Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash Page B

too.”
    I got dressed and drove to the resort, already thinking that whatever had happened, Gerald was involved. Becky’s truck was parked next to C.J.’s SUV, another bad sign.She and Jarvis were down by the creek and I joined them. Becky kneeled beside the stream, filling a plastic bottle with water. A few yards farther, where the culvert was, a brown trout, easily five pounds, drifted against the mesh wire. More dead trout were around it.
    â€œWhat in the hell happened?” I asked.
    â€œA fish kill,” Jarvis answered. “They say it is worse upstream where there’s a big waterfall. DENR’s on the way. They’ve already contacted the water treatment plant and they’ve shut down the intake valves.”
    â€œIt’s that bad?”
    â€œThey’re just being safe, same as us,” Becky said. “There are no dead fish in the park, but Carlos is posting warning signs.”
    â€œIt smells like diesel fuel,” I said.
    â€œIt’s kerosene,” Jarvis said.
    He pointed at the reddish sheen on a pool’s edge. But it wasn’t just there. Red tinged a sandbar upstream, as if the creek was bleeding.
    â€œWhy do you say that?” Becky asked, turning from the water she now tested.
    â€œThey put red dye in kerosene,” I said, “to differentiate it from on-road diesel.”
    Becky didn’t look pleased to hear that. She already knew where this was leading.
    â€œWhat do your tests say?” I asked.
    â€œThe ammonia levels aren’t elevated, right here at least.”
    â€œWhich means?”
    â€œIt’s probably not organic or animal waste and I don’t smell a herbicide,” Becky said. “Sewage or a pesticide either. But we won’t have the results for at least a week.”
    â€œBut isn’t it obvious what killed them?” Jarvis said. “I mean, you can smell it, and the red.”
    â€œThere could be something else mixed with it,” Becky said. “Or some chemical that was added in diesel fuel.”
    â€œI’m just saying,” Jarvis added.
    But Becky ignored him. She set the last sample bottle in the tackle box and snapped it shut.
    â€œWhere’s Tucker?” I asked Jarvis.
    â€œInside making phone calls.”
    â€œYou talk to him?”
    â€œJust for a few moments. He was waiting for you to come. Mr. Tucker said this was done on purpose. He says he damn well knows who did it.”
    â€œI’m going upstream,” Becky said, getting up, “to try and find where it was introduced.”
    I watched her walk up the trail and disappear into the woods.
    She already knows , I thought, but she doesn’t want to hear it.
    â€œSo Tucker thinks Gerald did this?”
    â€œHe didn’t say Gerald’s name but you know that’swhat he’s thinking.” Jarvis shook his head and frowned. “It’s not much of a stretch to think so.”
    â€œNo,” I said, as Harold Tucker came out on the lodge’s porch and motioned me toward him. “It isn’t.”
    â€œI’ve got something to show you, Sheriff,” Tucker said.

Eighteen
    As I move upstream, vomit scalds my throat like lye. Trout shoal on sandbars and banks. A few gills quiver feebly but most fish are death-paled, browns and rainbows now in name only. Festering sores on streamskin. Dace and war-paint shiners are sprinkled amid the larger fish. Two buzzards stalk the shallows, more overhead, blackly circling like clock hands. The stream rises and narrows. A dead trout vanes in the eddy. On the trail, between two stems of ironweed, a writing spider sways in the web’s palm. One eyelash-thin leg poised, as if pausing before finishing its message.

    T? R? G?
    Gerald couldn’t do this. I know him. This isn’t like it was with Richard.
    The stream disappears into rhododendron, then sidles back close as the trail dips before rising again. I hear the waterfall and soon