Saints at the River Page 4

“I’ll not burden your mother with this,” Daddy said, his teeth clinched to keep his voice low. “She’s got enough to handle without knowing you’re siding against the very people you’ve grown up among.”

  And that made me madder, his bringing Momma into it, because Momma had never mattered before when we’d had our fights. She’d never allowed herself to matter. What remorse I might have felt about my hospital bill comment slipped away like smoke.

  “That’s not what I’m doing,” I said. “No more than Billy or Earl Wilkinson are.”

  “That is what you’re doing,” Daddy said, “and them others as well.”

  “You’re just too ignorant to understand,” I said, and in my mind I saw another layer added to the wall we’d created between us.

  “Ignorant,” Daddy said, and shook his head. He said it again, the same way a child at a spelling bee repeats a word. “My daddy made me quit school at fifteen. Hired me out to Harley Winchester’s daddy like I was no more than a mule or draft horse. Old Man Winchester worked me like one too, ten hours a day, and every dime I made went in my daddy’s pocket. I’ve given you more than my daddy ever gave me. If I’m ignorant it’s because I never got the chances you got.”

  We didn’t say anything else. Everything we could hurt each other with we’d said. So Daddy and I just stood there, silent, like boxers who have thrown their best punches and found their opponent still standing.

  “I GOT AN ANSWER TO WHY THE FATHER DIDN’T DIVE IN,” BILLY said, pointing to the far wall where Sheriff Cantrell and his deputy, Hubert McClure, watched the crowd. “Our esteemed deputy came by the store as I was closing up. Turns out Herb Kowalsky had about as good a reason not to get into a river as you can have.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “He can’t swim.”

  “Yes, that explains it,” Allen said, more to himself than Billy and me. I hadn’t even known he was listening. He turned his attention back to rewinding the tape in his pocket recorder.

  “His wife and kids had been after him for years to learn. His daughter was Red Cross certified and wanted to teach him herself. How’s that for irony?”

  Billy looked across the rows of chairs to the front, where a young man I didn’t recognize placed a lectern on a metal foldout table. The man at the lectern pulled some papers from his pockets. He wore a Forest Service uniform, on his pocket a silver name tag I couldn’t read.

  “Who is that?” I asked Billy.

  “Walter Phillips. He’s the new district ranger.”

  “What happened to Will McDowell?”

  “Retired in February.”

  “Where’s Phillips from?”

  “Louisiana.”

  Two other men, both dressed in suits, walked over to Phillips. Phillips listened as the men spoke.

  “Lucky guy, ain’t he?” Billy said. “Your first head ranger assignment and right off you’re dealing with something like this. I bet he’s already wishing he was back on a bayou chasing gator poachers.”

  I looked at Phillips more closely. He wasn’t nearly as big as Will McDowell, probably no more than five-eight and with a slim build. That would make his job harder up here, perhaps already had. There would be men, especially the loggers, who would test him more than they had McDowell. They would want to see how quickly Phillips would show weakness by falling back on his gun and badge for protection. When he did, they would know he was afraid and they would have no respect for him after that.

  “Who are the men up there with him?”

  “The guy in the brown coat I don’t know. The other is Herb Kowalsky.”

  I looked at Allen. He studied the people who filled the room. You could tell he was making mental notes of what they wore, the expressions on their faces, the way they appeared to align themselves by where they stood or sat. An intensity I’d not seen in his face before marked his features, and there was something of the confidence and detachment I’d seen on the book jacket. Then the expression evaporated as quickly as it surfaced, as if he’d caught himself engaged in a habit not yet totally broken.

  Walter Phillips stepped behind the lectern. For a few seconds he said nothing, just stared at his right hand as if waiting for someone to fill it with a gavel, because there were already some heated voices in the room he’d have to quiet. If Phillips was like most rangers, this must have appeared to be a dream appointment: a Wild and Scenic River, mountains, low population density. He probably hadn’t believed his luck when he’d gotten this assignment, especially young as he was. Right now he seemed anything but thrilled to be district ranger of Oconee National Forest. Phillips looked like a man who’d wandered into a minefield without a map.

  He finally nodded at Myra Burrell, who’d been Will McDowell’s secretary and now worked for Phillips. She had a pen and notebook in her hand. His words were so soft people in the back didn’t hear him.

  “My name is Walter Phillips,” he said, louder this time, loud enough to quiet the other voices. He looked at a sheet of paper that lay on the lectern and began to read. “I’m district ranger for the Oconee National Forest. The purpose of this meeting is to get community input concerning possible ways to recover the body of Ruth Kowalsky from the Tamassee River.”

  For the first time since he’d said his name, Walter Phillips looked up. His round, boyish face was flushed, and though the room wasn’t particularly warm, sweat darkened his armpits and the edge of his collar. He wore a mustache, no doubt to look older, but the hair was blond and wispy. You could bet he still got carded when he bought alcohol.

  “It seems only right that the first person to speak should be Herb Kowalsky, Ruth’s father.”

  Herb Kowalsky left the front row. He looked around fifty, his gray hair cropped close to his scalp. Low and tight, my brother Ben would have called that haircut, and it fit Kowalsky, for he had the demeanor of a former military man. He wore a dark, stylish suit you could tell had been tailor cut. He wasn’t much bigger than Phillips, but he walked with the confidence of a man who expected to dominate any situation. He stepped behind the lectern and took a few moments to look the crowd over. You could tell he was used to speaking to people, even more used to people listening, which was to be expected of a man who was vice president of Minnesota’s largest savings and loan.

  “I want to thank Mr. Phillips for calling this meeting,” he said in an accent more urban Northeast than Midwest. “I’d have liked it called sooner, but there’s no reason to go into that now.”

  I glanced at Allen to see if he was taking notes. He wasn’t, but the tape recorder’s red light was on. He’d placed his palm in front of the recorder, as if to conceal it.

  “The point is this,” Herb Kowalsky said. “I’ve tried it Oconee County’s way for three weeks. This county’s search-and-rescue squad, this county’s divers.”

  Kowalsky looked in the back corner where Randy and Ronny Moseley stood, TAMASSEE SEARCH AND RESCUE SQUAD printed on the front of the faded ball caps they wore. They were twins, though not identical. Ronny was six feet tall and long-limbed. He’d been a good baseball pitcher, good enough to get college scholarship offers, but, like his brother, he’d chosen instead to work in his family’s orchards. Randy was similarly built, though not as tall or athletic. While his twin played baseball, Randy had learned to scuba dive. He was still in high school when he began helping recover bodies for the Search and Rescue Squad. Even then people said he was the best diver in the county.

  “I was told Ruth would be out of that river in a day. Then it was a week. It rains and I’m told it’s too dangerous, and two more weeks pass. I think it’s time you people backed off and let the experts take over.”

  “Quite the diplomat, ain’t he?” Billy said, not bothering to lower his voice.

  I looked at Randy and Ronny, their caps creased in the middle and pushed back at the same angle, arms crossed right over left. Their faces, brown already from weeks in the orchards, revealed nothing as they stared back at Herb Kowalsky.

  But the face o
f the man who stood beside them did. That man was my first cousin Joel Lusk, Aunt Margaret’s youngest son. His arms were also crossed. Biting his lower lip with his front teeth, he shook his head slightly. Joel was twenty-nine and divorced. He lived in a trailer he’d put beside Aunt Margaret’s house.

  “The man I brought here with me tonight, Pete Brennon, builds portable dams,” Herb Kowalsky continued. “He can divert enough water from Wolf Cliff Falls to get Ruth out, and that dam can be put up in four hours.”

  Kowalsky shifted his gaze to Luke.

  “I’m not going to get up here and jerk you around emotionally. I could do that. I could tell you how I feel about knowing my daughter is in that river. I could have brought my wife, Ruth’s mother, and let her tell you the hell these last three weeks have been. It wouldn’t be hard for her to get up here and cry because that’s all she’s done lately. But I’m not going to put her through that. All I’m going to do is ask you to think about what you’d do if Ruth was your daughter.”

  Kowalsky stepped to the side of the lectern.

  “Come on up here, Pete.”

  The man who’d been sitting next to Herb Kowalsky earlier stepped to the lectern. He looked to be in his late forties, six feet tall but paunchy. Brennon’s mismatched coat and tie looked like they’d been bought a decade earlier at Kmart. He wore black-rimmed glasses that made his eyes large and owlish. If you had seen him on the street you’d have guessed pharmacist or jeweler before dam builder.

  “I’ve already met some of you,” he said, “but for those I haven’t, my name is Peter Brennon. I’m the owner of Brennon Portable Dam Company in Carbondale, Illinois. I’m also the inventor of this dam.”

  Brennon’s voice had the same flat midwestern inflection of news anchors. It was the inflection taught in Charlotte and Atlanta—even in Columbia—to Southerners ashamed of talking like their parents and grandparents. But such classes weren’t taught in Oconee County.

  “Mr. Kowalsky wanted me to tell you about the dam and then answer any questions.”

  Brennon turned his head toward Kowalsky, who had not sat down but stood next to Walter Phillips. Nonverbal communication, my college speech teacher would have called it. Kowalsky was letting Phillips and everyone else in the room know he considered this his meeting.

  “Take what time you need to explain it, Pete,” Kowalsky said, looking at the audience as he spoke. “There’s been a lot of misinformation put out about this dam, and it’s time to clear things up.”

  “The main idea is not to stop water but divert it to the right side of the falls,” Brennon said. “The dam itself will be five feet high and fifty feet wide. It’s portable. We’ll put it up and take it down the same day.”

  Peter Brennon had placed a large laminated photograph against the podium before speaking. Now he pointed to the picture of the dam, explaining in detail how and why it would work. He spoke like an engineer—not a businessman or an advocate for a grieving family—an engineer who believed he had the solution to a challenging technical problem.

  There was movement in the front row. Luke stood up, placed his hands in his front pockets, and waited for Brennon to acknowledge him.

  “Make sure your machine’s recording,” I murmured to Allen, “because this is about to get interesting.”

  NO ONE STOOD UP WITH LUKE, BUT HIS SUPPORTERS FILLED THE first row. Like Luke they wore flannel shirts and jeans and river sandals. Most were college students who’d driven here just for this meeting, students who worked summers on the river. Earl Wilkinson provided them lodging and meals and as little pay as he could legally get away with.

  A lot of them would have worked for free. Running white water all day and partying at night was a pretty good way to pass a summer. Any cash they pocketed was a perk. Though most of their customers saw the Tamassee as little more than a longer, more dangerous version of rides at Six Flags or Disney World, the guides considered the river sacred, and it was inevitable they’d be drawn to Luke and his cause. They called themselves river rats. “Luke’s disciples,” the locals called them, and seldom fondly.

  I studied the girl who sat beside Luke. She wore her blond hair in a ponytail. Her hand reached out and squeezed Luke’s for a moment. She turned and I got a better look. The unlined face confirmed she was still in her early twenties, which was not surprising. Luke Miller had always liked his women young and impressionable.

  “How are you going to anchor this dam of yours?” Luke said, loud enough so that those behind him could hear the question, hear the challenge in his voice as well.

  You would never guess he’d grown up in Gainesville, Florida, the son of a neurosurgeon and a University of Florida English professor. After a decade of living here, his accent was pure Southern Appalachian.

  “A few small holes in the bedrock,” Brennon said. “That’s all we’ll need. Nothing significant. Nothing anyone can see.”

  “To do that breaks federal law,” Luke said. “It violates the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1978.”

  Luke lifted a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from his shirt pocket. The glasses struck me as quite a concession for a man who prided himself on seeing things so clearly. The girl with the ponytail handed him some photocopied pages. I wondered if she and Luke lived together.

  “ ‘It is hereby declared to be the policy of the United States that certain selected rivers of the Nation which, with their immediate environments, possess outstandingly remarkable scenic, recreational, geologic, fish and wildlife, historic, cultural, or other similar values, shall be preserved in free-flowing condition, and that they and their immediate environments shall be protected for the benefit and enjoyment of present and future generations.’ ”

  Luke turned to another page. “To be even more specific,” he said, “ ‘alteration or modification of the streambed will not be permitted.’ ”

  He took off the glasses and looked not at Brennon but at Phillips.

  “There it is in black and white. That’s the law, and it’s up to the Forest Service to enforce it.”

  Kowalsky came back to the podium to stand beside Brennon.

  “That law is more ambiguous than you’re making it appear,” Kowalsky said. “That law didn’t envision what’s happened to my daughter.”

  “Let’s take it to court then,” Luke said. “That suits me fine.”

  “You’d like that, Miller, wouldn’t you?” Kowalsky said, heat in his voice now. “Take a year or two to fight it out in court.”

  Brennon looked bewildered. “Are you telling me you wouldn’t want me to build this dam if it were your daughter?” he asked.

  Luke handed the photocopies back to the girl. He took off his glasses and placed them back in his shirt pocket.

  “I don’t have a daughter,” Luke said, his voice no longer confrontational, almost gentle. “But if I did and she was dead and I knew there was nothing I could do to make her alive again, I can’t think of a place I’d rather her body be than in the Tamassee. I’d want her where she’d be part of something pure and good and unchanging, the closest thing to Eden we’ve got left. You tell me where there’s a more serene and beautiful place on this planet. You tell me a more holy place, Mr. Brennon, because I don’t know one.”

  Brennon hadn’t expected that answer. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but nothing came out. For a few moments no one else said anything either. It seemed as though we were all in abeyance, that Luke had taken us into that quiet, beautiful place where Ruth Kowalsky lay suspended. Luke sat down. The girl put her hand over his and kept it there.

  He’d always been good with words, an English major before he quit college to come up here. Soon after Luke and I became lovers, he’d gone to Florida for six months. Occasionally he called, and twice that winter he drove up to Clemson to spend a weekend with me, but it had been his letters that made it so easy for me to fall in love despite the physical distance between us.

  But this evening it wasn’t just Luke’s eloquence that made his
words so powerful. Most people in the room knew he was voicing what he truly believed. He was voicing much of what I believed as well.

  “That’s a pretty place you’ve put Ruth,” Kowalsky said, “and maybe it is a holy place.” He looked at Luke as he spoke, and his words weren’t sharp-edged with anger or irony. It was as though a truce had been called, a truce they both knew would soon enough be broken but which Kowalsky seemed to want to preserve a few moments longer. That was understandable, the need for a reprieve. Here was a man who had been able to get things done all his life through anger and intimidation and will, but also a man who’d now learned that none of what had made him a successful businessman could bring his daughter back. What could be worse for a man like that than to watch a river take your daughter under and not be able to do anything, to watch your wife dive into that river while you stood on the bank?

  Then Kowalsky shook his head, and whatever vulnerability he’d allowed himself vanished so quickly it was almost as though it hadn’t been there at all but something we had imagined for him.

  “But my wife could never see it that way,” he said. “No, our daughter can’t be left in the river. I won’t let that happen.” He stepped back and turned to Brennon. “Go ahead and finish what you were saying.”

  “There’s not much else to say, except this dam can be installed, used, and disassembled in one day. One day. One time.” Brennon paused and looked around the room, then back at Kowalsky. He looked like he was trying to get his bearings. “I just don’t understand why this is a problem,” he said. He sounded not angry or even irritated, just be-mused.

  Luke stood up again. “It would set a precedent,” he said. “It would open up the Tamassee for all sorts of damage. If you cut new trails for this you can cut them for ATVs. If you can put up a dam you can put up condominiums or a Ferris wheel and water slide and charge admission. What good is a law that’s not enforced?”

  Luke turned his gaze to Phillips.

  “But that’s not going to happen. The Forest Service’s job is to enforce that law, a law the district ranger knows as well as anyone.”