Crossing the River Read online

  Miracle was heading towards his Grandmother Pickett with his respects and a cup of Nehi Orange when he spotted Rosamund Uptegrove. She sat sideways to him, in a scarlet two-piece bathing suit too tight to have come from any place in Jessup County. She was threading white clover blossoms in a chain, and when she leaned over to pick a flower her hair fell across her shoulder and lay black against skin that shone pale white as if lit from inside. She hummed a Patsy Cline tune as she picked.

  Miracle coughed and shifted the Nehi from one hand to another. Rosamund never lifted her eyes but kept searching for clover blossoms as if they were meant to feed the starving children of India. Then she stood, stretching white arms against the startled blue sky. Her breasts strained against her suit. She turned and walked to the river on long legs. With each step her hips wrinkled the bottom of her suit.

  “Miracle, if you crane your neck an inch further you’ll get a crick and be walking sideways when you take your diploma,” Grandmother Pickett said. “Not that I blame him,” she said to the sky. “Any girl in an outfit like that is asking for whatever she gets.”

  “That outfit came all the way from Lexington,” Big Rosie Uptegrove said, “And I think it’s real sharp. A girl’s got to keep up with the styles if she’s going to get her a man.”

  “I hadn’t seen a man in Jessup County that knew the difference between styles ten years ago and styles ten years from now,” Grandmother Pickett said.

  “You’re assuming she wants a man from Jessup County to notice what she’s got,” Big Rosie said. She jabbed a finger at Grandmother Pickett. The table tilted upward. Miracle sat to keep his Uncle Leo landbound. “There are bigger fish floating around, a whole ocean of them the far side of Strang Knob. I don’t see why a girl with looks and talent and ambition needs to restrict herself to what happens to wash up at her back door.” Miracle winced.

  Bradford Uptegrove trotted up then, like a muskrat fresh from the water, his thick hair slicked flat over his head and chest and arms. Behind his mother’s back he opened a beer without so much as a pop and poured it in a paper cup. Rosamund crossed the field to stand beside him, her head tilted, brushing her hair in long, smooth runs. She lifted the cup from her brother’s hand and sat at the far end of the table from Miracle, humming the Patsy Cline tune in time with her brush strokes.

  Bradford poured a second beer and walked to the river. He sat next to a girl Miracle had never seen, a pale, moon-faced child who looked a good deal younger than Miracle himself. She had been sitting quietly with her back to the picnic table. For some months Bradford Uptegrove had dated LaHoma Dean Hawkins, a quiet Cumberland Presbyterian from back in the knobs. Miracle guessed that this was that girl, and from the shy hunch in her shoulders he guessed that she had never been among boisterous Catholics who drank and cursed in the light of day.

  The table was quiet except for Rosamund’s thin hum and an occasional rumble from the Fort Knox firing ranges, just to the west, behind the limestone flank of Strang Knob. With the war in Vietnam, the bombing on the practice ranges had increased. These days it was as familiar a part of their lives as birdsongs or the cattle lowing.

  Bradford was the first to break the calm. He jumped up from beside LaHoma Dean and crossed to the picnic table. “Miracle!” he said, sticking out his hand. “Shake the hand of a man that’s on his way!”

  “We’re celebrating ourselves,” Big Rosie said. All heads turned. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard, but it’ll be in next week’s Argus anyway. They’re rebuilding the Boatyard Bridge!”

  “Who’s rebuilding,” Leo said. He was as thin as his brother Bernie had once been, with a shock of gray hair pasted flat against his skull in front, but springing up behind like a rooster comb.

  “The government, of course,” Big Rosie said. “Who else builds around here?”

  “Government this, government that,” Leo said. “Nobody notices nothing wrong with the old bridge until some jackass from Frankfort decides we got to have new bridges.”

  “I’ll thank you to watch your tongue where there’s ladies present,” Grandmother Pickett said.

  “Jesus rode a jackass,” Grandma Miracle said.

  Grandmother Pickett sniffed. “In my Bible he rode a mule.”

  “Anybody that’s ever rid a jackass would call it nothing more polite and a good number of things worse,” Grandma Miracle said. She leaned over to drop a wad of juice in her can. “Cuss all you want, son,” she said. “I don’t mind.”

  “Bradford Uptegrove is hiring on,” Big Rosie said. “At $10,000 a year and two weeks’ paid vacation!”

  “Just goes to show it depends on who you know,” Leo said.

  “We don’t know anybody,” Big Rosie said. “He got that job because he worked for it.”

  “I guess it’s just luck that Willie Uptegrove sends off $500 to the Congressman every year,” Leo said. “Don’t you deny it, Rosie Uptegrove. Dolores clears Willie’s checks at the bank. Ain’t that the truth, Dolores.” Dolores ducked her head.

  They argued the bridge rebuilding. Martha interrupted Leo whenever he moved to speak, and kept her mother Pickett supplied with cups of Nehi Orange. Over Big Rosie’s shoulder Miracle saw Bradford Uptegrove work a pint from his pocket and tip its contents into a cup.

  Bernie wondered if the rebuilding would reroute the highway away from the Miracle Inn. Big Rosie scoffed. “That road will stay exactly where it is,” she said. “There’s no reason for it to change. You’ll be making money hand over fist, Bernie Miracle. All those construction workers and contractors and government people will be coming through and the Miracle Inn is just the natural place for them to stop.” She gave Rosamund a long wink. “That’s not the only place they’ll stop either, if I’ve got anything to say about it.”

  “Mamma!” Rosamund said. Her cheeks bloomed red and she tossed her black hair so that it brushed across Miracle’s face. Miracle’s heart rose to his throat. He uncrossed his legs and rearranged himself inside his pants.

  “That’s a fact now, Rosamund, you’re twenty years old and old enough to be thinking about your future,” Big Rosie said. “And if you don’t I’ll do some thinking for you. Your father knows every one of those contractors and they’re not a bad bunch to know, either. Every one of them Yankees and half of them looking for the kind of woman you can’t find in the big city. They’ll be flocking here like ducks on a June bug. I wouldn’t be surprised to see one show up a little early.” A grin started at the corners of her eyes and worked its secret way to the corners of her mouth. “It wouldn’t surprise me, not one bit. The early bird gets the worm.”

  “I thought you said Willie didn’t know a soul,” Leo said.

  “Leo Miracle, I’ll thank you to keep your backbiting gossip to yourself,” Big Rosie said. “Everybody knows you cut timber on Fort Knox land.”

  Across dinner Miracle drank a great deal and ate very little. Martha moved next to Big Rosie to discuss children and lumbago and to distract her from Leo. Miracle had no polite choice but to scoot away from Rosamund. He picked at his greens and thought what a fool he’d been to fall in love with a woman almost two years older than he, from across the river, whose father knew a U. S. Congressman and every rich single good-looking contractor to boot.

  Every few minutes Rosamund directed a remark at him and offered him dishes. When Big Rosie wasn’t looking, she sipped his beer. Her attentions only confused Miracle. His jaw sagged and when the others spoke to him he answered in grunts.

  “Hey, hound dog,” Bernie said. “Cheer up. You’re why we’re here.” He reached across the table to slap his son’s shoulder. “Have another beer,” he said. He nodded at Martha’s mother Pickett. “Have old Carrie Nation get it for you.”

  Miracle went to the beer tub. Rosamund followed. “Pour me a beer,” she said.

  “Your mother’ll see,” Miracle said.

  “I’m twenty years old and I’ll drink beer if I want,” Rosamund said. “In a cup. No head.”

  They walked
to the riffle, where the splash of water over the rocks and around the bridge pilings drowned the voices from the table. Miracle flopped on his back, tilting his head to the sky. “Why me, Lord,” he said, mournful as the whistle of the coal train that rumbled through at midnight.

  Rosamund sat and sipped her beer. “I know just what you mean. All I want is to sing my way out of this hole and get to Nashville. I met this girl who’s come to set things up for the Jamboree contest at the county fair—she works with one of those agencies—and she said anytime, honey, she said it just like that, anytime, honey, I’ll get you in to see Mr. Porter Wagoner himself!”

  “So you’re clearing out.”

  “Isn’t everybody? Ever since he got that job with the bridge contractor all you can get out of Bradford Uptegrove is California this, California that. ‘When I get finished with this bridge job I’ll have enough money to go to California,’ he says. ‘I’ll buy me a car and move to Hollywood, where the money is easy and the women are too!’ It’s all part of his plan. I’m supposed to get married to some contractor he and Mamma have handpicked so I’m taken care of and he can take off to sit in the sun on the beach. Leaving me with screaming kids and dirty diapers and daytime TV. No, sir,” she said. “No soap operas for me. The Grand Ole Opry, maybe.”

  Miracle eyed her sideways. “So you’re not getting married.”

  “I’ll marry whatever whenever I want, so long as it’s headed to Nashville and has enough money to take me along,” Rosamund said.

  “And I’ll push beer at the Miracle Inn.”

  “You don’t have to stay at the Inn any more than I have to get married to a Yankee contractor. You could go to California if you wanted. You can do anything. You’re a man.”

  “I can’t leave. I could never leave. I’m a Miracle,” he said. “I’m the Miracle. Half the family doesn’t even know my first name, and wouldn’t use it if they did. I’ll bet you don’t know my first name.”

  Rosamund stood. “It’s fine with me if you sit around this town feeling sorry for yourself. But you mark my word. The day will come when you’ll see Rosamund Uptegrove up in lights.” She walked to the river.

  Miracle closed his eyes and thought about the songs his Grandma Miracle sang, about people who drowned themselves or stabbed themselves or hung themselves from high oak beams because they could not win their loves. He saw no future in that.

  At the same time he saw no future in the Miracle Inn. With his father’s stubbornness, Miracle knew that he would not give Rosamund up until she loved him or she loved somebody else.

  Rosamund was right, after all. He was a man, this was 1967, people he knew were taking off for foreign places right and left. People who had grown up in Jessup County lived in Louisville and Cincinnati and Detroit. People Miracle knew were writing letters to their families from boot camp in South Carolina, even from Vietnam.

  Two months ago a soldier from a town two counties over had been killed in a booby trap set by some Viet Cong, right in his home base, before he ever fired a gun. His picture had been in the Argus, and though nobody knew him several veterans of other wars went to the funeral and returned to give loud angry speeches in the Inn.

  Things were happening out there, in California and Nashville and Vietnam, and he was nineteen and sitting on his butt in a field that smelled of cowpies.

  “Rosamund! Ros-a-mund!” Big Rosie was yelling in a voice as sweet as sorghum. Rosamund ran to the table. Miracle rolled over to follow her with his eyes, across the slate bank to the sea of Miracles, gabbing and drinking and rowdy, with the Picketts scattered here and there, rocks of sobriety in the storm.

  He lay studying this family, and the people that made him who he was and held him down, all at once: his mother Martha Pickett, her red hair filled with colors from the sun, without a wrinkle or spot or gray hair to show that she was a day older than the day she married; his father Bernie Miracle, whose hands darted from his beer to his elbows to his cigarette, and whose square jaw flushed bright red in the sun; the tables full of Miracles, all sharing some line of jaw or slump of shoulders or bow-legged walk that set them apart from the in-laws and friends and anybody else who was not family.

  Then there were the Baptists from across the river, Big Rosie and Willie Uptegrove and their children: Bradford Uptegrove, who would never be happier, making plans with money he’d yet to earn, dating quiet LaHoma Dean, who’d give him no trouble along the way; and Rosamund, her back to Miracle but her black hair spread across shoulders as white and wonderful and cold as January snow.

  And the others, all talking with one eye cocked at a stranger wearing a wide paisley tie with a coat to match. He had blond hair—nobody in Jessup County had blond hair, or wore a tie, except to funerals or weddings. He was not older but getting there, not fat but thick enough to be prosperous. He shook women’s hands—Miracle saw him take his mother’s hand. He pecked his mother’s cheek, as if he’d known her since Adam. This, Miracle figured, must be Big Rosie’s Yankee contractor.

  Martha saw him first. Across babies and wicker baskets and crabgrass she saw the bright red car, with a blond man different from Bernie in every way: thick where Bernie was thin, pale where Bernie was raw red, soft where Bernie was hard. In the bright May light there was no mistaking this Yankee’s hair, yellow as goldenrod. He climbed from the car and caught her staring. She blushed and looked back to her food. A minute later she stole a glance up. He was still looking at her, his eyes staring coolly across Big Rosie’s welcoming bulk.

  He stepped through swarming babies, and held out his hand to her, before all others. “Talbott Marquand,” he said. He squeezed her hand, a second longer and a little tighter than he ought? Or was that her imagination? Or was that her hope? Before she could loosen her grasp, he drew her cheek to his lips and planted a kiss, bold and firm. She was too shocked to resist.

  She rose abruptly. “Pleased to meet you,” she said coldly. “Got to tend to the kids.”

  Across the next hour she felt his eyes on her back. She turned around once or twice, quickly, to find him engaged in a perfectly normal conversation, with the glazed smile of someone bored to tears but too polite to say as much. She cursed her imagination and turned back, only to feel his eyes again, checking her out in a way she’d not felt in twenty-three years, since leaving the Miracle Inn that first time, under Bernie’s watchful stare.

  She was stern with herself. She kept her attention on the children, the table, the women, all the while she felt that the churning in her stomach must be giving her away. When Big Rosie cornered the newcomer and Rosamund, Martha breathed a sigh of relief. She was too old, and too married, for this nonsense.

  But across the afternoon her thoughts returned to his first cool stare, with the sun glinting from his yellow, yellow hair.

  The sycamore shadows crept across the river and the water flowed the color of blackstrap molasses. Miracle gathered himself up one long limb at a time and loped across the field.

  At the side tables the Miracles were putting away beer bottles and leftovers and babies. At the center table Martha was changing the diaper on a niece, the squirming baby neatly spreadeagled on a towel. Big Rosie Uptegrove and Leo Miracle were glaring at each other with withering eyes. Leo was shouting and pointing at the ground. “Our country!” he said. “This is our country, right here, and every damned one of them boys should be over there defending it.”

  “Over there is not over here, Leo Miracle, and I’ll be damned if I can see how giving up our guns and our boys to a bunch of slant-eyed foreigners is going to protect our country,” Big Rosie said.

  “It’s the Chinese,” Bernie said.

  “I hears thunder,” Ossetta said, looking up at the cloudless sky.

  “It’s the guns at Fort Knox,’’ Leo said, as if she were a fool indeed. He turned to Bernie. “It was a different country in World War II and that didn’t stop us from going over.”

  “And where were you in World War II?” Big Rosie said. “As if I didn’
t know.”

  “The country needed me to farm,” Leo said. “I volunteered but they wouldn’t take me.”

  “And the country needs Bradford Uptegrove to rebuild the Boatyard Bridge.”

  “Which don’t need rebuilding in the first place.”

  “It’s the Chinese, the Chinese are behind all this,” Bernie said.

  “I smells rain,” Ossetta said. “That ain’t Fort Knox.” She began gathering dishes. The Yankee contractor stood shifting his weight from one leg to another and looking into the dark trees as if something interesting might be found there.

  “The Chinese started the whole thing to get us fighting amongst ourselves,” Bernie said. “Then when our backs are turned, they’re going to march in and take over.”

  “Bernie Miracle, you stay out of this,” Martha said. She skewered the diaper with a practiced thrust. “This is a graduation party, not the Miracle Inn.” She bounced the baby and waggled a finger into its smooth pale face before turning it over to a hovering sister-in-law. “Why people can’t get together for a reunion without acting like they have to solve the problems of the world that haven’t ever been solved and never will be solved—well, it’s beyond me.”

  “Now that woman’s talking sense,” the Yankee contractor said.

  Martha started and blushed. No one spoke, as if the contractor’s words reminded them that there was an outsider here, a Yankee, who might leave with the impression that these Southerners disagreed about important matters.

  Leo rushed to fill the gap. “She’s been watching too much TV,” he said. “I told Bernie when he moved that thing into his house, I said you watch what happens, a woman at home all day with nothing to do but sit in front of that tube—but he wouldn’t listen, no sir, not to little brother. You’ll never see Dolores with one of them things, I guarantee that. ‘The starved hen clucks loudest,’ ’swhat I always say.”

  Big Rosie stood and grabbed her pocketbook. “I refuse to listen to any more of this manure,’’ she said. “Bradford Uptegrove, you take us home. Rosamund, you ride with Mr. Marquand. I don’t believe he’s quite familiar with the way.”