The River Is Waiting

by Wally Lamb

sleep.… The river is loud tonight. After all that rain we’ve had, it sounds urgent as it rushes past, heading south. Rubbing my thumb against the stone, I begin to relax. Start to doze. Wake up, doze some more, then fall into a deep sleep.

“Means hope,” I tell him. “Back when I was on the grounds crew? I left my post one time and snuck down to the river out back. I used to listen to it on nights when it got quiet in here, but I wanted to see it, too. Watch it flow past this place. And before I snuck back, I pulled this little stone out of the water as a keepsake or whatever—a promise that one day I’d move past this place, too.”

So maybe I do get it. The plowman, the sailors, the townspeople: everyone goes about their business, unfazed about a boy’s falling from the sky into the sea and drowning. Maybe the poem’s about dying alone.… It makes me think of that guy Billy, whispering into the phone and waiting for Manny to come. And about all the other gay men taken by that disease. And about the victims of this new plague that’s on its way.… I think about Lester Wiggins, who died alone in prison because he was denied the compassionate release that would

Finally, I think about Niko, my precious boy, suffering and dying alone in the back of an ambulance as it sped toward the hospital. How could I ever have expected her forgiveness when I can never forgive myself?

He tells me to push over, and when I do, he gets on my bunk with me, pushing up against me. Puts his arms around me and begins rocking me like I’m his child. “You’re not alone, Corby,” he says. “I’m here. You’re not alone.”

Perhaps that’s why I dreamed about Corby. Of course he’d be on my mind. I learned just yesterday that he died in prison, a victim of the coronavirus.

Given Corby’s love of nature, I decide I’ll release the ashes I have into the Wequonnoc river.

I tell him Maisie and I discussed whether we should keep the stone or return it to the river. “And we decided that Corby would want us to let it go back home.”

“I… I recognize that it’s you in the foreground, looking down from some higher spot at those men floating down the river where we released your ashes this morning.” I choke up, wait, and then go on. “One of those men in the inner tubes looks like it might be Manny.… I see Maisie and me on a path that runs alongside the river.… And Native women and men going about their lives like those peasants in the painting Mrs. Millman said inspired you.