“I’m tired,” he said to the water.
The preacher’s daughter, a girl named Temperance with eyes the color of tarnished copper, swore the falls spoke to her at night. Let the river take what the river wants , it whispered. She took it as prophecy. When the claim-jumpers came from the north—six hard men with shotguns and a rope—she was the one who cut the anchors on the log boom upstream. The jumpers drowned in their sleep, their tents filling with icy water before they could draw a breath. Temperance stood on the bluff and watched them die, and the falls applauded with a sound like tearing silk. Seraphim Falls
He nodded. He’d seen enough in his life to know when to look away. “I’m tired,” he said to the water