Authors: Ron Rash
The Risen (15 page)
T
here was a last, brief newspaper article in which Sheriff Loudermilk stated that though Ligeia Mosely's death may well have been drug related, no solid leads had turned up. She could have simply walked the mile down to the interstate to hitchhike, her first ride her last. He conceded that the likelihood of finding her murderer was diminishing. Too much time had passed.
Nevertheless, for months I kept expecting someone to come forward and say Ligeia had mentioned meeting Bill and me on Sundays at Panther Creek, or else recalling our truck being parked there. But neither has happened and now it is winter. The earth around Panther
Creek is buried beneath a foot of snow, the creek glassed by ice. No leaves remain to give the wind a voice.
Bill and I have not spoken again about her. It is in my brother's hands now, what good might come from what happened. I have almost finished with this story, and so my days will be emptier, the clock crawling toward five o'clock. Soon I will build a fire and when five o'clock comes I will raise my goblet toward the hearth and see through glass the refracted flames. As the bottle of whiskey empties, I may even see myself as a man who helps save lives, a spectral assistant each time the blade enters.
As for Ligeia, I have given her the exotic name and blue eyes and clear complexion I promised that afternoon on Panther Creek. Now, as the earth turns these mountains west into darkness, a final promise remains before I offer this story to the fire one page at a time. Fire and water. So now I write the ending, which happens this evening, not in this house or at Panther Creek or in my brother's office, but instead on a beach in Florida. A woman is walking barefoot, the incoming tide swishing over her feet. Her beach house is fifty yards farther down the shore. It is almost dusk and she sees the warm yellow light behind the panes. A man is there,
finishing a final paragraph before he comes to join her. She feels a surge of happiness as she thinks how lucky she's been to survive her wayward years. Their daughter, grown now, will come to visit tomorrow and stay for a week. She will come back here in the morning and she and her daughter will hold hands as they enter the water together. Or perhaps there is no daughter come to visit, no husband finishing a story, or even a storyâonly herself, smiling as she leaves the sand and enters the ocean. She rises once, glances toward shore, then turns and disappears, a mermaid finally home.
Thanks to Kathy Brewer, Tom Rash, Bill Koon, Megan Lynch, Phil Moore, Marly Rusoff. Ann, Caroline, and James.
Onward.
RON RASH
is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and
New York Times
bestselling novel
Serena
, in addition to five other novels, including the prizewinning
One Foot in Eden, The Cove
, and
Above the Waterfall
; five collections of poetry, including
Poems: New and Selected
; and six collections of stories, among them
Nothing Gold Can Stay
and
Burning Bright
, which won the 2010 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.
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FICTION
The Ron Rash Reader
Burning Bright
Serena
The World Made Straight
Saints at the River
One Foot in Eden
Chemistry and Other Stories
Casualties
The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth
POETRY
Waking
Raising the Dead
Among the Believers
Eureka Mill
THE RISEN
. Copyright © 2016 by Ron Rash. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-243631-3
EPub Edition September 2016 ISBN 9780062436337
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