Follow Me
Authors: Joanna Scott
Copyright © 2009 by Joanna Scott
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
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www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: April 2009
Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and
not intended by the author.
“Easy to Love,” by James Longenbach. Reprinted with permission.
“Walk with Me,” by Oliver Haslegrave. Reprinted with permission.
Map © 2009 Jeffrey L. Ward
Acknowledgments: Special thanks to the Vermont Studio Workshop, the Santa Maddalena Foundation, the Center at High Falls in
Rochester, New York, and Ruth Rosenberg-Naparsteck for her lively history of a river,
Runnin’ Crazy
.
For their invaluable input, I’m indebted to Maureen Howard, Lori Precious, Steve Erikson, Geri Thoma, Reagan Arthur, Jayne
Yaffe Kemp, and to the three who fill our house with songs: Jim, Kathryn, and Alice.
ISBN: 978-0-316-07237-3
Contents
Also by Joanna Scott
Everybody Loves Somebody
Liberation
Tourmaline
Make Believe
The Manikin
Various Antidotes
Arrogance
The Closest Possible Union
Fading, My Parmacheene Belle
In memory of Walter Lee Scott, 1922–2007
Come with me, and we will go
Where the rocks of coral grow;
Follow, follow, follow me.
Anne Hunter, from “A Mermaid’s Song”
O
ne and two and three and
—
That’s about how long my father had to contemplate his life, to catch one last hungry glimpse of a sky that was likely the
same steel gray as this morning’s sky, to hear the river spilling down the cliff face of the Upper Falls, to see the spool
of foam, tinged red from chemical waste, unraveling with the northward pull of the current, to note the strata of limestone
and shale in the sheer walls below the ruins of Boxman’s Mill, to feel his arms grappling helplessly, his legs buckling, his
torso twisting away from the water while he anticipated his absence from the world and thought about my mother and abruptly
and completely regretted his decision to jump.
My father was a mystery to me when I was growing up, though not because he threw himself from the pedestrian bridge six months
before I was born. Here’s the thing — he didn’t die that day. He survived his plunge into the icy Tuskee, and as soon as he’d
dried out and recovered his senses, he packed his bags and left town.
You might say he was lucky. But really, a man who’d concluded that the only release from his torment was to escape life altogether
would have needed more than luck.
And so in November of 1974, on a day much like today, in the wake of a rainstorm, he climbed over the rail of the bridge and
jumped, and as he fell he had enough time to acknowledge that if he’d had the wherewithal to consider other options he could
have spared himself from the impending impact, which he must have felt in anticipation, with horrible, vivid clarity, before
he experienced it as a distinct physical sensation, his body shattering the surface of the river right at the moment when
he was probably condemning himself for being such a stupid fucking idiot, and wasn’t it just so fucking typical for him to
realize this too late!
Under ordinary conditions, the story would have ended with my father’s death. But something extraordinary happened that morning,
and Abe Boyle was saved from an outcome that should have been inevitable. As I imagine it, no sooner had he slipped beneath
the surface of the Tuskee than from the depths came a soft rumble, and the river, already swollen from the rain, abruptly
smoothed out in response. The refuse stopped its spinning rush; the wind died down. A vacuum of silence sucked in all noise,
and the gallons of water that a moment before had been plunging over the falls seemed to hover in the air, hesitating, uncertain.
For an instant that was too short and too long to be measured by conventional time, all motion in the gorge ceased.
And out of that infinite stillness came my father’s reprieve. Though I can’t fully explain what happened next, I do know that
heavy rainfall contributed to problems created by a rickety wooden cofferdam. A portion of the barrier had collapsed, and
storm debris had been collecting over several days, clogging the spillway. The previous night an additional two inches of
rain had fallen, causing the city’s sewers to overflow, and a dense sludge pasted the debris into a full obstruction, blocking
the surging river entirely. The water had nowhere to go except back into the gorge.
Ripples spread across the surface, gathering into a forceful swell. There was a great splashing noise of liquid washing against
a confined space. Water began foaming and boiling, and that portion of the Tuskee reversed its direction. The current sloshed
southward even as the river toppled over the falls with renewed force, and the gorge began to fill like a stopped-up sink.
I can only guess that my father, if he was still conscious, assumed he had already died and was descending through a vile,
viscous fluid into hell. Or else he spent that brief moment stunned into a complete oblivion, thinking and feeling nothing.
Across from the brewery, in the lower parking lot of the Beebee Electric plant, a few employees heard an unusual roar echoing
through the gorge. They approached the embankment and through the mist watched the river surging back into the stone channel.
When it appeared that the water would keep rising, they prepared to flee. Some of them had even started to run when a wave
crashed over the wall and spread across the parking lot. At the same moment, the debris blocking the opening must have been
dislodged by the shifting pressure, for the river formed a liquid funnel in the gorge, gulping back the surge, and the water
level fell.
But the people in the Beebee parking lot didn’t notice the spillover trickling away through cracks and crevices in the wall.
They didn’t see that the Tuskee River was flowing steadily and reliably north again, toward Canton Point and the lake. Rather,
their stares were fixed on the body of the sputtering, blue-faced, waterlogged man who had been deposited in a puddle on the
pavement.
For reasons I’ll go on to explain, I was thinking about this story earlier this morning. I was wondering if I should go ahead
and write it down, tell the whole of it from start to finish. Would anyone believe me if I claimed to be telling the truth?
I felt too muddled to head directly to work, so I took a detour through the city. I parked my car in the lot beside the ruins
of Boxman’s Mill and walked partway across the pedestrian bridge. The air was damp, the sky overcast. Far below, the river
looked as glassy and flat as a pond. I stood there for a long while, watching gulls circling between the walls of the gorge.
When I heard the electric chimes of St. Stephen’s ringing the hour, I decided to leave. But first I dug into my purse, found
a penny, and tossed it over the rail. As it fell, I counted aloud:
one and two and three and —
Between the bottle of vodka he’d polished off the night before he jumped from the bridge and the engulfing shock of the frigid
water, my father would remember little of his actual ordeal. Most of my information comes from my grandmother. She was the
one who first told me what happened that day. She described the unfolding scene in the gorge in impossible detail, as if she’d
been there and had watched it herself.
After being spit out by the river onto the lower parking lot of the Beebee plant, my father, with no broken bones or obvious
injuries, was helped to his feet. A blanket appeared out of nowhere and was draped over his shoulders. Clamping his shivering
lips closed, shaking his aching head, he vowed silently to get on with his life and prove himself worthy.
He couldn’t bring himself to contact my mother, and she never came close to guessing why he disappeared so abruptly. All she
knew was that Abe Boyle went away without even saying good-bye, leaving her alone, brokenhearted, and pregnant with me.
My grandmother Sally Werner blamed herself for the turmoil that culminated that day in the gorge. Everything, she thought,
was her fault. And yet she was convinced that none of it could have been prevented.
She entrusted me with her version of this story late in her life. In fact, it’s a long story when all the pieces are added
together, and it begins many years before my father jumped from the pedestrian bridge, when my grandmother was young and set
out to follow the Tuskee River north. She confided in me because she wanted me to understand, as she put it,
how one thing led to another
. But I had to promise never to repeat what she told me to anyone.
She would be furious to hear that I’m about to break my promise. I’d like to hope, though, that by the end she would forgive
me.