Two Rivers: A Diptych — By Rebecca Watkins

artwork by Lucy Jackson

I grew up on the Ohio River, once called Ohi-yó or “the great river” by the Onöndowa’ga people. I’ve seen photographs taken one winter in the 1970s of men who drove their Ford LTDs and El Caminos out onto its frozen surface. Daring, snow in their mustaches, shearling coats zipped high, bell bottoms dusting the drifts, they laughed. Gods with long sideburns standing on top of Mount Olympus.

Men who looked like my Uncle Tommy, who played records alone in his room at my grandmother’s house. Until one autumn when I was in elementary school, he walked out into the river just like John the Baptist never to return. My cousins and I helped our parents comb the shoreline, glancing often at the dark ripples, yelling his name. We found soggy jeans, a tennis shoe, beer cans all tucked like strange treasures in the clay and silt. Most likely left from some drunken party, but I imagined my uncle stepping out of his clothes there, until naked and cold, he let the oily water close over his head.

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Now I live near the banks of another river, the Hudson, and like a first language, my senses recognize the swell of water striking the rocky edges, the smell of fish and mud. A beacon saying home. A tidal river, the Mohicans called it Mahicantuck or “the river that flows two ways.” Fresh water and saltwater slide past each other with the pulse of the ocean.

Its opaque face gives nothing away, but I know rivers. They want someone to keep all their secrets, the beautiful and the terrifying ones. From the wooded trail where I stand, I can see the widest span and the bridge where people used to go to end it all. I think about the woman who took off her sandals, left them on the railing and jumped into the murky depths. I wonder did she finally feel relief to be submerged as the world she knew blurred. Above me now, crimson leaves flutter, soon to fall. It is the same time of year when my uncle, much younger than I am now, walked into the river’s arms. But I turn, continue into the woods, knowing all the while that the river will draw me back.

Rebecca Watkins’ work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ginosko Literary Journal, Hole in the Head Review, and the Quartet Journal among others. Her creative nonfiction has been shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Open Season Awards. She is the author of Field Guide to Forgiveness (Finishing Line Press 2023) and Sometimes, in These Places (Unsolicited Press 2017). She lives in the Hudson Valley with her husband and two dogs. More of her work can be found at rebeccawatkinswriter.com.