Go as a River by Shelley Read

Author:Shelley Read [Read, Shelley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2023-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

1949-1954

Daddy died the Saturday after the final crop was picked and delivered. As if he had it all carefully scheduled, the first morning the temperature dropped below freezing, the hired hands pulled the last peaches and Daddy failed to rise.

I sat at his bedside, with Trout curled solemnly at my feet, and gazed sadly down at my father. When I reached out for one final touch, I never imagined a hand so cold.

Nearly everyone in Iola showed up for Daddy’s graveside funeral beneath the bluest autumn sky. After, when folks gathered for food and respects back at our farmhouse, I learned from Sheriff Lyle that it was Daddy himself who had turned in Seth. Lacking solid evidence, Lyle couldn’t make an arrest, but he assured both Seth and Forrest Davis they’d be in for trouble if they stayed. The pair headed out to California in Seth’s roadster, Lyle explained, “taking their mischief with them.”

“It was a hell of a lot more than mischief,” I said, clenching my jaw.

Lyle nodded solemnly, his eyes searching and apologetic. I could tell he wanted to ask me questions but was politely holding them back.

“You should know your Daddy was out looking for you every day after that, driving to Gunnison, Sapinero, Cebolla, riding Abel into the hills,” he said, moving the food around his plate but not eating. “I think he figured you’d come home if you knew Seth was gone. Asked me to keep a lookout.”

I considered that information, wondering what all Daddy knew, wondering if roaming the hills had given him the cough that grew to claim his lungs, if I was the cause of my father’s undoing, like I was the cause of Wil’s.

“I might have,” I answered grimly, the unimagined alternative to treating my baby as if he were an unwanted thing stinging the back of my throat like swallowed wasps. I was sorry I ever doubted my father’s devotion. It was too late to thank him and far too late to bring his grandson home.

“He even had me relocate your uncle,” Lyle continued.

“Relocate?” I asked, having difficulty reconciling the term with what Daddy had eventually told me about Og—that the “freeloader” had had kin all along but only contacted them once there was no longer a woman in our house to do his bidding.

“Turns out Ogden had a mother,” Lyle said.

“Everyone has a mother,” I said rudely, fatigued by the demands of the day.

“Not everyone has a mother who’d been searching for them for pert near eight years,” Lyle said. “Your father discovered a letter. Had me come pick up Og, drive him to Salida, and put him on the first train to Denver. The deuce swore at me the whole way.”

“What did the letter say?” I asked.

“Said she didn’t believe the notices she received saying both her boys died in the first months of the war. Said God wouldn’t do that to a mother.”

“God would,” I said, thinking, God will or He won’t.

“God didn’t,” he replied. “Somehow this old woman knew that.

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