Trouble the Water- Excerpt

Drunk with thaw from the Carr Mountains, the Pee Dee River raised its muddy arms and hugged the shore. Months into spring the river was still drinking. Ripples on its surface arched into blue-black lips that puckered and belched with every swallow. As the river swelled, hilltops along the Blue Ridge Mountains seemed to shrink. A low, thick fog inching out of the North Carolina morning hung a veil of heat over all and narrowed the horizon. Under a silver green sky the water glistened like a bolt of wrinkled satin. But when it rose, the river became as sloppy and inebriated as molasses.

At night the black surface of the water was pure snakeskin. Ripples burst on its surface without a sound. Flies and mosquitoes knitted their buzz and whine into the cooling air. Crickets sang soprano, bullfrogs bass. And the face of the water opened its many mouths to catch the kisses of car headlights sweeping across the Hardison Bridge. At the rattle of pickup trucks riding the heels of twilight, those mouths became ears filling up with sound.

Wide and long the Pee Dee started way up in the Blue Ridge as the Yadkin River. It flowed south and east until it joined the Uharie in the Piedmont and gave its name and granite color to the village near Lilesville, midway between Wadesboro and Rockingham. It would reach farther down into South Carolina, gather red clay and yellow silt as the Little Pee Dee, ease into the Winyah Bay at Georgetown, then break water at the Atlantic.

One afternoon, Mitch followed his brother Beauford to the water. He knew all about the Pee Dee from what Harriet Henry and Addie Miller said about the Confederate gold hidden somewhere between the bridge and Blewett Falls, and from his mother Maggie telling how Rev. Franklin led the church membership class there for baptism. Each day Mitch rode the schoolbus across the riverbridge, but he just didn't see the water for all his looking at the short hills rolling back from the whitewashed plank houses and yards full of wood chips. He played tag with Ruthie and fought with Beauford over whose turn it was for the chilly morning face wash. When he did notice the river flittering in the warm spring sun, he wanted a closer look and feel, not Maggie's church songs about deep rivers or Harriet moaning about camp ground.