THE RIVER

In the fall of 1912, Daniel was born next to the rushing water of a river that has passed by his family farm since time itself can remember. The river is born in the dark hollers above the farm and holds tight to the edge of the family’s land in a narrow cove that hangs high above the flat, open valley below. Daniel entered the world during a mid-October snowfall and was bathed and warmed by water carried from the river and boiled over a puttering hearth fire stoked by hickory and chestnut from the surrounding woods. And his connection to the river began.

Daniel was nourished by the river. The family grew corn, creasy beans, winter squash, tomatoes, cabbage, turnips, and onions. Creasy greens and mustard greens were plentiful. Along the riverbank, Eastern Hemlocks, River Birch, and Sycamores grew. And in the dappled sunlight that funneled through their limbs, juneberries, pawpaws, and black cherries flourished. And some of Daniel’s earliest memories were of sitting on a rock in the shallows of the river while his father fished for speckled trout. And the river touched it all.

Despite the abundance, life beside the river hardened Daniel. Winter came early, and with it a depth of darkness and cold that made your soul coil tightly and seek cover. The hearth burned bright, fueled by life-giving wood stacked month after month before winter came down the holler. And outside, the river made its own courageous way through the brutal winter. Warmed from below by the earth and insulated from above by its icy blanket, the flow of the water rolled on. Its passage resonated like a cavernous gurgling from its depths and what the old timers called a “chuckling” in its shallows. Daniel’s father taught him to dig into the life-giving water with an axe, cutting inches deep to find the current and haul it to the hearth. The winter pulse of the river felt to Daniel like his own blood, coursing through its veins and his in a fight for survival.

Eventually, the river brought Daniel love. He first saw Katie at church. The small, white clapboard church sat in the valley that lay below the highlands where Daniel’s family lived. And in those days, they still took a wagon, pulled by their two mules Laurel and Bess, along the deeply rutted dirt path that followed the river the entire distance. In Daniel’s earliest memories he imagined that the river had miraculously found the little church and was intent on guiding them right to its door. The long journey made it an all-day affair to attend church and meant that Sunday mornings was the only service of the week for which his family made the trip. Once Daniel knew Katie was part of being at church, the infrequency of their encounters weighed on him. But one Sunday when he was 12, he asked his father if the family could sit on the side of the church nearest the river. He made the case that if they just sat close enough to the window, he would be able to see over the high sill and catch a glimpse of the black and silver water below. And Katie and her family always sat on that side. But that he kept to himself.

Eventually, the same river that had delivered him into Katie’s presence, also witnessed their first kiss. Two summers after they first met, they had fallen for one another. Of course, Daniel would always say it was Katie who fell that summer. His fall had been instantaneous, and he had waited and hoped for her to follow. And follow she did. That summer in 1926, they were inseparable every Sunday.  And one evening in June, Daniel’s mother asked them both to fetch a few more chairs for that night’s church dinner from the session house. They took a rickety metal wagon and walked together along the river for the short trip. It took them a minute to find the chairs, hidden away as they were amidst a myriad of enamel plates, cases of mason jars, stacks of old quilts, and cast-iron cauldrons. Searching in darkened room lit only by the early summer evening light felt like a proper adventure, made more electric by the unspoken realization that this was the first time they had every been alone. Back outside, with the little wagon fully laden with folding chairs, the paused in front of the river. The kiss was unexpected, like a sudden spilling out of something long unsaid. As new and foreign as it was, neither Daniel nor Katie felt embarrassed or shy in the moment after. It felt like a confirmation of what they already knew. Alongside them, the river seemed to agree, quietly laughing along with Daniel and Katie. And then carrying their secret down past the next bend and out of sight.

When Daniel’s father passed, he was not there beside him. It happened quickly, and by then Daniel lived in the lower valley for easier access to the lumber mill where he found work and later became a foreman. Daniel and Katie had 5 children, ranging from Thomas, the oldest to Lucy, the baby, with Samual, Mary, and Becky lining up in between. And Daniel had been to war and returned alive but with a limp caused by shrapnel from a shell that killed one of his closest mates. But his father’s death was a different kind of pain. Deeper, more personal, and more foreboding of his own mortality than even war had been. Daniel reasoned that war came when he was young. Whether you lived or died was a matter of some twist of fate that felt like roulette. But when his father passed, it was as if a door opened to reveal his own future. He sat long beside the river the evening after the funeral. He listened to the water tumbling and the river soothed him. The percussive roar washed over his hurt and helped turn his mind from the intrusive internal loop of anger and longing to something like serenity. As dark settled, he walked to river’s edge and placed a hand in the rough current, acknowledging the kinship and smiling at the understanding that he could always find his father there.

 Years later, Daniel returned to the homesite for good. The cabin had long been replaced by modest wooden frame house, in which Daniel’s mother lived out her life. Daniel and his family had returned often to visit her and hear the song of the river. But in his last days, Daniel returned for his own reckoning. He could think of nowhere better suited to pass his last days. Katie and Lucy cared for him, and his other children came to see him and to smile at the many memories that rose to the surface in his presence. He spent afternoons by the river, saying that it held him close and eased his fear about what was to come.

After he passed, his family gathered on the banks of the old river. They scattered his ashes and held hands as the last physical signs of him swirled on the surface, lingered in a small eddy as if to take a moment to look over his shoulder one final time, and then were tugged under the dark water and gone. Lucy’s words resonated softly amongst the undertones of the river, “Dad always lived like water.” And his family and the river nodded.

Photo credit: Tim Manske