Slidell opened a leather wallet and took out all but one bill.
“Here,” he said, and stuffed the money in Walter’s shirt pocket. “That’s enough to get you to New York. Write me when you get there and I’ll send your belongings. Come on, we’ll get your ticket and wait on the platform.”
Walter didn’t move.
“You knew I was German all along?”
“Not until I brought you to town that morning,” Slidell answered. “I went to the depot to make sure you’d gotten on the train okay. The depot master said he hadn’t seen you. There was a wanted poster in there with a sketch of you on it.”
“Why didn’t you tell?”
“That morning, it was because bastards like Feith and Jubel Parton wouldn’t wait for the law. If they knew, they’d hunt you down and kill you. You hadn’t hurt Laurel or Hank and I knew you weren’t a spy or a soldier. But later . . .”
Slidell looked at the floor. He pressed the bridge of his nose with a thumb and finger, looked up, and met Walter’s gaze.
“But later,” Slidell said, “because you were the one chance for Laurel to have some happiness in her life. And she did, for a little while.”
For a few moments, Slidell looked like he might say more, but he didn’t. He took Walter by the arm and led him through the doors. They stepped onto the boardwalk just as the red-headed man and a companion came toward them, axe handles and rope in their hands. The one who led gestured with an axe handle.
“Get back in there, Hun.”
“The war’s over, Jubel,” Slidell said.
“Not until we find out what he done to Chauncey,” Jubel said. “Then this town’s going to have use for that grandstand after all.”
Jubel poked the handle into Walter’s chest, pushed him back inside.
“Go on home, old man,” the red-headed man said, and left Slidell on the boardwalk.
“Pull down your shutters and bolt the real doors, Meachum,” Jubel ordered. “We’re having us a private party tonight.”
Meachum had just pulled the shutters down when Slidell came in, a raised double-barreled shotgun in his hands.
“If you don’t think I’ll use it, you better mull this over,” Slidell said. “I’ve already lived four days longer than I wish I had. Hank and Laurel, they were the last thing I cared about on this earth. What happened to them, you had your part in it.”
Slidell turned to Walter.
“Get on that train. If need be, you can switch to one headed to New York at the next depot. Go, go now.”
Walter walked out into the afternoon’s brightness. A banner hung from the savings and loan’s awning, one word on it, VICTORY. As he walked over to the depot, Walter stepped around a limp string of firecrackers, small flags, and a brass-capped shotgun shell. Inside the train station, the wanted poster was no longer on the wall. The depot master gave him his ticket and told him the train left in twelve minutes. He went outside and sat on a bench, watched the clock tower’s minute hand make ten measured lurches before the train arrived. The conductor set down a wooden footstool, nodded for Walter and the two other passengers to board. He found an empty window seat but did not look out through the glass until the wheels began to turn. He stared at the mountains and thought how small and fleeting a human life was. Forty or fifty years, a blink of time for these mountains, and there’d be no memory of what had happened here.
He leaned his head into his palms and closed his eyes, did not open them until a voice asked for his ticket. Walter handed the conductor the ticket and turned to the window, watched the world rush past him.
The train had rumbled into Maryland before his head cleared enough to remember why he was returning to New York. It was harder to remember why it once had been so important to him. He tried to imagine some alternative, another place, another profession, but could not. New York, then. After Slidell sent the flute, he would go to Goritz and tell the conductor that what had been asked of Walter was now done. He would tell Goritz that he was ready.
Acknowledgments
Frank O. Braynard’s “World’s Greatest Ship”: The Story of the Leviathan, Volume 1 and Jacqueline Burgin Painter’s The German Invasion of Western North Carolina were especially valuable sources in writing this novel, and are excellent reading for anyone interested in learning more about the Vaterland and the Hot Springs camp. The newspaper article in chapter 15 was published in the November 5, 1916, issue of the New York Times.
Grateful appreciation to Marly Rusoff, Mihai Radulescu, Lee Boudreaux, Abigail Holstein, Tina Monaco, Phil Moore, Bill Koon, George Frizzell, Kathleen Dickel, Tom Rash, Lea Kibler, Western Carolina University, Ann, James, and Caroline.
About the Author
RON RASH is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner finalist and New York Times bestselling novel Serena, in addition to three other prizewinning novels, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The World Made Straight; four collections of poems; and four collections of stories, among them Burning Bright, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and Chemistry and Other Stories, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, he teaches at Western Carolina University.
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Also by Ron Rash
FICTION
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
Credits
Cover design by Allison Saltzman
Cover photographs by Paulina Mieczkowska (woman) and Magdalena Lutek (stream and digital composite)
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE COVE. Copyright © 2012 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-180419-9
EPub Edition APRIL 2012 ISBN: 9780062096906
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Ron Rash, The Cove
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