It must've been after midnight when I woke up to pee. (Waking up to pee is a nightly event now that I'm well into my 70s. My urologist, Dr. Nichols, says the problem is my prostate gland. He gets to stick his finger up my ass because of it. At seventeen, my prostate was pink and in the trim and standing before [that's what prostate means: "standing before"] my bladder like a Swiss guard. Now my prostate is more like Jabba the Hut.) I unzipped my sleeping bag and climbed from the picnic table and walked to the river. The sound of water on water harmonized with the rippling of the river and the trilling of the spring peepers. I looked up and down the length of the river: There were no fires, no music, no drunken laughter. Just the trill and trickle of the night. All the campers were snug in their bags. They'd be up at first light to fish for trout. Roaring River has a beautiful, blue spring that flows from beneath a bluff and spills out to form a stream that winds through the campground. It's not really a river, and the stream rarely roars, but apparently, somebody a long time ago called it Roaring River and the name stuck. The spring of blue water is so deep that no one has ever been able to find the bottom, and the water is so cold that trout thrive in it. Back in the 30s, the Civilian Conservation Corps built a trout hatchery to stock the creek.
Anyhow, I finished, shook, and turned to look toward a bridge over the creek. A mercury light hung over one end of the bridge and bathed the road and guardrails in a melancholy light while beneath the bridge, a deep shadow hid the river and pilings. On the other side of the road were more tents and a bathhouse, but all was quiet there, too. The night air was thick with creek smells, and an occasional lightning bug blinked a dull yellow between me and the road embankment. My feet were wet with dew, and I had almost reached the pavilion when I saw a shadowy form standing in the road beneath the mercury light. It looked to be a woman in a long, tattered dress with shawls hanging from her shoulders. Her face was hidden by the shadows and weak light, so I still couldn't make what she looked like or how old she was. The woman stood absolutely still, and then she began walking down the embankment in my direction.
What in the world? I thought.
She kept coming, and I tingled with fear. The light was behind her now, and I still couldn't see her face, but her hair hung limp and twisting to her shoulders, and the tatters of her dress swayed as she walked. I couldn't run, and I couldn't get back in my sleeping bag. So, I held my breath and waited while the blood pulsed in my ears.
Soon she stood before me, a heap of rags and shadows. I could smell her better than I could see her: She had a dank, cave-like smell, like a newly dug grave. Then she asked, "Who are ye?" Her voice quavered, and she spoke in the tenor of the hills.
"My name's Otis, ma'am. I don't mean any harm. I just had to pee is all. In the river." I pointed vaguely to the river behind me as if to confirm that I had indeed urinated there.
"Oh." She sounded disappointed. "Well, has ya lost anythin'?"
"No, ma'am, unless it's my innocence. Some bad men want me to fight in a bad war, and the folks in my hometown hate me because I don't want to. So I left, and now I'm headed down to Arkansas."
"Why is it Arkansas ye seek?"
"Because of a camping trip my Pa took me on a long time ago."
"What town d'ye seek?"
"I don't know."
"I do."
"Ma'am?"
"A rememory may be leading you to hills made holy by the South Wind, but a dark tomorrow leads you on to Onyx. Onyx, where unknown rivers flow from the hillsides, and the water's sweet to drink! Where the nails of Aphrodite fell; where the sadness of Ali lingers. In Onyx you must heed an old man with ornery whiskers and stinkin' breath and a fallin' down cabin, and you must wrestle his two stout boys, Manasseh and Ephraim. Even now, they hold his arms aloft until the will of Jehovah is accomplished. Yea, all things lost er gonna be restored and lost and restored again, until the Day of Resurrection, when all things lost er raised to the glory of God Almighty."
"Where is Onyx?"
"On the breastplate of Aaron and the Apocalypse of Saint John where the End Times are manifested, and the prophecies of the Returning Christ er fulfilled, and the Alpha and the Omega burn with unquenchable fire."
"Okay—" I really wanted to know about the town of Onyx, where, apparently, I was to meet a man with ornery whiskers and wrestle Manasseh and Ephraim, something I absolutely did not want to do. But it's hard to hold rational discourse with an apparition, especially one who is eschatologically obsessed.
"Okay? That's it? Don't ya want to know what is to come: say, for example, if there be a gal down in Arkansas a-waitin' fer ye? Or who will win the wrasslin' match? That's the kind of thing most young men ask me. They come from Cassville and Washburn and Seligman, some from as fur away as Monett, and they bring me trifles. Sometimes they want to know what they're goin' to do by way of occupation. Or whether the war is a-gonna take 'em. But you, all you can say is, 'Okay'?"
"I'm sorry, what did you say your name is?"
"My name don't matter! I kin see what's hid and find what's lost and recover what shouldn't of ever been fashioned in the beginning."
All of this falderal was getting us nowhere, so I ventured, "You sounded disappointed when I told you my name is Otis. Were you looking for someone else?"
The apparition stood still and silent, her shadow stretching toward me from the mercury light. Then she walked over to the pavilion and sat soundlessly on the picnic table, her feet resting on the bench. She said, "Her name was Cynthia. Isn't that a beautiful name?" She said the name again but emphasized "thee-ah." She asked, "Do you know what it means?"
"No, ma'am."
"Goddess of the moon. Cynthia would descend Mount Cynthos on the isle of Delos and scatter silver light over the water. She was nothing like that horrid light." She turned her hooded face toward the mercury light. "I hate that light. Ugly. It makes me look ugly."
"What happened to Cynthia?" I asked.
"I'll start from when we met," she said. Her voice had changed, softened, saddened into the tenor of universal sorrow. And that's when I learned the true story of the Mountain Maid of Roaring River.