I stowed the saw and hatchet in the porch corner, next to Pops’ walking stick, left behind in the rush to the hospital, then went down to the waterfall. Grass had grown shin tall at his and Sarah’s picnic spot, so I found a rusted scythe from the old shed, sharpened it, then took the long off the grass. I finished the job with the old push mower, cutting it close the way it was kept back then.
After raking the clippings, I cut saplings near the cabin, sawing them out one by one at grass level. By the time evening spread, I had cleared the entire side yard of trees.
At full dark I gathered the tools, laid them on the porch, and took a meatball sandwich and a Mountain Dew from the cooler Audy Rae had packed. I lit the kerosene lamp and sat on the porch, back against the cabin wall, walking stick across my legs, just listening to the night sounds—the same night sounds Pops heard as a boy so many years ago.
After an hour of night listening, I took the pack and the cooler and the lantern inside to the second bedroom with the triple bunks cut into the wall.
I put my sleeping bag on the top bunk, Pops’ bunk, and climbed up the ladder and settled into his old bed.
Buzzy and I are working beaverlike to dam up a creek. He lays the fresh-cut bamboo measuring rod down on a fallen log and notches two cuts to mark the measure. We’re at a two-handled saw, pulling and pushing the blade in opposition across the face of the tree. We cut through the base and hoist the log onto our shoulders—me at the front, him at the rear. This should be the last; then we’ll be swimming, he says. We place it on top of the logs already in the creek and fit it to the notches we had dug into the bank. A cliff materializes on the edge of the dream. I’m first, he says and climbs the rocks. It’s too shallow, I yell. But he ignores me and dives off. Don’t, I yell as he floats in the air. He spreads his arms and executes a perfect swan dive into the water. After a few seconds, he breaks the surface as a wholly different boy—a smaller, thin boy with brown hair. His face is deeply familiar, but I just can’t place him. This new boy exits the water and smiles to me. Jeb taught me that, you gonna go? I shake my head and he climbs to the top of the rocks. He dives again, another perfect swan, and comes to the surface as a young man. He cuts through the water with powerful, efficient strokes and climbs out to a waiting towel held by a beautiful woman with long chestnut hair. “You gonna go?” he says to her. She smiles, kisses him, then shakes her head. He climbs back up the cliff and dives in again, this time surfacing as the Pops I know. The beautiful woman on the bank has disappeared. Pops winks at me and climbs the rock for a fourth try. Arms out in front, then at the side to steady himself. He does a perfect swan dive into clear water. I wait for a moment, but he doesn’t surface. I call out over the water but get no response. Panicking, I strip to my shorts and dive under, but he’s already slipped away from me.
Chapter 44
JULY 2014
We slide the burled casket carefully from the dark-blue hearse. The handles feel cool despite the stifling heat scalding eastern Kentucky this July. It is much lighter than I expect and we hoist it hip high as if empty. After three or four awkward steps, our walkings join to an intended cadence, and once so aligned, our pace is slow and purposeful, off the road, onto the grass, and down the hill toward the crossing.
The mourners file behind us as we move slowly toward the burial site on the hill. The sun, which shied all morning behind low clouds, swaddles us now in warm light. At the graveside, dirt from the hole is piled to the side, covered with an Astroturf carpet. Flowers everywhere. We cortege the casket to the grave and set it on the platform. We all gather around the coffin in a semicircle, clasping hands in front and behind for lack of purposeful utility.
“Dear friends,” Pastor Barnes begins. “Let us pray…”
I scan the crowd for familiar faces, recognizing many through the application of years. They are stooped and creased now, some attended by grown children, others on their own.
He is standing by himself, off to the side. The tall man with beamed shoulders and a thick neck. His blond hair is cut short at the front, not quite a crew, and the back tails his shoulders. His dense beard is two shades darker than his hair. With hints of red.
He moves closer to the casket. Despite the beard I recognize him instantly. Recognize the three-piece suit he wore to Pops’ brother’s funeral ten years ago, now tight across him.
I smile and Buzzy Fink smiles back.
In 2002 Billy Boyd’s Monongahela Energy traded the reclaimed plateau that was once Sadler, Cheek, and Indian Head to the commonwealth in exchange for mineral rights on a string of mountains north of Medgar up toward Big Spoon. Within two years a new supermax prison sprouted on the barren site with lights that Christmas-treed the stub of Sadler and washed all the luminance from the stars.
The Company took Floss Mountain first, then Limber, then Kinny and Chute—eight hundred acres clear-cut and ready for blasting, hauling, and filling. The jobs soon followed—dragliners, blasters, haulers, and supervisors—and outrage after that: anger at each new hollow fill, umbrage on every rust-running creek, rage with each new cancer diagnosis.
Paitsel organized protests, wrote letters, made phone calls, and cajoled B-list celebrities, but as always, the money was on the side of the mines. Each year the lines were drawn deeper and to ever more acute angles as cousins stopped speaking, kin became estranged, liquored friends fist-fought over draglines instead of women.
Katherine Marie Sloane was born on December 14, 1979, in the Subic Bay Naval Hospital while her father was on maneuvers in the South China Sea. After the Philippines came a fickle of postings around the world—Pensacola for first and second grade; then four years in San Diego; Dubai for junior high; senior year at the American School in London while her father taught at Greenwich.
She chose the University of Kentucky for their premed program and because she liked the brochure. After that, Emory for medical school.
She first saw him coming from a lecture on Merton. She was on her way to the chem lab with some friends when their sidewalks wove into one. He was by himself and walked as if he didn’t mind being alone.
She chanced upon him again the following week when she was buying new running shoes for the cystic fibrosis 10-K. He was working at Foot Locker on weekends for walking-around money. She asked him the difference between the Advantra and the Road Warrior. He mumbled something about vacuum-molded soles. She could tell he was nervous, could feel his eyes on her as she examined the instep of the Jog Master. She wasn’t surprised when he turned up at the race, and his attempts to keep up with her were valiant.
They went for coffee afterward and she caught him twice looking at her. Watching the tiny hairs that covered her earlobes and the space of skin at the end of her eyebrow. Watching the way the light overhead gave her chestnut hair a reddish tinge when she cocked her head a certain way.
She was a first-year med, she told him. He told her he was getting his masters in fine arts and wanted to write. She wanted to specialize in pediatric surgery, she said.
They talked of their parents. He hadn’t seen his father in five years. Hers was teaching at the Naval Academy in Annapolis before retirement. She told him how it was to never have a home for more than a few years.
They discussed Nietzsche and cognitive dissonance in children. They argued architecture and whether Jan Brady was prettier than Marcia; if Gilligan really wanted to be rescued; if the Grateful Dead were any good.
She rubbed her coffee mug when thinking and tossed her hair to the side when she laughed.
They each told a dirty joke. Neither had any bumper stickers.
He tried to compliment her. She turned red and remarked on the coffee. He liked that she didn’t wear bangle earrings—liked that she wasn’t afraid to wear a cappuccino-froth mustache.
They each recited Shakespeare. She was Lady Macbeth spurring him to murder. He was Henry urging her at Agincourt. She was in love by the end of his mangled St. Crispin’s Day speech.
She told him of her volunteer work at a children’s clinic in town and about the time she berated a man in Safeway for hitting his own boy. They agreed that the animal rights people go overboard. Neither had seen a UFO.
They stayed until five p.m., examining each other’s lives and discovering empathies in their opposite experiences. They parted, promising to meet for Italian the following Friday. She wrote her number on the back of the coffee-shop bill.
They married nineteen months later at the Naval Academy Chapel. His father came but left the reception early; his mother and grandfather danced all night with total abandon. She began her residency at Emory and he took an assistant professorship in the English department. Within a year she was pregnant and the trouble started. A difficult carry became a disastrous birth. Kate’s uterus ruptured and she began hemorrhaging. The doctors saved her with an emergency Cesarean and amid the blood and building expectations came a little girl on air and light named Sarah Ryder Gillooly. My daughter.
Pastor Barnes’ benediction speaks of renewal and a life to celebrate. Mom thanks the assembled for coming and tells a few anecdotes from Pops’ life, then asks everyone back to Chisold Street for food. She jokes that she laid in extra Clinch Mountain sour mash on his specific instructions.
Kate squeezes my hand. “You sure you want to stay up here by yourself tonight? Mom can take Sarah.”
I brush away a gnat cloud and kiss her. “I’m sure. I’ll come by and get some stuff.”
She smiles sadly, touches my cheek, and walks with Mom, Audy Rae, and the rest of them to the waiting cars at the cul-de-sac. I watch as they trace the trail down the hill, across the creek, and through the old field, now fully taken by trees.
It was Audy Rae who found Pops, sitting in the green wicker chair where she left him the evening before. Mom was down in Atlanta at an exhibition of her paintings and Audy Rae agreed to take care of him for the weekend. She knew he had passed as soon as she rounded Watford and saw him in last night’s clothes. He looked asleep, but she knew otherwise. She closed his eyes all the way, brushed his hair with her hand, and went into the kitchen to call Dr. Killen.