Chapter 10 - The Sound of the River
Spring came late to North Carolina that year.
By late April, the rhododendrons along the banks of the Swannanoa River outside Asheville were finally breaking into heavy clusters of pink and white blossoms. The mountain runoff ran high, clear, cold, and loud—a constant, rushing music that tumbled over the river stones, filling the valley with the clean, mineral breath of the high peaks.
We had sold the house in Raleigh.
We had packed our lives into two moving trucks and bought a sixty-acre former dairy farm outside Black Mountain, ten miles from my parents’ place. The house was old—a ninety-year-old cedar farmhouse with squeaky pine floors, high ceilings, wide screen porches, and windows that rattled whenever the wind came out of the gap.
There were no locks on the interior doors. We had removed every single one with a screwdriver on the day we closed.
On a Saturday afternoon, the family had gathered for my mother’s seventy-second birthday.
The smell of hickory smoke and grilled chicken drifted across the yard, mingling with the scent of wild mint that grew along the irrigation ditch. Cousins ran through the orchard, their shouts bouncing off the barn walls, their laughter bright and unrestricted.
Noah sat on the edge of the low river dock, his bare feet dangling into the cold current.
His hair was short again, cut in the messy crew cut he had worn when he was eight. His skin was golden brown from two months of working the vegetable garden with his grandfather. His shoulders had broadened, the muscle returning to his legs, his shins marked with the honest, beautiful badges of childhood: a purple bruise from a baseball slide, three scabs from a blackberry briar, and a streak of yellow pollen across his knee.
Beside him sat Lily, skipping flat shale stones across the pool where the water slowed before the rapids.
"Watch this one, Noah," she called out, her arm whipping forward in an awkward, sidearm delivery.
The stone skipped twice, kicking up two small plumes of white water before sinking into the green depths.
"Two," Noah said, smiling. "My turn."
He picked up a thin piece of slate. His fingers were strong now, calloused from hauling cedar posts and pulling weeds. He leaned back, his hips rotating with the natural, athletic rhythm that had returned to his body over the long winter.
The stone flew.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
It skipped all the way to the far gravel bar, clattering against the stones with a dry, sharp rattle.
"Five!" Lily shouted, jumping up and down on the wooden dock, the planks groaning beneath her bare feet. "Teach me how to hold it like that! Teach me the finger thing!"
I stood sixty feet away on the porch, leaning against the square timber post, a glass of cold water in my hand.
Caroline stepped out through the screen door, letting it slap shut behind her with a sharp, wooden clack. She didn't flinch at the sound. None of us did anymore.
She leaned her side against mine, her arm slipping around my waist, her head coming to rest against my shoulder.
"Dr. Vance called this morning," she murmured.
"What did he say?"
"He reviewed the six-month neurological panel. The cognitive processing scores are completely normal, David. The spatial awareness deficit is gone. He said... he said he’s never seen a child reclaim his footing so fast."
I looked across the green grass toward the dock.
Noah was kneeling beside his sister now, his large hand gently wrapping around her small fingers, positioning the flat slate stone against her index finger, showing her where to place her thumb.
His face was turned toward the sun, his eyes wide and clear, drinking in the light without squinting, without fear.
From the road half a mile away came the distant, rhythmic rumble of the westbound Norfolk Southern freight train, its horn blowing long and low as it approached the grade crossing at Old Fort.
In the old days, that sound would have made Noah freeze. It would have sent him diving beneath the nearest table, his hands over his ears, his body shaking with the memory of subterranean vents.
Now, he simply lifted his head.
He listened to the train horn. He listened to the crows arguing in the orchard. He listened to the laughter of his cousins by the picnic table. And he listened to the roar of the mountain river sweeping over the stones, carrying everything old, everything broken, everything buried, down toward the sea.
He turned toward the porch.
His eyes locked with mine across the lawn.
He didn't tap three times.
He didn't have to.
May you like
He raised his right hand high above his head, his palm open to the blue Carolina sky, his fingers waving once, twice, in the warm spring wind.
I lifted my glass, waving back, and took a long, deep breath of the open air.
