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The river is a witness.
The Eye of Providence stretches a golden hand into Sam as he sleeps. If he were to ask, Henry and Ling could tell him that what we do not face in the light comes for us in the dark. Sam tosses. Turns. He dreams of the white buffalo calf. Its mother mewls into a dark and fractured night, staggering across scorched earth, searching for a safe place to rest among so much death. She is heavy with the weight of life inside her: the bones, fluid, blood; the three hundred days of dreams. So much weight; she can go no farther. Moaning, she lowers herself into a patch of diseased flowers, thrashing, until, with a final push, she expels her child from its gestational dreaming. The white buffalo calf slithers out into this world on a tide of blood. Breath stirs in its new lungs. The mouth parts, ready to make a sound. The calf opens its eyes and sees the bared teeth of the world and the power of the night behind it. It opens its mouth to cry, and the world descends. Sam does not know it, but he is crying. Crying for what is lost. He would cry a river.
The river unifies. The river divides. East and West. North and South. Rich and poor. Black and white. Have and have not. Down to the river and leave your sins behind. Shall we gather at the river?
The hour grows later. Supper dishes have been washed and dried and placed in cupboards. Everything put to order.
“There is no order, no order,” the ghosts cry.
Children with mint-fresh mouths promised in magazine advertisements don pajamas and sit at their parents’ feet. Mama with her needlepoint. Papa with his pipe, a gift for ten years’ service at his good job. Papa turns on the radio. Everywhere in this nation, its eyes and ears on the radios and the amusements it offers: the peppy orchestras, the romantic crooners, the comedy duos, the thrilling serials. It is the national pastime. (It passes the time. So much time and past.) Under the amusements is the thin static of insects, and just under that, the King of Crows whispers like an infection into those eager ears: “We are not strangers, you and I. Search your hearts. I am here, have always been here. You know me.”
“We know you,” the people repeat.
“I am in you.”
“You are in us.”
“Let it rise up.”
“Rise up.”
Papa rises. He descends into his lair, the basement, past the neatly lined-up jars of pickled okra and the tools placed just-so in their metal box. Past the fishing tackle hung upon the wall, to the drawer where he keeps his grandfather’s pistol and the bullets, fitting their gold weight neatly into each snug hole and spinning the chamber, watching the revolutions. The gun is a circle. He rises and enters the parlor, where the radio plays a jaunty tune. The fresh-mint children regard him and the gun curiously. “Papa?” Mama drops her needlepoint and screams. Four bullets later, it’s quiet, except for the blood-spattered radio.
The river is a witness.
America’s favorite son sleeps on. A four-poster bed with beautiful linens. He is far from the river.
“Sleep. Sleep and follow me,” the King of Crows whispers.
Jake Marlowe rises and follows the King of Crows into the desert strobed by harsh white light, as if the sky is a giant camera taking evidence. Atoms dance along the mountaintops, which catch fire. Black smoke curdles the view. The mountains undulate, rise and fall, one wide as a fat man, the next skinny as a little boy.
“Do you know me?” the King of Crows calls.
“Yes,” Jake Marlowe responds.
“I am what you seek,” the King of Crows calls. “I am where you lead.”
“Yes,” Marlowe responds.
In the serrated light, Jake sees a field of ragged, haunted people, mouths open in a scream like a factory whistle. Shadow. Light. Shadow. Light.
Smoke pours from their mouths and nostrils. “This keeps happening,” they say.
White-hot light violates the sky.
Shadow. Light.
They crumble into ash.
Light. Shadow.
Bodies piled in mass graves. “This keeps happening.”
Shadow.
Shadow.
Where is the river? Who will witness?
