From The River People

from The River People John McCluskey Jr. (bio) The River People is a novel-in-progress which treats the trials and triumphs of a small band who have achieved fellowship and seek a land for the sustaining of that fellowship. Julian, their reluctant leader, comes across a crude map during his travels in the American West. That map and the group’s commitment to find a home lead them to West Africa and Brazil. They wind up near Cincinnati where Julian is rehearsing his story for the press. The one they called the Grand Convenor, of medium height and balding, squatted slowly and rested his neck against the top beam of the split-rail fence. He was watching for traffic along Hope Highway, the narrow gravel road that linked one end of the island to another. It was early morning, just after sunrise, and soon three pickup trucks would begin moving fruits and vegetables down to the landing. A boat would be there at 6:30 to take the produce to the open markets and Black neighborhoods in Cincinnati, Newport, and Covington and the trucks would return to remain quiet until Shack went over to pick up the mail at ten. He heard the sound of one truck even before it appeared. There was a honk when it passed and an arm flashed in greeting. Oscar, that one, the new man from Topeka. Then several passed singly, walking or pumping hard on old bicycles. The Grand Convenor knew them all and spoke; their answers were bright bells in the morning. He followed a jogger along the banks of the Ohio and farther up on the mainland he could see the expressway. The nearest interchange was the frozen play of great and grey tentacles. Occasional trailer rigs worked along their lengths. Further down the river the Coliseum’s high rim had caught the early light and was washed in a dull pink. He yawned, scratched under an arm, then dug into his coveralls for a pipe. Behind him a screen door slammed, but he did not bother to turn. He knew that it was his oldest son starting out to try some fishing. “Don’t fall in now,” he said chuckling. “Daddy, you always saying that,” said the boy, shorter, broader than his father. “The only thing that will get me wet might be wrestling with that catfish that got away yesterday.” “Well, anyway, don’t be all morning . . . I want you to help show the guests around.” The others would be stirring now in the small tidy house behind him. Over the front door was a bright, reddish disc, the color of the sun setting in a hazy, July evening. That was the touch of his wife, Iris, though she had wanted the entire house painted that color in the beginning. Before long he would hear the scrape of a pan [End Page 845] across a stove-top grill or music perhaps from a radio. Nearby he heard one of Selma’s roosters, a door or two banging shut, a motor or two starting up as the island and its people he was so proud of grew fitfully to life. He lit his pipe and shut out the sounds, even the groan of the generator, in order to concentrate. In a little more than four hours a newspaper reporter would be out to interview him. For months, years in fact, the islanders had shunned all reporters. Once they had to shoo away an uninvited television camera crew trying to rush from the ferry. With her microphone extended for a word, a mannishly-dressed woman had backed away, pleading for just a word for the public starved to know more about the group of strange settlers. Others drifted close on motor boats and took pictures with telescopic lens. In their first days, a gleaming bass boat moved close, its two fishermen shouting and waving cans of beer over their heads with one hand and slapping their own crotches with the other. One pissed in the water and waved over its surface, perhaps hoping his urine combined with the muddy Ohio water would poison the edges of the island. He could never

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