Josh to take the first shot, which in retrospect must have seemed like an expensive mistake. Josh cleared the table in less than five minutes without missing a shot. The man reached for his wallet, pulled out a few bills, whispered into Josh’s ear, and then slid the bills into Josh’s hand. Josh responded with a small grin and returned to the table where Denver and Helena were drinking colas.

“How did you do that?” Helena asked.

“It’s magic,” he smiled.

“How much money did you get?” Denver asked.

“Fifty smackaroos, ladies. The burgers are on me.”

“Josh, you’re unbelievable,” Denver said. “What did that guy say to you as he walked away?”

“He said, ‘You’re an asshole.’” Josh paused. “He might be right.”

“What if you would have lost?” Denver asked.

“I never lose, not at pool, anyway. Everything else I lose, sooner or later,” he said as he glanced up at Denver.

“What’s it like, Josh?” Helena asked.

“What is what like?”

“What’s it like to be that good at something?” Josh thought for a moment and then pointed to a man sitting by himself drinking a beer.

“Do you see that guy over there by the restrooms? He’s waiting for a drug delivery. They always sit at the table by the restrooms. Within the next ten minutes or so, another guy will come in and sit down with him. They’ll pretend to be friends and talk about sports. After a few minutes of small talk, an envelope and money will be exchanged. They will both leave a few minutes after the exchange, but not together. When I play pool, I feel like the guy delivering the envelope. I’m the guy making money off of someone else’s gambling addiction.”

“Oh, nonsense, Josh,” Helena said. “You have a real talent. You should play in tournaments. You could win trophies.”

“Well, if I do, I will be sure to dedicate my first trophy to you.”

Helena leaned forward and kissed Josh on the cheek to show her approval.

Not all evenings at the pool hall ended with such enjoyment. Occasionally a fight broke out, usually related to the mine fire, and as the winter progressed into spring, the bowling lanes grew increasingly quiet. The lights were on, and the pins were set, but no one came to play. The smoke in the pool hall cleared and by March, it was a busy day if a few people came to play pool, often alone. By April, news circulated around town that Miller Lanes would soon close.

The coming of spring brought with it the first anniversary of the mine fire, and the decision made by Ted Oakley to resign as chairperson of the town council. He had not made a formal announcement at that time but was waiting for the appropriate opportunity hoping that spring would lighten the mood in Adena and ease the bitterness that came with winter.

With the summer months approaching, many people planned to follow the voluntary evacuation proceedings and leave Adena, and Denver thought about being one of them, but she wanted to finish college. She wanted to stay with her parents to help them move when it was time. Her mother was already heartbroken about losing friends and relatives to the evacuation, and she didn’t want to compound her mother’s sadness.

Denver wanted an escape. She didn’t want to think about coal anymore, and she didn’t want to be part of the growing tension at home between her mother and father. They had always tried to hide their disagreements and problems from Denver, which only made matters worse for her because it meant days of silence. It meant endless hours of people living in the same house and behaving like strangers. She wished they would simply air out their grievances in a kind of domestic thunderstorm and then return to normal, refreshed by the rain. But their anger was like a long, dry cold spell. Quiet and punishing. She only guessed that they disagreed about the relocation efforts because they seemed to take opposing sides on almost anything. She barely wanted to admit to herself that this was something she loved about her parents, the way they usually found a way to meet in the middle.

She decided to follow in the footsteps of her friend Josh and go camping for a few days by herself. She used to wonder why he always wanted to go alone. Wasn’t he lonely? Wasn’t he afraid? When she asked him about it, he replied by saying, “There is more to be afraid of sleeping in a house than sleeping in the forest, and there is too much going on in the woods to be lonely.”

She borrowed Josh’s pack, pocket knife, and compass, and he gave her a crude sketch of a map of the forest surrounding Adena. She left early on a Friday morning. Josh drove her to the river where she boarded a small boat tied at the dock that belonged to her father. The river was beautiful. Whenever she was away from the river, if only for a short time, she missed the sight of it.

The landscape changed very quickly and brightened as she traveled north of Adena. There was no history of mining there or coal dust lining the roads. She loved Desert Ring Island, and she was familiar with some of the territory, so she planned to spend her first night there, on familiar ground.

As she paddled across the river, she felt herself come alive again with every swish of the oar against the clear current, and the fear and worry slowly unraveled from her body like a ribbon dismantling until it ended in a faint and floating sigh. Although it was still very early, she found a place to set up camp and studied the grounds so she would know the area well after dark. She walked most of the day, breathing in the sweet moist air. She only stopped to eat lunch and dinner, and when she did, she sat and watched the world unfold around her for as long as she wanted.

There was no rush, no disquiet in her mind. Her senses absorbed the soft prowling of goodness that surrounded her, and she tasted the food that passed through her lips more fully than she ever had before. The trees reminded her of the ocean inhaling toward the shore and exhaling, the breath falling again in the sound of a soft whisper as it went back out to sea. She remembered Pilner’s cabin and decided not to go in that direction. The burdens continued to slip from her like a loose scarf and she wanted no reminders of her frightening experience at his cabin. Her mind returned to Josh. She wanted him there with her. He was not her boyfriend. In fact, they had moved apart like slow moving ships. Everyone thought they were very close, but from the shore, ships often look that way, as if they are very near to one another on the horizon line, when in fact, they are miles apart.

As dusk approached, she built a fire from tree branches and boiled a small pot of water for dried soup. The flicker of the fire on the water in the distance grew brighter as darkness set in. She listened for hours for other boats coming across the river. She was too young to be so suspicious. She wanted to believe that the rite of passage into full adulthood did not have to entail such disillusionment and fear.

She discovered that there are thoughts that go through one’s mind in a night forest where you become nearly blind. Other senses become sharp. You hear farther, smell more acutely, but also feel more intensely. Your sense of reality can become blaring headlights in a space where there is only a small flashlight between you and the multitude of glowing eyes that wonder what you are. She knew where she was that night in the forest, and that clarity made her realize she was absolutely lost.

She got very little sleep that night. It took time to adjust to the night sounds. Like the moans of an old house, the sounds seem haunted until you get used to them and identify what they are. A little squirrel can make more noise at three o’clock in the morning than a freight train moving through town during a funeral mass. The crunching of the leaves as the animal steps echo within the canopy of trees, reverberate through the air like a candy wrapper unfolding in a library.

She fell asleep for a while. She had just allowed her body to slip into the slight grooves in the ground beneath when she awoke suddenly to another sound. This noise came from the water. She thought a deer was getting a drink of water, or some geese were washing themselves. But she knew this sound. The rhythmic trickle of a long wooden oar gently swirling, making small whirlpools on the current. She fully awoke then. She didn’t move. She heard a small boat being pulled over the stones on the narrow shore. The scrape echoed over the water and back again. The footsteps beat mildly up the small hill where the trees that protected her began to thicken. In the soft glow of a half moon, she saw a figure, standing at the edge of the forest, looking about, perhaps allowing the eyes to adjust to the darkening woods. She began to breathe again with her hand on her heart that pounded like a thousand frantic drums. “Joshua?” she called out. His head turned.

“Denver? Where are you?”

“To your left,” she replied. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” he responded. “I couldn’t stay away. I was worried about you.” He took a few small pieces of wood that were scattered about and threw them into the smoldering embers that steamed in the cool night air. The embers were still very hot and the wood caught fire, which illuminated a small circle of the night into a warm glow. He peered around with a look on his face that Denver had not seen before. He was totally at ease. He looked satisfied, peaceful, yet fully awake and alert. She sat motionless, studying him. It wasn’t just the surroundings that suited him so well, but also the night. He wore it well, like the troubles of life only came with the daylight, and this was his time of reprieve.

“Well, you know I can take care of myself, Josh.”

“Yes, I do know that, but the first night can be difficult.”

“I suppose so,” she agreed.

After a slight pause as the night wind blew lightly on their faces, Josh looked down at the leaves on the ground, and they both listened to the distant sound of tree frogs that echoed across the moonlit face of the Susquehanna. Sweetly and instinctively, Josh curled up next to her, and they slept the remainder of the night unafraid for each other and unafraid for themselves.

They slept until late in the morning. Josh helped gather her things and put them back in the pack. She never knew he could be so well organized. There was a perfect space available for every bag, spoon, sock, and Kleenex laid out in a methodical arrangement in accordance to when or how often it was projected that she would need them.

After helping her pack, Josh left to go back to Adena while Denver embarked on a small voyage around Desert Ring Island in search of the Susquehanna’s west bank. The island was fairly large, but it didn’t take long to get around it by boat. The air bore an eerie silence between the island and the west bank. The waterway was narrow allowing for the call of the crows to echo back and forth between the dense trees. Narrow passageways in life are fine for brief journeys but claustrophobic for long term.

She pulled her boat up to the bank and walked for several hours on deer trails into the lush sea green world that held an abundance of wonder in all its wrappings. She couldn’t help thinking that she was surrounded by the essence of life, vibrating existence in its fullest expression, and how curious it is that humans have worked centuries to get as far away from it as possible. In the distance, she heard a light tapping noise that she thought was a woodpecker. As she moved closer to the sound, she knew that it was coming from another source, and her curiosity kept her following its tap.

She walked tenderly through the trees and peered around a large evergreen tree that unveiled an old man sitting on a log working with a piece of wood. She did not expect to see anyone there. He looked like he was carving a wooden sculpture of some sort with a small but very capable pocket knife. He was a thin man with rough working hands, worn clothes, and a pony tail. He looked homeless, like a refugee. She wondered if he was a criminal. He didn’t take his eyes off the wood the entire time she watched him, but she could see the wrinkles on his face, which were long and deep. They reminded her of the sunken tracks on her grandmother’s face. She died very ill and since then, Denver had always associated wrinkles with illness. It’s no wonder there is a great fear of getting old. Acquiring wisdom in life means wearing the struggle of one’s journey on the face like a surrender flag. We should be proud of those wrinkles, Denver thought to herself. Physically, we are not like the river rocks that polish smooth over time.

As the old man’s knife pointed into the wood to create a small hole in his sculpture, Denver felt a needle of pain shoot into her left arm. She involuntarily cried out a sound of surprise mixed with displeasure as she swatted away a fully grown wasp and its stinger. The old man’s glassy blue eyes quickly arose from their object of preoccupation and Denver returned his gaze with a look of part fear, part embarrassment that she was caught as his voyeur. She swallowed hard and looked at him intensely, waiting for a reaction from him. He didn’t seem moved or affected by her presence at all.

“Why didn’t you just say hello?” he asked in a calm yet rough voice that had either spent a lifetime speaking too many words or was rusty from not speaking enough.

“Well, I . . . just . . .”

“Come. Let me see you.”

She came out from behind the tree and slowly walked closer to him. She didn’t know if she was in danger or not, but she knew she could outrun him if she had to.

“What is your name?” he asked still concentrating on his sculpting.

“Denver Oakley.”

“What brings you to this part of the world, Denver Oakley? There are many places you could be, but you are here in the middle of the woods watching how an old man spends his afternoon.”

“I’m hunting rock samples for my college geology class,” she lied, feeling ashamed.

“Are you from Adena?”

“Why, yes, yes I am. I’m from near there, anyway.”

He paused for a moment before saying, “Perhaps you are here for another reason then.”

“Who are you?” she asked changing the subject.