Above the Waterfall. Ron Rash
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Above the Waterfall
A Novel
RON RASH
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2016 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Ron Rash, 2015
The moral right of the author has been asserted
First published in the United States in 2015 by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78211 799 5
eISBN 978 1 78211 800 8
Designed by Suet Yee Chong
For Philip Moore
Contents
PART ONE
The moon an ungripped scythe
Though sunlight tinges the mountains, black leather-winged bodies swing low. First fireflies blink languidly. Beyond this meadow, cicadas rev and slow like sewing machines. All else ready for night except night itself. I watch last light lift off level land. Ground shadows seep and thicken. Circling trees form banks. The meadow itself becomes a pond filling, on its surface dozens of black-eyed susans.
I sit on ground cooling, soon dew-damp. Near me a moldboard plow long left. Honeysuckle vines twine green cords, white flowers attached like Christmas lights. I touch a handle slick from wrist shifts and sweaty grips. Memory of my grandfather’s hands, calluses round and smooth as worn coins. One morning I’d watched him cross the field, the steel oar rippling soil. In its wake, a caught wave of sillion shine. But this plow has wearied into sleep. How long lying here? Perhaps a decade, since