Deep River Burning Read Free

ambiguity. She closed her eyes and imagined each path she could take as a road. What did each road look like and where would it lead? When she looked down those roads in her mind, she saw nothing. They were empty, black and white highways that led to a void. There was something in store for her, even though her understanding of it was as blurry as a muddy creek after a hard rain.
    She fought with her parents on many occasions about her future. Her father always said “stick close to your roots” and “invest your time and talents into your home town.” Her mother would say “Why don’t you get a job at the flower shop on Market Street? I could talk to the owner, Maggie. I’ll bet she’d love to have you.” Denver’s response was always the same: “Those are great things to do, but those are your dreams, not mine.” The arguments usually ended with a door slam and then the house would be quiet for a while. She went for long walks until she was too tired to be angry anymore. It didn’t matter where the anger took her. Sometimes it took her to the woods, other times she went downtown and burned through the streets and alleys like an arrow looking for a bull’s eye. She didn’t know that a little girl named Samantha Hewitt was about to change her life, and was about to change everyone’s life, everyone who lived in and around Adena, in ways they could have never imagined.
    A few weeks after the bonfire, Samantha Hewitt, who lived on Adena’s busy Lilac Avenue, was playing with a small stick in her back yard where the short, wiry grass was brown in patches even though the spring months brought plenty of warmth and rain. She sat down and pulled at the thin grass, remembering the previous summer when it was thick enough to hide her plump fingers in the bed of green. She picked up a worm that couldn’t hide itself in the poor grass strings and allowed it to twirl around her wrist before she put it back down on the ground.
    “Come in for supper, Samantha!” her mother shouted from the back door to the house.
    “I’m coming,” Samantha responded as she brushed her fine, straight hair away from her cheek. Samantha noticed a small crack in the road where a threadlike steady stream of smoke piped from the ground. When the breeze blew, she barely saw the smoke at all, but when the air was still, she saw the gray, lanky cloud snake from the hole. She slowly waved her hand through the smoke line as if it were stretching from the point of a yellow candle flame, except there was no golden flicker of a burning wick, no dripping wax, and no trace of cinnamon in the air resembling the candles her mom liked to burn. A twinge of fear crept into her heart and she ran inside.
    When Samantha sat down at the table to eat dinner, her father had already prepared a plate for her that consisted of mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, and a small piece of ham. The family ate without talking. From Samantha’s seat at the table, she could see out into the back yard through the screen.
    “What do you keep looking at, Samantha?” her mother asked. Samantha looked down at her plate and said, “Nothing.” Their small dog named Bailey came over to the table and sniffed at everyone’s feet. A television could be heard in another room although no one was watching it, and then the phone rang, but no one answered it. Samantha’s father rolled his eyes and went back to eating his dinner as Bailey ran away from the kitchen table and jumped and barked at the screen door. When Samantha’s mother was finished eating, she looked at her little girl and asked, “Ok, are you going to tell us what you keep looking for outside?”
    “It’s too dark now,” Samantha said.
    “Too dark for what?” her father asked.
    “Too dark to see the ground smoking.”
    “What do you mean, Samantha?” her mother asked.
    “Like when daddy smokes his cigars,” she paused, “but it doesn’t smell the same.”
    The following day, a group of borough