Go as a River

Copyright © 2023 Shelley Read All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law. Doubleday Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House Canada Limited Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Go as a river / Shelley Read. Names: Read, Shelley, author. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220419469 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220419477 | ISBN 9780385688772 (softcover) | ISBN 9780385688789 (EPUB) Classification: LCC PS3618.E225 G6 2023 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Cover design: Kelly Hill Cover art: (painting) zatelepina/Getty Images; (cabin) based on a photo by Jim Glab/Adobe Stock Published in Canada by Doubleday Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited www.penguinrandomhouse.ca a_prh_6.0_142785590_c0_r0 Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Epigraph Prologue Part I Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Part II Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Part III Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Part IV Chapter Twenty - One Part V Chapter Twenty - Two Chapter Twenty - Three Chapter Twenty - Four Chapter Twenty - Five Chapter Twenty - Six Acknowledgments About the Author For Richard & Kathryn,my parents and guiding lights For Avery & Owen,my inspiration And for Erik,my always At a certain point you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, to the world, Now I am ready. ~Annie Dillard Prologue Imagine what lingers on the black bottom of a lake. Debris, rivered in or tossed from boats, grows shaggy and soft. Pouty fish swim their strange lives, far from the hook, in inseparable breath and motion. Imagine patches of lake weed dancing like lithe, unobserved women. Stand on the edge of a lake, the low waves gulping at your shoes, and imagine how close you are to a world as silent and alien as the moon, out of reach of light and heat and sound. My home is at the bottom of a lake. Our farm lies there, mud bound, its remnants indistinguishable from boat wreckage. Sleek trout troll the remains of my bedroom and the parlor where we sat as a family on Sundays. Barns and troughs rot. Tangled barbed wire rusts. The once fertile land marinates in idleness. A history-book version of the creation of Blue Mesa Reservoir might portray the project as heroic, part of the grand vision to carry precious water from the Colorado River’s tributaries to the arid Southwest. Good intentions may have plugged the once wild Gunnison River and forced it to be a lake, but I know another story. I used to stand knee-deep in this section of the Gunnison when it still rushed fast and frothy through the valley of my birth, the vast and lonely Big Blue wilderness rising above it. I knew the town of Iola when it PART I 1948-1955 One 1948 He wasn’t much to look at. Not at first, anyway. “Pardon,” the young man said, a grimy thumb and forefinger tugging at the brim of his tattered red ball cap. “This the way to the flop?” As simple as that. This ordinary question from a filthy stranger walking up Main Street just as I arrived at the intersection with North Laura. His overalls and hands were blackened with coal, which I assumed was axle grease or layers of dirt from the fields, though it was too dark for either. His cheeks were smudged. Tan skin shone through trickled sweat. Straight black hair jutted from beneath his cap. The autumn day had begun as ordinary as the porridge and fried eggs I had served the men for breakfast. I noticed nothing uncommon as I went on to tend the house and the docile animals in their pens, picked two baskets of late-season peaches in the cool morning air, and made my daily deliveries pulling the rickety wagon behind my bicycle, then returned home to cook lunch. But I’ve come to understand how the exceptional lurks beneath the ordinary, like the deep and mysterious world beneath the surface of the sea. “The way to everything,” I replied. I was not trying to be witty or catch his notice, but the angle of his pause and slight twist of smile showed that my response amused him. He