Nothing Gold Can Stay (17 page)

Darnell paused.

“I ain’t making light of your loss.”

“I know that,” Carson said. “I’ve had plenty enough grieving words and hangdog faces. The sad part I don’t need any help with.”

He was rested enough now to give the shots, but waited. Except for speaking to his son and daughter on the phone, Carson hadn’t much wanted to talk with people of late. But tonight, here in the dark with Darnell, there was a pleasure in it.

“The stars don’t show out in town like they do here,” Carson said.

“I’m not down there often of a night to know,” Darnell answered, “but it’s nice to look up and see something that never changes. When I was in Korea, I’d find the Big Dipper and the Huntress and the Archer. They hung in the sky different but I could make them out, same as if I was in North Carolina. There was a comfort in doing that, especially when the fighting got thick.”

“I did that a couple of times too,” Carson said.

Darnell lit another cigarette and stepped outside of the barn, listening until he was satisfied.

“They ain’t yapping about it,” Darnell said, “but they could still be out there.”

Carson half stifled a yawn.

“I can put us on a pot of coffee.”

“No,” Carson answered. “I’ll be on my way as soon as I give the shots.”

“Back in Korea, we’d not have figured it to turn out this way, would we?” Darnell said. “I mean, we’ve gotten a lot more than we ever thought.”

“Yes,” Carson replied. “We have.”

Carson went back inside, gave the shots, and packed up. Darnell lifted the lantern in one hand and the medicine bag in the other, led them back down to the pickup. Darnell opened his billfold and offered five ten-dollar bills that, as always, Carson refused. They shook hands and he got in the truck. As Carson bumped down the drive, he looked back and saw the lantern’s glow moving toward the barn. Darnell would hang the lantern back on its nail, maybe smoke another cigarette as he stood at the barn mouth, attentive as any good sentry.

Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the publications in which the following stories first appeared: “The Trusty” in
The New Yorker;
“Something Rich and Strange” in
Shade 2004;
“Cherokee” in
Ecotone;
“Twenty-Six Days” in the
Washington Post;
“A Sort of Miracle” in
Ecotone;
“Those Who Are Dead Are Only Now Forgiven” in
The Warwick Review
(England); “The Dowry” and “The Woman at the Pond” in
The Southern Review;
“Night Hawks” in
Grist;
and “Three
A.M.
and the Stars Were Out” in
Our State
magazine.

About the Author

RON RASH
is the author of
The Cove
and of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and
New York Times
bestselling novel
Serena
, in addition to three other prizewinning novels,
One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River
, and
The World Made Straight
; three collections of poems; and four collections of stories, among them
Burning Bright
, which won the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and
Chemistry and Other Stories
, which was a finalist for the 2007 PEN/Faulkner Award. Twice the recipient of the O. Henry Prize, Rash teaches at Western Carolina University.

WWW.HARPERCOLLINS.COM/RONRASH

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Also by Ron Rash

FICTION

The Cove

Burning Bright

Serena

The World Made Straight

Saints at the River

One Foot in Eden

Chemistry and Other Stories

Casualties

The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth

POETRY

Waking

Raising the Dead

Among the Believers

Eureka Mill

Credits

Cover design by Steve Attardo

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY.
Copyright © 2013 by Ron Rash. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

FIRST EDITION

ISBN 978-0-06-220271-0

Epub Edition © MARCH 2013 ISBN: 9780062202734

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