A Twist in the River

It was June 30, 1880, or so he reckoned. He’d spent all his days in the same log cabin, the one his pa and ma had built together. He never went to school but taught himself to read and write. He hunted and fished, and he was good with his hands. His ma showed him how to cook. He learned building and fixing things from his pa. When he was ten, his ma gave birth to his sister, but she only made it two days. They called her Julia. A hand-carved wooden headstone in the backyard marked her burial spot. His mother died, at least on the inside, along with the baby. His father hit the bottle—a habit he thought he’d broken eight years earlier. Both parents’ spiritless bodies hung on another half-decade or so, finally leaving the boy an orphan at sixteen.

He hated socializing, though he fiercely missed earlier conversations with his ma and pa. On the rare occasion when he did go into town—which was only when he was obliged by some necessity from the general store or lumber from the mill—the townsfolk sneered at him through hushed comments and callous stares. He was attractive enough, that wasn’t the issue. It was just that his reputation as the son of a lunatic and drunkard preceded him. In a small town like Chestnut Copse, he’d be trapped in that identity until the day he died. And so he decided today would be that day.

He didn’t have an exact plan in mind. He wasn’t keen on shooting himself. He actually felt guilty shooting game but was able to rationalize it. And the thought of drinking himself to death felt like an insult to his pa. So he decided to go for a walk and think on it. He noticed his sister’s headstone had come undone on account of all the rain they’d had. It was face down in the mud. He shook his head but did nothing about it.

He didn’t have an exact destination in mind. He just knew that walking usually helped when his head was feeling all mixed up. So he pressed on, through the secluded woods he’d befriended as a young one. It was his sanctuary where he’d go to read, climb trees and observe animals as they scurried past, and—as of late—to break free from the heavy memories that haunted his home. As a branch snapped below his left boot, he laughed at himself. Why am I walking this far if I’m fixing to die today anyway?

He didn’t have an exact route in mind. He’d traveled along multiple paths in the past and knew them all well. But something suddenly began guiding him in a specific direction—an unidentifiable force that he didn’t resist or even question. About thirty minutes later, he found himself in view of the river.

The sound of rushing water loomed ominously in the distance. It’d rained hard for six days straight, so the river was unusually swollen. In fact, he thought to himself, today’s the first sunny day in some time. Nearing the bank, he caught something out of the corner of his eye. He spun around and witnessed a young girl lose her balance and fall into the river, instantly swallowed up by the current. With no time to spare, he ran and jumped in after her.

The churning water was the most turbulent he’d ever experienced, as if the ground itself was seething beneath him. He struggled to keep his head above the surface, being thrashed about in every which way. He quickly realized all hope was probably lost. He couldn’t see the girl, and he was losing stamina. Resigned, he decided to swim back to land.

But a force—peculiar as the one that had originally led him to the river—plunged his head below the surface. He fought back, rose up, and gasped for air. As he did, he searched frantically for the river’s edge. He glimpsed the girl, fantastically safe and sound, cradled in Pa’s arms with Ma standing alongside. “Julia!” she cried in relief.

Still caught in the current, the boy turned his attention back to the river—the enigmatic trader of life it was—just in time to distinguish a grayish-brown boulder protruding directly in front of him. Headfirst, he smashed into it and blacked out. The unyielding rapids dragged his body through the final twist, where he plummeted over a waterfall into the deep, dark hallow exactly forty-one feet below.