AN APPLE RIVER LIFE
Apple River used to border orchards. apple orchards, naturally. Sandi had been raised on those country roads bordering the willows and occasional low-land levees of that river. her family had been poor river rats. and that was a fact. her Mama and Papa had been divorced for years before she heard about how she was from a broken home. that being from such a home was a bad thing. it had never occurred to her. Papa still came around and gave Mama money when he could. Gramma said he meant good. but he just wasn't naturally a settled man. he was a gypsy. so Gramma said. Mama said nothing. but they always had coffee and talked around the old Formica kitchen table kindly enough. he'd laugh with them and called Sandi "Sandy Bottom", cuz that's what the Apple River had: a sandy and clean bottom. it was so clear you could see the fish easy against the sands - even after storm floods....
Sandi was a reader like her Mama and Gramma too. she figured that all three of them being readers meant they were as good as everybody else. the lady at the library was sweet to them and treated them like they were people like any body else too. but maybe being a reader wasn't quite enough. Mama was always talking about how they were all, she and Gramma and Sandi, Daughters of the American Confederacy. that meant they were people with class for sure. but no one else knew about that in town; not that Sandi knew about anyway. it wasn't that bothersome to know that people didn't cotton to her and her family - not that much anyway. they were OK just on the river as a family... and the river was part of the family for sure. its every season and mood and movement were twisted into the hair of all three women like ribbons of green and blue and white...
Gramma made do for them all. she put foods by. kept the kitchen garden - which was really huge. Mama worked in the calendar factory. boxing calendars off the punch-press six days a week. Sandi's job was to wash dishes after school for three hours at the Chinese restaurant and help set up for the dinner hour. then she'd come home and do her chores and her homework and get ready for the next school day. there wasn't much time for funnin', as Gramma would say. not much time at all. they were just getting by. that's for sure. and the house was a rental. a shack... truth be told.
There were three events in Sandi's life that changed her life for certain by the time she was eighteen.
The first was that Gramma died. she was out on one of those really muggy near-evening hot days when even the current of the river seems almost still as a pond. mosquito's buzzing around your ears causin' you to go crazy in about two hours. birds starting up in the sky who'll never eat enough of the pests to make a whit of difference. grass dank with river silt and wet. fishing slow - all of them in the deeps under the rocks. being cooler... not hungry enough to come on up yet for a bite. Gramma was up in the kitchen garden. weeding. insisting that it was cooler out there than in the house. air still as the grave must be. hardly could breathe...
Gramma's pies were under the screening domes trying to be cooling on the sill. apple. of course. and raspberries. and thimble berry...one pie. takes a lot of thimble berries to make a pie. the early gherkins in the pickle crock. vinegar and white sugar and salt and dill. the scum skimmer draped over the side: becoming pickles pretty near soon. dilly beans marinating for canning. strawberries and rhubarb simmering soft and slow on the stove to whittle them down into the paste that Gramma would roll up into straws of fruit leather that were the best bursts of flavor in the world for dessert - if none else was made. milk just churned into butter-milk...the butter cooling in the old wood ice box in its wooden mold with the hen-relief pattern on the bottom: that would become the top when you pressed out the butter to 'put it by' in the ice box...on top of the block of ice. so it would stay sweet...it was from milk from the neighbor's cows. clean and good....everything was clean and good and fed and innocent on that day... except for the heat. which was all steam and hell....
Then Gramma headed downward over into the rows. quick. like a tree falling in the forest. a tree upright. then down. across the carefully weeded rows of hefty plants. she herself a hardy and sturdy soul of a tree up until then - only sixty-something. over and down. curled around the crushed plants. arms out like protecting them from her fall. peace like a river on her face. Sandi saw her go down from the window of the house. ran over to her with screams low and loud. saw she was dead... and the peace like a river. cried out loudly into a wail of pain... up to the sky that had no mercy for that very day....
that night it would rain. and cool. and the next day was beautiful beyond belief. cool and fresh. it was the boiling heat of the day that had taken Gramma down. Sandi would never forgive hot and muggy days ever again in her whole life. she hated each one like a murderer gone free. for such a day had taken the person she loved most. right in front of her eyes. and no one ever again made a pie. or grew and tended a garden. or put by one living thing for preserving: not at that house by the river. not ever again.
The second happenings involved Mama big time. The factory closed its calendar production. people just weren't buying little cardboard desk calendars like they used to do maybe. maybe it was just time. whatever it was: took Mama's job. small towns don't have any jobs when their one factory pulls out of town. people just go on welfare: which isn't much. on account of the county being poor in the first place. and then there's how you feel about yourself. Mama felt real bad. real bad: Gramma gone. house all a wreck now and the yard too. no way to pay the landlord. and they were already living almost as poor as it gets. Mama started into drink. first a beer or two, cuz it was hot. then wine when it got cooler into the fall. then even medicine from the drugstore with alcohol in it. cuz they were going to be evicted. even Papa was at a loss. Sandy Bot, he said. you got two parents not worth a damn thing on earth. Gramma was the only good thing ever in our lives. her being gone took our spirit away finally. quite finally.
Papa and Mama packed up out of the house on the Apple River. they moved into the shelter in town. only Sandi wouldn't go. she talked herself into a full-time job at the Chinese restaurant. they naturally felt sorry for her: on account of she dropped out of school. age seventeen. almost eighteen. no one bothered her about it... she had to make do somehow. all the teachers knew it. only a couple of them had been working on scholarships for her for college. they kept saying not to throw it all away. but they didn't exactly offer to have her stay with them either. and there was no body else to help anywhere... so people turned away. not to be mean. just to be real about it all. Apple River folk all had to deal with having less. losses in floods... and now the factory gone: only the river kept singing its way over the sand and stone and past the old Indian Caves on its banks. caves that said that other people had lived there once long ago too. had made it somehow. seen sorrow. maybe poverty too. the landlord gave her a break. if she cleaned up the place and the yard and all - took care of it well: then he'd lower the rent. and she wouldn't have to pay the back-rent. Sandi took the deal. it was a good deal.
Winter came on. winter was snow and very cold. walking to work was hard. keeping wood cut for the stove was hard. keeping the road open was hard. Sandi had some good friends and neighbors who would help her quite a bit. she felt bad about it though. on account of she had no way to pay-back. to say thanks proper... she tried to help them all right back when she could. plus kids would bring by their homework and their texts. they tried to teach her what they were learning. so as she could take her GED and all. she just worked her self raw keeping her life going. what with the restaurant and trying to learn and keeping up the property and all... she was getting older before her time. no time for funnin' anymore for sure. no time for love... Papa and Mama never came out to see her on account of shame. they sometimes met together at the church relief-kitchen at the same time for a free meal though. not much to say. but then it had always been Gramma who was the chatty one. kept them talking about more than only survival. there was the shame all around too. Mama didn't even go to the library anymore. no sense pressing the Daughters of the Confederacy bit anyways... no one cared up north roundabouts anyhow... that was a complete fact....
May be best to make a long story shorter. simply said: the Chinese Restaurant burned down. it was winter. for some reason more fires start up in winter. don't know why: some said it was no accident. it was arson. but no one knew the china man or his wife... see: if you don't have family around in Apple River: you really don't have much of a social 'life' and so on. even Sandi didn't know them well... in the narrow streets of that narrow little town: prejudice was real as the river was real. people hadn't even wanted the China Family to fish in the river. people ate their food like it was foreign food - which it was. but it was like they were foreign: too foreign to be neighbors or friends - though they were really American as any body else. Sandi had never thought about it ever... still: now she didn't have a job. and the town seemed very small all at once. very narrow. she suddenly wanted the river to freeze over completely. to be able to skate away on it. to leave like the China Family did. without a trace left behind.
Sandi talked it all over with her friend Sara. Sara was the only and best friend who might understand why she felt she had to leave Apple River. Sara just laughed and said she had always known Sandi would leave. It was like a sign. that's what she said: the Chinese Restaurant burned down. you were going to go. I just knew it. they were sipping root beer floats. listening to the old jukebox in the drugstore. I'm staying here. Sara was clear about that. I'm tied to that ranch out yonder. it's dusty, dead, and in debt. but I'm staying with those three damn 'd's. Sara was kidding around. but not by much. you gotta go. Sandi. my grandpa used to say people born on the river are born moving on. they just see the world like it was a floating highway: they want to go on the river. go to where it's gonna go. they're not tied to the soil like the rest of us. you are a river rat. a river person on the run. always have been.
I don't know. Sandi was upset. Gramma kept us here so good. me and Mama. if she hadn't died. if she just hadn't died... Sara was kind. she was gonna die some day. Sandi: she would have told you to go now. you know that. your Papa made the mistake coming back all the time. your Mama made the mistake hiding in alcohol. you haven't make any mistakes yet. don't make the mistake of staying in Apple River. if you love the river: let the river take you out of here. that's what it does. it takes you away from all the mistakes. from the rotting of that old river house. the rotting in the soil where the garden used to be. the rotting of death in the graveyard where your Gramma lies restless... she would travel with you if she could....
Sandi knew right when she heard right. she hugged Sara and made her way back home. she listened to the river all night. next morning she went out fishing. near the bridge where the mud terns nested. near the old red barn. near the Indian Caves cut farther-in than you could see. near the ripples with the quiet water behind them. where the fish would bite. every time a little bass would bite: sometimes she would catch it. but she kept throwing them all back... dreams were possessing her. no body could blame the fish. they were following the river's ways. they had to eat. and bite. even at the fisherman's lures and spinners. there was mercy in the river - and there was no mercy in the river... the day grew beautiful. the birds flew into the low thermals above the river. their song was much like the sound of the wheels of a train on tracks going far away... the river was singing a gypsy song about moving on. about escaping Apple River... by being part of Apple River....
Sandi put her rod up on the hilly bank. she walked into the river off the stones on the bank. the river held her and rocked her. she paddled her self out of the shallow eddy and into the current. she let the river carry her a long, long, long way. it was night when she pulled herself out onto a grassy bank. she walked into the town downriver... shaking cold and drowned-looking wet. she told the nice police-man where she had 'fallen' in. he took her back in the squad car to Apple River. they talked a lot about his town. about it being ok. jobs and all. some place to be that was ok... she packed up the very next morning and took the bus to that town. the nice cop found her a room in his aunt's boarding house. she took a job at the Five and Dime the next day... it was a new town. bigger. small junior college. the nice cop - who she could almost trust. because it turned out he didn't live far from the river. not far from the river at all....
When you are born on river. when you live by a river all your life: well then it is not easy to leave the river. your life is all flood and then dry and is rarely a life of money or fame or fortune... your life is all gypsy and wandering and following the water downstream. fighting to get back up stream. dealing with the river as if it was kind. dealing with the river as if it was cruel: when all it is being is more natural than all that. it is just being timeless and flow of life down channels water makes and follows. stone. sand. animals that must live in it. animals that must live along it. Apple River is such a one: running free without a dam even to stop its course to the great lake and even to the very sea... if there is a sea nearby. or even far away....
Each life on Apple River has a water-course way to flow: a question when there is no better answer. Sandi followed the Apple River. she followed it since she was haunted by rivers. as she had once heard. She would never leave Apple River itself. not for all of her days...
there are people who have to have rivers. who have to be on rivers. in rivers. along-side rivers. wandering with rivers. fishing in rivers. living on the river. living because of river. what river is. where the water flows. there they follow. there they may die...
mainly. truly: there they have to live their lives.
Rivers just like Apple River.... there:
they live....
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