Lyndon Johnson, a president we loved, dedicated Summersville Dam in 1966. Before cutting the ribbon, he made a joke about losing his pocketknife on the way and maybe having the Secret Service throw up a roadblock at the Nicholas County line to find whoever had pocketed his Schrade — too fine a thing to leave just laying around — since he reckoned all West Virginia boys come out of the womb knowing a good knife when they see one. We laughed, and Lyndon took out a bandanna and swabbed at his brow, looking like any worried man.
Acres of virgin concrete. Smooth, vertical. The dam was tall as the face of God. There was nothing else to compare it to. Nothing of such stability, such mass.
The rising waters flooded the village of Gad, home to a store, a filling station, and three hundred people. Eminent domain moved them, even the dead from their graves. (When Kelly stood on the overpass, was he trying to see his mother’s village through ninety feet of water? No. He thought only of the girl.) Quietly, later, Gauley Season was created in 1986 by an act of Congress. We had no idea how life would change.
Over unruly rivers and hogbacks, the rectangular Gauley River National Recreation Area was placed like a stencil. It’s shaded aquamarine on the maps. Lord — maps and new maps. The rapids had names before the rafters came: Glenmorgan Crossing and Mink Shoals, Gooseneck, Musselshell. They brought a new language: cubic feet per second, high side and chicken line, hydraulic and haystack. They renamed the rapids: Insignificant, Pure Screaming Hell, Junkyard, the Devil’s Asshole. Unwritten, our names flew away like thistledown on the wind. Except for Pillow Rock. Our fathers named the rock for the river drivers napping there in the sun, after a punishing morning of busting jams and poling logs downriver. Chet snuck to the foot of the overpass and spray-painted in green neon, PILLOW ROCK AHEAD!!! The last thing a rafter sees before tipping over the falls.
True, the release goes against nature. Gauley Season scours the river, blasting fish from their lies, eyes agog, air bladders ruptured. Even so, Gauley Season brings certain benefits. To atone for the fishery’s death, the Department of Natural Resources grows California rainbow trout in hatcheries and drops ten thousand pounds into the canyon by helicopter. The fish have nubby snouts, open ulcers, and tattered fins from rubbing against the concrete raceways. Gray trout, we call them. They taste like they’ve been stamped out of cat food, but they’re free. Come spring, we watch them rain and smack the waters. We cast hooks until every last one’s caught and creeled. Sometimes the fish hit the rocks as the helicopter swoops away. Raccoons revel in the blood. They lick their wiry hands, fumbling them in an attitude just like prayer. They rejoice.
“There he is!” an engineer cried. “You win, Sully! He jumped! He finally jumped!”
The others ran out of the powerhouse. He adjusted the parallax of his binoculars in a gloved fist. “Shit. False alarm.” What he thought was Kelly was a dead deer twisted — twisting — in sunken willows.
A year passed as they do, quickly, as if in a dream or a coma. We thought of the dead girl and her father less and less, or tried to.
Snow and thaw and rain. Hay was cut in the fields, sallies hatched off the river in lime-and-sulfur clouds, deer grew their velvet crowns. September gleaned a cool wind from the Alleghenies. Labor Day weekend, Pillow Rock gathered its people. We hollered as the Army Corps opened up the gates. Upriver, the beating of ten thousand hooves. We inhaled the water’s breath of iron and cedar.
A standing wave broke over Sweet’s Falls. The river augered and torqued, a muscular green. Shards of flotsam and jetsam: broken sycamores and garbage bags, bleached timber, a child’s tricycle. A water-bloated calf wheeled downriver, eyes blue as heaven.
The air crackled with anticipation. Gas stations and hotels and campgrounds had pitched their banners early: RAFTERS WELCOME, COLD BEER HOT SHOWERS, ASK ABOUT OUR GROUP RATES. This would be a record-breaking season. The Washington Post had featured us in their Sunday magazine. The headline read MONTANI SEMPER LIBERI. West Virginia’s secret is out: the number two river in America, number seven in the world. One question remains. Can the whitewater industry save this place? With the glee of discoverers, they told of the spine-rattling, third-world pike that is Route 19. That wasn’t so bad — maybe the Department of Highways would be embarrassed and put in for federal money. What nettled most were the things they plucked out to describe: junk cars in the river, raggedy bear-hounds jumping in their kennels, crosses at Carnifex Ferry that say GET RIGHT WITH GOD and THERE IS NO WATER IN HELL. All eye-battering, all to be laughed at. Didn’t talk about the landing we poured, the oil-and-chip road we laid for their wobbling, overburdened shuttles. “Relax,” Mayor Cline said. “Sometimes the fire that cooks your food burns your fingers — you can’t bitch.” It’s dog Latin, the state slogan. We are, it says, always free.
Kelly Bischoff walked in long pants down the fisherman’s trail, with a ragged red backpack on.
Pillow Rock went silent.
Work-blackened jeans, dirt in his hair. He peeled off his shirt, shook it of coal dust, and folded it with care. The words Sweet and Sour were inked in cursive blue over his nipples, with arrows offering up directions. A black panther climbed his bicep, claws drawing stylized blood. A Vietnam mark. He shucked his boots and tucked his cigarettes, wallet, and keys into them. Finally, he pulled out a penknife and snagged off his work pants to the knee.
“You’re back among the fold,” Reed said to him.
Kelly smiled. “Good to see you all.”
“You working that strip job?”
“Yes I am,” Kelly said, looking side to side, daring anyone to say a word against it.
“Jesus Was Our Savior, Coal Was Our King. Say, you probably ain’t watched from this angle.”
Kelly said, “I seen them go over. 1979, it was. Fishing here. Seen Philadelphy Pete Dragan go over Sweet’s, back in them too-big green army rafts. Said, Hell, I can do that.”
Kelly watched the falls, apart from the rest. What could he read there? The water herded yellow foam into the backwater, a rancid butterfat color, thick enough you could draw your name in it with a fish pole. Where we’d saved four lives last year. Five if we counted Kelly’s. If Kelly longed for his old life, he did not say. He just watched the water’s horseplay like he could augur it. Maybe he could.
Rafters! We waved and hollered as usual, but Kelly radiated a complex silence. So we grew quiet, not so joyful, and the day grew old. Shadows slithered on the rock. One hundred ninety-seven rafts. Not a one drowned. Clouds came and snuffed our shadows. The air had a little bite to it, so we pulled on sweaters and packed to leave. Slush tipped from coolers, the last orphan beer cracked and drained. Kelly just sat there.
“Them are your people,” we said, waving at the last raft.
Kelly shrugged. We gave Reed Judy some hopeful looks, so he hunkered down next to our fallen idol. “You coming? We’re going to Bud Shreve’s, grill some food. Be fun.”
“No, I’ll set here awhile.” Kelly rummaged around his backpack and found a gray army-surplus blanket. Was he too good for us?
“Alright, bud. You hear about the blind kid up here got bit by the rattlesnake?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Least he didn’t see it coming.”