Remember How It Rained: River Saga Book Two

Remembering,

Where Justice Begins

Divided in childhood but children no more, Margaret Rose, Jack and Kuruk answer the echoes of childhood loves, memories and voices. Power is shifting in Darkwater Creek, old crimes cry out for justice and Nebraska’s deadliest floodwaters gather in the west.

Book Two of the River Saga, Remember How It Rained continues Seven Kinds of Rain’s voices of innocence, corruption, courage and justice on the Great Plains.

It sings of running away and coming home to find love, truth and justice in the places and people who won’t let you go.

Excerpt from Remember How It Rained: River Saga Book Two:

Quoyle lets out a little chuckle like a hiccup.

The stink of him is bringing up the half-digested taste of my dinner, but I tighten my chest and take a slow breath. I could say what I’m thinking, but I may not live long enough after to enjoy or regret it. I settle for saying, You have no end of words, Regal Quoyle.

It’s not words that give me strength, but my intentions and my will to achieve them. I have a Cause, Peter. Every man has at least one or more of these: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, or desire.

Aristotle again.

Why, yes. Quoyle grins. Which Cause is yours, friend?

You tell me yours, first.

Ah. Tilting his head, he sighs. You disappoint me, Peter. I was enjoying our game, but you don’t play by the rules. There’s a manner of discourse in which intelligent men discuss and debate ideas. Give and take. But, of course . . . I shouldn’t have assumed.

He pauses and his eyes get a far-away look while he says, I do have a Cause no one could imagine. A sophisticated vision for Darkwater Creek beyond your uneducated, limited imagination. Beyond every man in this town. Quoyle tugs at his lower lip and inhales slowly. His eyes focus back on me.

Give and take, I say. Well, I’ll give you this. Maybe I have a cause you and Aristotle never imagined.

And that would be?

With your broad imagination, you’ll figure it out.

Before he can reply, I stretch, spit on the floor and step my boots one after another down the stairs out of White Boss’s house, slow and solid, acting the brave and confident man. One who can see straight, who isn’t blind with wanting to commit murder, or tensed to run like a rabbit.

Away from the house, past where the young elms green up in a wall high enough to hide me from Quoyle, I run. One sure thing about that man, he makes no idle threats. Doc being so testy, may mean Hollingwood won’t last through the night. I gotta get out of town.

Walking the five miles to New Eden, I calm myself by counting my Remembering. It works for me the way a rosary does for a Catholic, meditating on sad mysteries.

I could write the Remembering in a book. My handwriting has improved with practice, so anybody could read it the way a court reads evidence. I hesitate to lock it down on paper though, like a Coyote in a trap. As I breathe in and out and tap a rhythm with the words, the Remembering is the breath of those people moving through me.

Only thing is, I need to stay alive to pass on the Remembering to another voice, or those poor folks will be forgotten. Their stories hold power I’m afraid to turn loose into someone else’s ear. The words once spoken will gather and roll into a flood, washing out lies, demanding justice.

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