One Foot in Eden

“It was as much a part of Billy as his own shadow. But as I watched him finish his row I knew he couldn’t allow himself to think about how uncertain his livelihood was. To farm a man did have to act like a mule—keep his eyes and thoughts on the ground straight in front of him. If he didn’t he couldn’t keep coming out to his fields day after day.”

Billy’s connection to the land demoralizes him at times, and Rash shows this mood by creating a simile that equates Billy to a plodding mule. Despite the difficulty and the unpredictability of farming, Billy has no choice but to continue to work the land, hoping to make a profit. The passage also emphasizes the necessity of ignoring life’s risks and focusing on the work at hand in order to maintain the determination to persevere.

“Holland was talking about how some men weren’t much bothered by the killing. I had been, and I carried with me the glazed eyes of every Japanese soldier I’d taken the life from on Guadalcanal. But I’d fought with men like Holland who seemed bred for fighting the same way gamecocks are. Their eyes lit up when the shooting started. They were utterly fearless, and you thanked God they were on your side instead of the other.”

Will’s memory of fighting in the Battle of Guadalcanal reminds him of the inherent violence in human nature. Like the earlier comparison of Billy to a mule, Rash uses another animalistic simile to highlight Holland’s focused violence. Holland will not let go of something once he sets his eyes on it, and this dynamic becomes clear later in the narrative when Amy tries to break off her misguided affair with him.

“‘There’s nothing more valuable than what is behind this glass,’ Uncle Thomas had once told me, opening a child-tall bookshelf and handing me a book. ‘Knowledge is the one thing no one can take away from you.’”

In this passage, Will prioritizes his intellect because his body has betrayed him throughout his life. However, Will’s inability to hold Billy accountable for his crime discourages the sheriff because his mind cannot keep up with Billy’s schemes.

“I thought of how the descendants of settlers from Scotland and Wales and Ireland and England—people poor and desperate enough to risk their lives to take that land, as the Cherokees had once taken it from other tribes—would soon vanish from Jocassee as well. Fifteen years, twenty at most, and it’ll be all water, at least that was what the people who would know had told me. Reservoir, reservations, the two words sounded so alike. In a dictionary they would be on the same page.”

Will thematically connects the words “reservoir” and “reservation” to compare the imminent destruction of the Jocassee Valley with the ways that the US government oppressed the Cherokee people over the years. Both instances represent the dehumanization of the residents of Jocassee.

“There was a kind of justice in what would happen. But this time the disappearance would be total. There would be no names left, because Alexander Springs and Boone Creek and Robertson’s Ford and Chapman’s Bridge would all disappear. Every tombstone with Holcombe or Lusk or Alexander or Nicholson chiseled into it would vanish as well.”

Will feels haunted by the impending erasure of Jocassee in the reservoir-to-be. However, he still believes that the filling of Jocassee Valley exhibits a type of poetic justice. Jocassee’s history comes from years of exploitation of the land and its people, starting with the US government’s exploitation of the Cherokee people. Therefore, Will believes that the erasure of this history is an appropriate fate.

“You want to think the worst of her, I told myself as the road curved with the river. It’s easier than the truth—that sometimes what goes wrong between two people is nobody’s fault.”

Will thinks about how people make fun of Janice because they believe that her aloofness signifies her elitism. However, this assumption reveals their ignorance because they do not know that Janice’s miscarriage has broken her spirit. Will hates that the gossips in the town jump to assumptions about people’s true nature without knowing their personal history.

“Loneliness was a word you could give it, but it was something beyond words. It was a kind of yearning, a sense that part of your heart was unfilled. A preacher would say it was man’s condition since leaving Eden, and so many of the old hymns were about how in another life we’d be with God. But we lived in the here and now. You tried to find something to fill that absence. Maybe a marriage could cure that yearning, though mine hadn’t. Drink did it for many…Maybe children filled it for some, or maybe like Daddy even the love of a place that connected you to generations of your family.”

This quote alludes to the Biblical doctrine that humanity feels lost because they are searching for God and their lost home of Eden. Because Will is not religious, he does not agree with this belief, but he believes that people search for things to fill the void within them.

“But nothing is solid and permanent. Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations. You don’t need to read history books to know that. You only have to know the history of your own life.”

This quote shows Will’s realization that experience guides people even more than knowledge. Based on Will’s life, he knows that nothing is certain. This understanding drives Will towards letting go of the investigation because he does not believe that he will find proof to accuse Billy of the murder.

“What bothered my thoughts was that as much punishment as I’d heaped on myself for what happened, maybe God figured it wasn’t enough. I’d near killed a young one once and I’d not be trusted with another.”

In this passage, Amy’s understanding of her punishment-based morality system highlights the human inability to accept The Ambiguous Nature of Justice and Morality. Wanting a clear-cut answer to her own inner guilt, she punishes herself for what she did to Matthew as a child and wonders if that choice has determined her whole destiny and compelled God to refuse to give her a child of her own.

“If I was being punished for what happened to Matthew, that was wrong. How could something I did at twelve, something that was more accident than meanness, be grudged against me for the rest of my life? Not a sparrow falls from the sky without His knowledge, the Bible claimed. Don’t that include children that fall from a loft, I told myself.”

As Amy’s prayers continue to go unanswered, her faith in God changes. Amy believes that if God knew Matthew was going to fall from the loft, then the burden of saving Matthew was on him, not on Amy. The harsh, bitter tone of her reflections implies her lasting anger and guilt over this childhood incident, which has deeply influenced her understanding of guilt, punishment, and cosmic retribution.

“‘That old woman has helped many other person when they wasn’t no one else to doctor them and now some of them same people call her a witch,’ Daddy said as he tucked the quilts around us. But after he’d snuffed the lamp and went downstairs I couldn’t help wondering why if he argued there was no such thing as witches he’d nailed a horseshoe upside down above the front door the first day he and Momma had moved into this house. And why he’d never had a notion to take it down.”

This quote reveals the widespread fear of the supernatural in the community of Jocassee Valley, for even those who claim not to believe that the Widow is a witch harbor private superstitions. This dynamic illustrates the fact that nearly every member of this local Appalachian culture harbors an ingrained belief in the supernatural despite mainstream beliefs to the contrary.

“A shadow came over me and then a shiver so deep down in my bones it could be but one thing. I looked up. No cloud passed overhead, not even a hawk or crow, and I knew somebody had crossed over my grave. Don’t go to dwelling on death, think about new life, I told myself.”

Amy interprets her shiver as proof that someone has tread upon her future grave. While this passage invokes an old superstition, Rash also uses it to foreshadow Amy’s death, because in the full context of this scene, she is walking by the river where she will drown. Rash indicates that Amy may have passed over her own grave, although she does not know it yet.

“‘Fire and water,’ she finally said. ‘Fever’s a fire. Your man’s not to die by fever, leastways if you give him what’s in that poke.’”

To Amy’s understanding, the Widow reveals her power of foresight as she predicts that Billy will not die by fire. Because the Widow mentions water in her prediction, this scene foreshadows the circumstances of Billy’s death at the end of the novel. The tinge of the uncanny in her statement also toys with the locals’ superstitions, and it is clear that regardless of whether the Widow possesses supernatural powers, she revels in the knowledge of her reputation.

“Yet thoughts of those bad times laid deep in my mind like river snags. They would raise to the surface ever so often just to let me know they was still there. When they did I had never a doubt there’d come a time I’d pay for all that had happened and the cost would be a lot more than a piece of gold.”

Even though Amy moves on and does her best to forget the murder, she knows that she must eventually pay a price for her complicity in the crime. Rash invokes river imagery by stating that thoughts of the murder catch in her mind “like river snags,” and this description obliquely foreshadows the fact that the river will eventually claim her life.

“‘I hope you killed him,’ she said. Or at least that’s what I reckoned I heard. I just stared at her, my right hand gripping that shotgun tight. Then I took a couple of steps toward her. ‘What was your words?’ I said. My voice had no more strength to it than a shadow. My body either. The shotgun felt to be a plow-point weighting my hand. ‘That snake,’ Widow Glendower said. ‘I hope you kill him.’”

With her deliberately ambiguous phrasing, the Widow reveals to Billy that she knows more than she lets on. Billy knows that he can take the Widow’s words at face value, but she also indicates that she knows what happened to Holland and approves of it.

“The rope spread Holland’s arms out. They was stiff now as fire-pokers and he raised higher his arms looked like wings. I remembered Preacher Robertson reading from Revelation how on Judgement Day the dead would raise from earth and sea and fly to heaven and what a glorious sight that would be. But as I patted Sam’s flank and Holland lifted another few yards toward the sky, his face gouged by barbed wire, the hole in his chest boiling with bluebottle flies and yellow jackets, I reckoned a man might witness no more terrible sight than the dead resurrected.”

As Billy mutilates Holland’s body in the process of hiding it, he remembers the book of Revelation. Billy’s guilt keeps him from viewing the story of Judgment Day with any kind of hope because he feels haunted by the sight of Holland hovering in the air. This imagery reflects Rash’s use of biblical references to heighten the novel’s ominous tone and highlight its connection to the Southern Gothic genre.

“‘You got away with it,’ Sheriff Alexander had said that last afternoon he came, and in some ways it had been unsettling easy. A part of me troubled over that, because I knew there was a price to be paid some way or another. Even if the state of South Carolina didn’t collect that price, sooner or later God would. That thief on the cross was forgiven but he still had to hang there and hurt. I recollected how Mark warned about the sins of the father being laid on the child. The closer to the baby coming, the more that verse troubled my mind.”

Billy’s faith in the Bible causes him to fear his punishment because he does not want Isaac punished for his crimes. In this passage, Billy interprets the famous Bible story of the thief on the cross as a reminder of the pain that comes with punishment, even if God ultimately forgives the person. Thus, Rash makes it clear that Billy is simultaneously a guilty murderer and a devoted father, for he wants to protect his son from the weight of his past crimes.

“I saw the coming years when those eyes would look at me from across the table every meal I ate, would be waiting for me every afternoon when I came from my field. I saw me and him later on working together, putting up hay, planting the fields, and all of a sudden his eyes on me and how it would feel like a icy fishhook stuck barb-deep in my heart and I’d wonder if somehow Holland was watching me from the other side.”

When Billy realizes that Isaac’s eyes resembles Holland’s, he understands that his punishment will be to live with this daily reminder of his guilt. Billy uses the phrase “barb-deep” to describe his guilt, and the description evokes the earlier gruesome imagery of the barbed wire with which Billy pierced Holland’s skin, signifying that he will never be able to forget what he did.

“I’d grown up knowing there was no future here, that Jocassee would sooner or later be covered in water, so I’d never let myself get attached to it the way Momma and Daddy had. I’d always known someday I’d have to leave.”

Isaac does not have the same connection to Jocassee that his parents do because he knows that no future generations will be able to live in Jocassee. This understanding causes Isaac to feel that he never truly had a home because he never attached himself to the land.

“It doesn’t matter how many Indian mounds are here or what flowers or bugs or birds. If you found chunks of gold big as baseballs it wouldn’t matter now. That dam’s built, and the gates are closed. It doesn’t matter if you’re living or dead. You don’t belong here anymore. Every last one of you hillbillies is going to be flushed out of this valley like shit down a commode.”

The Carolina Power man uses racist and classist language to show his lack of respect for the people of Jocassee. Even though Isaac never felt connected to Jocassee like his parents do, Carolina Power does not allow him the closure that would come from saying goodbye to his parents’ farm.

“I stepped into the river and didn’t stop until the water got to my knees. I turned, my eyes on Momma and Daddy. The current pushed hard against my legs but I stood firm. I grabbed the Gold Star from my pocket and dropped it in the sack. I raised the sack in my right hand and held it between us for a moment before I let it slip through my fingers. The current toted the sack a few feet downstream before it sunk. ‘Let the dead bury the dead,’ Sheriff Alexander said.”

Isaac’s internal struggle over his knowledge of his parents’ crimes culminates in his decision to choose them over Holland’s remains. Will quotes Jesus’s words from the Gospels when he says, “Let the dead bury the dead” (198). For Will, these words signify the way that the lost in Jocassee Valley, such as Jocassee herself, will oversee whatever happens to Holland next.

“‘You’ll not rest in no graveyard with my kin, witch,’ I told her. Then I lifted what there was of her from the coffin. ‘Sink straight to hell,’ I said and dropped her in the water.”

Bobby decides to dump the Widow’s body in the reservoir because he does not want a “witch” buried with his family. This instance highlights the theme of The Ambiguities of Justice and Morality because even though stealing a body is a crime, Bobby justifies his criminal activity with his superstitious belief that he is protecting the other dead in the cemetery.

“Down in the water I saw a road and I knew there was but one road it could be…This is the way God sees the world, I thought. Soon I saw a truck, still bogged down in the mud the way it has been six months ago, then a mailbox and finally the house and barn and shed me and the sheriff had searched so long ago. The front door of the house was open and I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone might step out on that porch any second and look up at me the same way I might look up at a plane—someone who didn’t even know they was dead and buried under a lake.”

As Bobby stares into the lake, he sees the Holcombe farm beneath him. Although he does not explicitly state who he fears will look up at him, the narrative makes it clear that he believes Holland will come out and stare at him. Bobby’s fear invokes the philosophical idea that God stares down at the world, and the individuals who stare back up at him do not realize that they are dying.