The River

The River There is a river that runs through this town. It is cold and dark and carries a current that is swift and silent and cannot be stopped. The current is hidden and courses through the river, whispering its icy demands. The river runs past the railway yards. It runs past factories and condominiums, past high rises and modest three room houses. It runs past the alleyways and the pews where prayers are said and faith is tested and sometimes broken. And it runs through the eyes of the people. There is a darkness in the river that swallows light and hope and spits out something pitiless. The dark and cold of it flows through the just and the unjust, the deserving and the undeserving, the contrite and the unforgiven alike. Sometimes late at night in the town there is a wail of a distant locomotive on its path away to places that are warm where the river cannot reach. Last week, an old woman, someone’s daughter or sister or mother, left a campfire where the poor stay near the tracks. It was suddenly too cold for old bones. If you have stood in the wind on an early autumn night, you know the bite of it, like a wild dog locking its jaws, determined to drag you away toward winter. She wanted to remember the warmth of the world, so she slowly climbed down the railroad trestle in the dark. Shivering, she thought to try and cross the road. There is a place on the other side she remembered that stayed open and sometimes the owner was kind and let her warm herself. The old woman had in some inexorable way begun to vanish. To the people of the day she was veiled by a fear of seeing what the world could demand, and so had become invisible. To the people of the night she was just another shadow, cloaked in a darkness that never lifted, even in the day. The road is four lanes near the river and it is dark. But the cold was relentless and the wind cruel so she began to limp across. The car did not see the invisible old woman and no one heard her cry out. And though the blow broke the car’s windshield, it did not stop. So someone’s daughter fell to the pavement in the dark near the tracks, and died suddenly in the same way she had lived. Quietly and unseen. Another car passed and then another before one struck her. A driver cursed to himself that someone left some debris in the way. He worried that his new car was damaged. He slowed and listened to his engine tick then slowly drove away. We all dream of what our lives may become. The dreams are the same, like the river is the same. We dream of happiness and love. We dream of warmth on cold nights. We pray that our mistakes will not surround us, and our weakness will not cripple us. But some prayers get lost and find their way only to railroad yards. And some dreams are like the river. Cold and dark and their broken bones are scattered on some roadway. We are such small things. Just arms and legs, blood and bone. We are born and live for a time. We love and work, suffer and pray, grow old and die and return to the darkness. But there is more than one kind of darkness. There is the darkness of a railway yard and a four lane road in the cold. That is the darkness of a tomb. But there is another other kind. It is the darkness of something being born. The darkness that cannot yet speak, but grows quietly in the shadows. It is the darkness of the womb. And sometimes great and terrible things, things touched by an awful grace are born in that kind of darkness. A stranger drove through and unable to stop rolled over the bones and dreams of someone’s daughter. He cursed and stopped, went back and seeing her, ran into the darkness trying to stop the river of traffic. He waved his arms and hollered to an oncoming tractor trailer. But it did not see. It could not see in the darkness what was invisible even in daylight. And what was left of someone’s sister was dragged along the concrete until her quiet bones made a sound he could not ignore. The police came and tried to free her. Not from poverty or brokenness or a railyard campfire. Not from the cold or the tracks or the river of contempt she knew. They tried to free her from the cruelty that left her on the roadside. Men that see death each day become kind. Handling the remains of bad choices and mistakes, the skeletons and wounds of life made these men kind. They gently covered her and lifted her away from the pavement and swept her away. They took notes and made reports. They shrugged and whispered and pretended that it was just one careless driver, that could not see her. We live in a very wealthy country. If you have some small talent and do not let your mistakes and bad choices tangle around your heart, there will be enough. Enough food and warmth. Enough love and hope. All of us are, by nature, hungry for more. But we have enough. Yet some of us, the very same flesh and blood and human hearts, are left to the cold that we keep in us all. They are left to the railroad yards in us, to the dark places we try not to think of, where only suffering demands rent. So we turn over before sleep and call consequence simply the price of freedom. We are free to make our mistakes. Free to ruin ourselves and dreams. Perhaps a mind is not strong, or a soul unsteady, or perhaps a heart, cracked like a bad foundation, cannot prevent itself from crumbling. But each of us knows, when we are dragged to it, there is nothing free about trying to keep warm when the cold bites. And there is nothing free about the will, that leads to a heart imprisoned by a cage of bones dragged along a highway. The stranger filled out the reports. He talked to the kind policemen and watched them drape a clean white sheet over the remains of some daughter’s dreams. And that night he lay in his warm bed, with the sound of bones breaking in his ears, listening to the howl of the trains in the railroad yards, so close to us all. He prayed for his own bones and dreams. He prayed for every daughter and son. He prayed for some way past the freedom to be ruined and the broken thing that comes from being human. He prayed that she was warm and young again and far beyond the reach of cold winds and dark roads. And he thought about another river that runs through this country. This river is as dark as blood, and as cold and quiet as first snow. It is whispering from forgotten places. From railroad yards and make shift tents. It is flooding quietly through the hearts of men. Its current carries unfairness and contempt. It carries unspoken rage and righteous anger. It carries prayers that are no longer said but have been swallowed and become instead an unheard howl. This other river is spilling over the banks of the eyes of men and flooding their veins. It is cold and dark. And it is rising. WLM