Above the Waterfall - Ron Rash

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      Above the Waterfall

       A Novel

      RON RASH

Images

      First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

       www.canongate.co.uk

      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

       One

       Two

       Three

       Four

       Five

       Six

       Seven

       Eight

       Nine

       Part Two

       Ten

       Eleven

       Twelve

       Thirteen

       Fourteen

       Fifteen

       Sixteen

       Part Three

       Seventeen

       Eighteen

       Nineteen

       Twenty

       Twenty-one

       Twenty-two

       Twenty-three

       Part Four

       Twenty-four

       Twenty-five

       Twenty-six

       Twenty-seven

       Twenty-eight

       Twenty-nine

       Thirty

       Part Five

       Thirty-one

       Thirty-two

       Thirty-three

       Thirty-four

       Thirty-five

       Thirty-six

       Thirty-seven

       Thirty-eight

       Acknowledgments

       Also by Ron Rash

       About the Author

      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

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