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Back Saints at the River Save as PDF
Chapters (20)
  1. Cover
  2. Halftitle
  3. SAINTS
  4. Dedication
  5. Front Matter
  6. Halftitle 1
  7. Part One
  8. CHAPTER 1
  9. CHAPTER 2
  10. CHAPTER 3
  11. CHAPTER 4
  12. CHAPTER 5
  13. Part Two
  14. CHAPTER 6
  15. CHAPTER 7
  16. CHAPTER 8
  17. CHAPTER 9
  18. CHAPTER 10
  19. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  20. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

So we spoke only the words we felt comfortable with that Sunday afternoon, and in the days and months that followed as well, until now nine years had passed and any other language had become hopelessly foreign, untranslatable.

CHAPTER 7

I went straight to the statehouse Tuesday morning to photograph the latest protest against the Confederate flag flying on capitol grounds. When I got back to the office, thirty e-mails awaited me. The first was from Allen, who was in Cheraw. He’d driven there to do a story about a woman who claimed to be Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe’s love child.

I was glad he was doing the story. A good dose of southern zaniness offered him a much-needed reprieve from the story he’d just written, the story he would resume on Friday when we returned to Oconee County for the second meeting.

“I’ll be back in Columbia by noon Friday, so let’s plan on leaving by two o’clock,” Allen’s e-mail said, “unless this woman suddenly produces the birth certificate for Elvilyn Presley she claims is hidden in the Memphis courthouse vault. If that happens I may be a little late.”

I clicked to the other messages, most of which congratulated me on the photograph, including one from an editor at the Charlotte Observer asking if I’d send a résumé her way. I read the e-mail from [email protected] last. There was no subject or greeting.

“I expected what Hemphill would do, but you disappoint me. You understand what’s at stake up here. Or maybe I should say you once did. A lot of people have devoted a significant part of their lives to saving the Tamassee. You have betrayed every one of those people. It’s the only free-flowing river left in this state. Is it too much to ask that one river in South Carolina not be turned into a lake or open sewer? Just one, Maggie, one river left alone? Is that so radical, so uncompromising?”

I read the message again. Blunt and to the point, classic Luke. In spite of myself, I smiled, thinking back to the first time I found myself on the receiving end of Luke’s directness. It was the summer after my sophomore year at Clemson. We’d been at Mama Tilson’s because Momma hadn’t felt up to cooking. Having come straight from my summer job potting plants at Ellis Gillespie’s nursery, I’d washed my face and hands in the bathroom, but black dirt was wedged under my nails and stained my T-shirt and jeans.