Rubine River (eBook)

David Ray Skinner (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2019 | 1. Auflage
200 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-5439-8478-1 (ISBN)

Infos

This is a tapestry of stories; one thread is about a young slave in pre-war (and Civil War) South Carolina, another is the narrative of a Chicago-born alcoholic vet suffering from PTSD who is waylaid while homelessly drifting and traveling the interstates and backroads of America. Their stories begin to intertwine (along with those of other present-day and antebellum characters) and are eventually woven together with forgiveness and redemption on the banks of the ever-flowing Rubine River.

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Chicago-born Clay Maddau is an alcoholic vet who travels the interstates and backroads as a hitchhiker in an effort to come to grips with his wartime nightmares and to somehow move forward with his life and future. A chain of events one autumn Saturday night leaves him stranded in a drunken haze on the banks of the Rubine River, beneath an interstate bridge in South Carolina. Befriended the following morning by Silas, an African American vet (who senses Clay's PTSD), he is invited to share breakfast, as well as his story. As the two travel to Silas' church (where they have a community breakfast program), the two vets begin to bond, not only over their common military service, but, in an odd twist of fate, their very roots. In the unraveling of the story, we also learn about a young slave named Nehemiah and the compassionate wife of the callous master of a South Carolina plantation and her arrangement with the flawed, but well-meaning minister in the small town of Rubineville. Just as the various streams run together to form the Rubine River, the different story strands eventually merge to provide an insight to Clay's future.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

The Bridge in the Desert

 

As Clay drifted into consciousness, the overwhelming white-hot brightness of the October morning forced him to quickly shut his eyes with a painful grimace. He lay frozen on his back, brushed back the wisps of blond hair cascading over his damp forehead and listened hard for the heavy rumble of approaching choppers in the sky overhead. Where’s my unit? he thought, That blasted desert sun is cooking my head like a microwave meatloaf TV dinner, and yet my boots are all iced over. Guess the elements can’t make up their mind how they want to kill me.

His thoughts were drowned out by a low whop-whop-whop roar above him.

“It’s about time,” he said to himself, “But that chopper sounds like an old Chevy with a rusted-out muffler.”

Then, with his eyes still closed, he did a mental assessment of his physical state. Just my luck—it appears as if I’ve landed in medical no-man’s land, he thought, not serious enough to be treated and carted away by the medics, but bad enough to make me not want to move. There was a metallic taste in his mouth, and a sharp stab of pain began surging up and down his ribs to join with the already pounding throb in his head, the after-effect of a night of way too much cheap bourbon. What was I thinking? Actually, what was I drinking? A stinging drop of sweat rolled into his right eye and, as he began to force open his eyes, he saw the desert sky morphing into a massive interstate bridge above him. The high autumn sun had angled over the bridge, catching his head in its path, but leaving the rest of his ragged body in the dirty shadows. Somewhere, close by, the sound of rushing water softly gurgled.

“What tha—?” he said out loud, “How’d a bridge get stuck in the middle of the desert?”

“’Cause it ain’t the desert, brother,” a voice from the shadows answered. “You’re in South Care-o-lina, and there ain’t no desert in Carolina—’least not one I ever heard of. How you feelin’ anyway? Heard you ’bout got yerself kild last night. ’Least that’s the word on the street. Well—the word on the ground under the bridge, rather. Said they done rolled you pretty good, brother. Or you rolled yerself. Either way, you rolled! My friend, Percy over there said you came flying out of an old redneck pickup truck like Superman, and you and yer bag came a-rollin’ down the hill toward the river. An’ I’m guessin’ you feel it ’bout now. Percy here said he couldn’t tell if you jumped or were pushed.”

Clay squinted toward the voice and made out a black man about his own age—early- to mid-thirties. He had a friendly smile, and he moved with the grace of an aging athlete as he paced on the red-dirt bank above where Clay had landed. The man wore a bright yellow polo, and although he was dressed casually, he was too well-dressed—and his yellow polo was much too clean—for him to have spent the night under the bridge. Clay figured the man apparently was a new arrival to the scene; a cop, maybe? If that were the case, he would have been an undercover cop, because he definitely wasn’t in uniform…unless the under-the-bridge cops wore bright yellow. Plus, Clay thought, based on past experience, if he was a cop, he would have most likely already accused me of something and would have already thrown me in the back of a cruiser.

“Ain’t that about right, Percy?” said the man in the yellow polo gesturing toward an older white man sitting in the shadows of the bridge. “You said he looked like Superman flyin’ from a redneck truck.”

Percy laughed, “Yep, thas ’bout right. Coulda been Superman or Batman. Whichever one don’t got a cape.” Although he was sitting on the muddy bank next to the yellow-polo man, he couldn’t have been more different in appearance. His clothes were not torn, but they were old and worn enough to successfully hide any kind of dirt or debris he could have picked up during a stay under the bridge. His weather-beaten cap had a rusty bill and was adorned with a logo that had long-since been rendered useless and nondescript. The cap, however, served its purpose; it protected the old man from the sun and bathed his face in shadows, embossing the furrowed winkles on his forehead, temples and cheeks as he gestured.

Clay slowly sat up, and as he did, he realized that the old man had been correct in his description of his previous night’s adventure—tiny-but-sharp bursts of pain jabbed him from all over his body, like angry bees. Percy held up a water bottle in salute. “Welcome to Sunday, my man,” he said, “How you feelin’ this fine day? Your friends in the truck were concerned ’bout you.”

“Ow. Uh, they weren’t exactly my friends.”

“I figgered. An’ I’d be using that term i-ron-i-cal-ly. Satire-ically, actually. Can’t really say they wuz concerned ’bout your welfare, but they wuz definitely interested enough to stop on down th’ way. Then they backed up, all swervy-like. Idiots. I guess it’s lucky that it’s only an overpass bridge up there and ain’t no exit, ’cause they woulda most likely driven down to check on you. Fact is, I thought for a minute there, they wuz gonna try and drive down anyway, exit or no exit. An’ as you say, they weren’t your friends, so you may have had somewhat of a problem, seein’ whereas you were off to dreamland at that point.”

“Did they get out?”

“Not all of ’em. They sent a lil’ ol’ pudgy scout to check on ya, but all he did was up-chuck half-way down the hill, so he never got to where you landed after you flew out the truck. I’m pretty sure he weren’t the leader, ’cause he looked to be even more idiot than the rest o’ the idiots, so I don’t think they woulda made him king of the moment. I don’t know if he was trying to be all stealthy-like, but if he was, he failed miserably—he made way too much noise crashing through the brush. An’ they ain’t that much brush up on this hill, so that numbskull had to go outta his way to find some brush to crash through. We like it nice and quiet here under the bridge. It’s one thing to have Superman come rollin’ down the hill—you were quiet and polite. Well, at least once you came to a stop. It’s quite another thing to have some blowhard bellowing like a beached whale. So, I admit I did some hollerin’ back at him. An’ possibly some bad language.” Percy put his hand to his mouth as a mock gesture of an apology.

“Didn’t take much to spook ’im, though,” he said, continuing. “He scampered on up the hill like a big ol’ rabbit an’ jumped back in th’ truck. Actually—an’ this wuz purty funny, though purty mean—they locked ’im outta’ the truck at first and started takin’ off without ’im. He was a-screamin’ and cryin’—and I mean boo-hooing, tears an’ everthing—so they finally stopped—in the middle of the bridge, can you believe it?—an’ he waddled over an’ they finally let ’im in. I don’t blame you for not havin’ ’em as friends. They was extremely disreputable. An’ irresponsible. Buncha mo-rons.”

“’Preciate you lookin’ out for me, since I was somewhat…indisposed.”

“If that’s what you wanna call it, son. Fancy ol’ word for your condition, as it were.” Percy cackled.

Out of instinct and habit, Clay sat up and did a quick check of his surroundings, just in case he needed to utilize a contingency plan. He probed the back of his head until he found the dried blood and, as he rolled over to get his bearings, a dull blast of pain from his chest told him he had a least a couple of bruised ribs. However, past experience also told him that nothing was broken.

The whop-whop-whop above him continued, and he squinted up at the bridge and realized it was the sound of the traffic rushing over a loose metal plate on the overpass.

“Right, that makes a little more sense than a chopper,” he said as his memory started returning. Oh yeah, now I remember, he thought to himself sarcastically, Yesterday was a fairly action-packed day with so many wonderful adventures.

“So, let me guess,” it was yellow-polo man again. “I suppose this wadn’t your planned destination, was it?”

“Uh, no,” Clay said, “I don’t even know where ‘this’ is. Can you enlighten me?”

“Well, it’s nowhere, really. As you discovered last night, it ain’t even an exit. That road up there—at the top of the hill, where my car is—that road goes under the interstate an’ eventually ends up in Rubaville. That’s where I was headed when I saw Percy. I think ol’ Percy musta been trollin’ for more superheroes bein’ thrown from pickups when I saw him from the road this morning. Hey, Percy, thanks again. Thanks for keepin’ watch under th’ bridge.”

“Yeah, thanks, Percy,” Clay said, still rubbing the back of his head.

“And that there river you almost landed in?” Percy said, “That’s the Rubine River.”

“That really doesn’t mean anything to me. No offense. There’s lots of places I’ve been that I had never heard of before I got there. So no, I never heard of the Rubine River. And no, I never heard of Rubaville.”

“Well, the proper name is Rubineville. But, if you want to fit in with the locals, you butcher the pronunciation like the rest of us.”

“I’m not sure I’m gonna stick around long enough to fit it with the locals. And again, I never heard of the river or the town.”

“No surprise there. Rubaville...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.9.2019
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Historische Romane
• ISBN-10: 1-5439-8478-9 / 1543984789
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5439-8478-1 / 9781543984781