by Amy Sorrells
“Look at those eels.” Jed pointed behind us where at least a dozen eels buried their bodies in the shallow water, their heads the only things sticking out and swaying with the gentle roll of the tide. “Their mouths are hanging open like they’re starving for air.”
“They are.” Larry waded over to where we stood, a string of crabs flung over his shoulder, and a bucket full of flounder stacked up like pancakes at his side.
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Ran out of oxygen out in the deep. They’ll disappear as fast as they came in ’fore too long. Soon as they can breathe again.”
A pickup truck already full to overflowing with shrimp pulled away from the frenzy, and other folks with strings overpacked with crab and flounder packed up to get their catch home to clean and freeze.
“Wanna catch some?” Larry offered Jed a gig and rope.
“I can’t say that I do. Something’s not right about celebrating creatures forced to shore because they can’t breathe out in the deep where they’re s’posed to. They swim up here, crazed out of their minds and suffocating, and then we all celebrate and stab ’em and string ’em up?”
“It’s not such a bad thing. Most folks look at it as a gift from the sea.” Larry nodded toward a mother and father, surrounded by at least a half dozen kids, the sort of skin-and-bones that comes from eating gas-station beef jerky and RC Cola all day, and most of ’em needing haircuts or baths or both. An older boy threw two lines of flounder over his shoulders, and each of the younger kids filled buckets with crab. Next to them, a group of older teenagers threw beer cans at the dopey crabs and shrimp floating near the top of the water.
“Maybe.” Jed looked Larry straight in the eye. “What else is there to do when you can’t breathe but try to swim for shore?”
Larry put a hand on Jed’s shoulder. “Swim for shore, or don’t be afraid to swim out deeper.” He shook him hard and knowing-like.
The Bay Spring Catholic Church bells rang at two a.m., just before the creatures came back to life, like the Lord breathing into Adam. Soon, they all flipped and flopped their way back out to the moonlit sea. The time had passed without us realizing it, and I figured I’d be in a whole mess of trouble for staying up so late until I spied Comfort and Solly tying up Ernestine’s tent. They’d stayed to watch the hullabaloo too.
“Be back in a minute!” I called to them.
“We’ll wait.” Solly winked.
Jed and I walked as far as the library.
“So you’d never heard of the jubilee before tonight?” I asked him.
“Nope. ’Cept for the one in the Bible you told me about. Never heard of this one.”
“Pretty crazy, huh?”
“Pretty crazy.”
I searched my brain for something else to say besides good-bye, half-afraid and half-hoping the silence that fell between us would bring another kiss. “God’s gonna give you a jubilee of your own, Jed. You wait and see. Like He did for Larry. Like Daddy said He did for all those Israelites in Leviticus. God gives second chances. You don’t have to leave town. He’ll give one to you, too.”
“The only second chance I want is this one.” He held my face between his hands and kissed me. A second time. A third time. And a fourth. After that I quit counting.
He stepped back, and by the time I opened my eyes, he was gone.
LATE OCTOBER 1980
Sonje lapli a ki te fè mayi ou grandi.
“Remember the rain that made your corn grow.”
CHAPTER 46
Anniston
Vaughn moved the cows out to the far pasture so they wouldn’t trample the nuts beginning to fall. Trimmers, mowers, and gatherers worked as many hours a day as they could now that the nuts were really falling. Everyone hoped for a great crop to make up for everything Hurricane Frederic stole, and we used every contraption available to scoop up, pick up, and rake up nuts as they fell from their withering husks.
The good part about harvest was seeing Jed most every day after school when he’d come to work with us, huddling under one of the makeshift, tin-roofed storage sheds that dotted the hills and rows when it rained. Inside, it sounded like popcorn exploding and overflowing Ernestine’s old Bromwell popper with the holes in the lid.
The bad part about harvest was seeing him most every day with no time to search the creek beds or lie on our backs, hidden behind an overgrown row of trees, watching the clouds roll past. Too much work to do.
One Friday afternoon, a day an Indian summer sun nearly baked our skin to a crisp, Jed came and found me up at the house before he left for the day. “Meet me at the library tomorrow around noon. We’ll go down to Point Clear Creek where it dumps into the bay. I bet a lot of stuff’s washed up there after all the cat-and-dog rains we’ve been having.”
“’Kay, but wait for me if I’m running late.”
I packed my towel and pulled on my favorite terrycloth shorts over my blue polka-dot swimsuit. “Hey, Molly, I’ll be back soon. Then I’ll walk ya. Promise.” Molly looked up at me from her curled-up spot on the floor, the whites of her eyes hanging like sad smiles. I snuggled my nose into one of her floppy white ears and hugged her good-bye.
“Awww, don’t give me that face, girl. It’s not like I’m going away forever.”
I found Ernestine in the laundry room. “Ernestine? Jed and I are going down to the creek.”
“Be careful, and call me if we need to come get you if it’s after dark.”
By the time I got to the library, Jed wasn’t there yet, so I sat on the steps to wait for him. Noon turned into quarter past, then half past, and by then I was getting all riled up.
Where could he be?
I took the chance of running into Mr. and Mrs. Devine to see if he was home. Maybe he was snoozing. Maybe he forgot. I had to find out. The whole trailer rattled when I knocked, and at first, not a sound answered me back.
I knocked again.
A rumble in the far back end grew into loud thumps as it came closer.
A hand pulled the makeshift curtain aside, and the face of a wild man, who I figured was Mr. Devine, greeted me. I tried to calm myself, figuring John the Baptist mighta looked much the same, with a scraggly beard and hair poking up in dreads all over his head. Folks in the Bible thought he looked right crazy, too, but he wasn’t. He was the cousin of Jesus, after all.
“What do you want?” he bellowed, and the smell of alcohol nearly knocked me off the rickety steps.
This was no cousin of Jesus.
“Um, afternoon, sir. I’m looking for Jed? Jed Manon?”
“He ain’t here. Ain’t been here for days, the little rat. Living off us and coming and going as he pleases. S’posed to get us our money. S’posed to got paid yesterday. You ain’t come to deliver his pay, have ya?”
“John? Who is it?” Mrs. Devine, whom I recognized from the night she took me home from the cotillion, peeked over his shoulder. She blew out a plume of smoke that rose like a cloud-shaped halo over her head.
Lord, I shoulda listened to Jed and never come here.
“’Scuse me, ma’am. I’m looking for Jed.”
Mrs. Devine pushed her husband aside, who was happy to back away and collapse onto the vinyl couch behind her. “You’re that friend of his, ain’t ya? What’s your name? Anni?”
“Anniston, ma’am.”
“That’s right. Anniston.” She looked me over a minute, took another draw of her cigarette, which was nearly down to the stub, and scratched at the rollers in her hair. “I ain’t seen him. Not for a few days. Hangs out at that crazy library all the time. Don’t know why. So stupid I doubt he can even read. You find him, you tell him he owes us that paycheck, hear?”
“Yes, ma’am. Sorry to bother y’all.”
She slammed the door before I even finished my sentence.
Days? They hadn’t
seen him for days? Where had he been stayin’ then? And where was he now?
I checked the library first. I was glad Jed got me going there again. Used to love when Daddy took me there for reading time when I was little. We made crafts and listened to the singsong voice of the librarian as she read us the latest adventure from Frog and Toad or a Shel Silverstein poem. The rows of shelves loomed high over my head, stacked with old books, new books, books covered in plastic, frayed on the spines from so many checkouts, stained from so many wondering, searching fingers. Hundreds of books, but no sign of Jed.
The sun stung my shoulders as I rode my bike down past the docks, down the path that led to where we liked to wade, where Point Clear Creek meets the bay. Maybe I hadn’t heard him right. Maybe he’d said to meet him there.
The water crept higher than I’d ever seen it. I hardly recognized the place, and so little shore remained left to walk along. I parked my bike against the overlook railing next to Jed’s. His backpack and water bottle were still there, which meant he probably started wading already. I hurried down the trail that led to the creek. Jed’s shoes and socks sat like bullfrogs on top of a boulder.
“Je-ed! Hey, Jed!” I didn’t hear anything except water running fast over nearby rocks and over an old tree halfsunk, giant roots whittled away to nubs by the currents.
I kicked off my flip-flops and waded in to my knees, surprised by how hard the water pulled toward the bay.
“Jed! Je-ed, where are you?” I wished he’d waited. Irritation melted into a fear at the bottom of my backbone, creeping around to my stomach and making my chest burn.
“Jed, come on! This isn’t funny!” It wasn’t like him to play a joke.
I waded in farther, and my whole body throbbed with panic. I remembered how he said he wasn’t a good swimmer, that I shouldn’t count on him to save me, back on that day we took Larry’s boat out onto the bay. If Jed dove or even if he waded too far in, he wouldn’t have known about the current. He wouldn’t have known about the strength of the undertow. He wouldn’t have had anything to grab when he came up for air.
If he came up.
I ran back up the trail, tripping over thick, bare roots jutting up out of the ground, washed bare by all the recent rain. I peered down once more from the overlook to see if I could see Jed anywhere.
The roads and trails blurred around me. I pedaled fast. My legs burned. My heart hurt. I had to get help. Tears stung my eyes.
“Help me.
“Help Jed!
“Someone!”
A policeman passed, slowed down, and backed up when he saw me. I tried to tell him. My words got all mixed up. I choked on the dreadful thoughts trying to push their way out of me, about what happened—
No. I would not think of him as gone.
The back of the police car felt refrigerator cold. The chemical-like smell of vinyl and the commotion of lights and sirens shot a wave of vomit into my throat.
Police boats trolled, and I worried a motor might cut him, there beneath the surface.
Police dogs barked and sniffed in crazy-making circles down by the river.
Divers bobbed up and down, empty armed every time they surfaced.
More lights and cars arrived.
Mama.
Ernestine.
Vaughn.
Solly and Comfort, too.
Someone put a towel around me. Ernestine covered me with her shawl. I shook and trembled despite the still-ninety-degree heat.
The sun disappeared into the bay, and the world turned gray.
People tried to convince me to go, but I couldn’t.
Wouldn’t.
“We won’t be able to find anything more tonight,” the officer said, badge glaring at me from the center of his chest.
“You can’t stop looking!” I screamed. Vaughn held me back before I could take a swing at him. I swung anyway, clawing at the soupy air.
Mama pulled me closer, held me, helped me to the car.
“Wait!” I tore myself from her grip and ran to Jed’s bike and clutched his orange tackle box full of fossils to my chest. Detectives or somebody had already taken his backpack, but at least I could save his collection.
Our collection.
Vaughn talked softly to the officer I’d tried to clobber and to a couple of dripping-wet police divers before driving us home. It was the first time I remembered Vaughn driving me anywhere, ever, as I sat in the back, leaning into the wide, soft folds of Ernestine’s side.
Vaughn handed me a wet piece of fabric. “Here, darlin’. One of the divers found this bandana.”
It was the bandana Jed handed me the day we’d taken Larry’s skiff out onto the bay.
I avoided Vaughn’s eyes as he searched for mine in the rearview mirror.
I was sure I already knew the rest of the truth he wanted to say.
Quand prend trop boucoup, li glisse’.
“Grab for too much, and it slips away from you.”
CHAPTER 47
Anniston
I am lost. Gone. Wandering through a graveyard. Tangled in moss hanging, tendrils reaching, tapping me on the shoulder. Teasing. Making me think someone is there. But the blackness reminds me.
He’s gone.
I woke up to a still-black world. Felt like morning, but I couldn’t tell. Maybe I’d slept through the day. Maybe yesterday was a dream. But I saw the double brooksella on my nightstand, and I knew. I pulled my covers up tighter and curled into a ball. If I could make myself small enough, maybe the hurt would squeeze out and away like toothpaste down a drain. Washed far away. To the river. To the ocean. To Jed.
“Anni.” Mama knocked soft and weak against my solid wood door. “Anni, may I come in?”
“Did they find somethin’?”
She opened the door and shook her head. “No. Nothin’ yet.”
I groaned, and she came and sat on the bed beside me. I saw her hand rubbing my leg, but I felt nothing. Nothing to feel.
“It’s not morning yet, but I couldn’t sleep. Figured maybe you couldn’t either. You okay?”
“What time is it?”
“’Bout five.”
I rolled away from her.
She lay down behind me like a spoon and rubbed my back for a little while, like she used to before we moved here. Before Daddy died. Before any of this mess.
“I’m sorry, Anni. About everything. And now this. This is too much for anyone to bear.”
I didn’t know what to say about that.
It was too much.
Way too much.
Later that morning, the sun woke me up like a glaring smack of fire. I patted the side of the bed, and Molly stretched herself out, long and alive. She jumped up, circled three times, then curled her back up against me.
What was I supposed to do with all this death?
I shoved my feet into my slippers and shuffled to the kitchen. I sorta hoped to be alone, but Mama and Ernestine were already up and dressed, drinking their coffee.
I felt their eyes on me as I pulled open the refrigerator to find something that would make the ache in my belly stop.
“Quit,” I said into the open refrigerator.
“What’s that, child?”
“Quit staring at me!” I spun around and felt right then that I hated them both very much—a new and mighty and wild, wild feeling. “Quit staring at me! Make all of this quit!”
“Baby girl—“
“I’m not a baby! He kissed me, you know. I’m not a baby anymore, because he kissed me!” I ran back to my room and nearly caught Molly’s tail in the door when I slammed it shut. I crawled under my desk and cried. Hard, heaving crying, like giant hiccups, one after the other.
Ernestine knocked on my door this time. “Can I come in, child?”
I sniffed and wiped the snot o
ff my face.
She perched herself on the edge of my bed. “What you got there?”
I turned the fossil over in my hand. “He found this.”
She waited, patient as ever, for me to keep talking.
“Jed found this and gave it to me. Two fossils. Brooksella fossils. Connected. Hardly anyone ever finds two of ’em connected like this. But he found it and gave it to me soon after we met.”
“It’s beautiful. Like they’s holding hands.”
“They are holding hands. Because something awful and fierce made them stick together. Me and Jed, we were stuck together by everything around spinning us, and now we’re unstuck. Broke apart. And I don’t know what I’m gonna do.” I searched her eyes for help. “What am I supposed to do?”
She turned and gazed outside the window. “You supposed to look, child. God don’t let a person precious as Jed leave without leaving his friends who loved him with ladders.”
I rolled my eyes and didn’t feel guilty that she saw me.
“Nechel. Angels coming down to take away your pain, and angels coming down to replace that pain with life. One tiny ladder, one small rung to climb. One small rung at a time.”
“Humph.” No good in that advice. And no angels scooping away any of my pain. Besides, whatever pain they scooped out would fill right back up again, like digging a hole at the beach. Dig too far, and you hit water, and the hole fills right back up, no matter how much or how fast you keep digging.
Ernestine interrupted my thoughts. “Don’t you think Jed would look for nechel?”
He would.
I knew he would.
And sure enough, a ladder came down that evening.
“What else can you tell us about Jed’s home life?” the detective asked me. He sat across the dining room table from me, gold badge glinting from the light of the chandelier above us. Made me nervous knowing a gun rested in his holster. Reminded me of the night Daddy died. This was the same officer Vaughn had talked to before we left the park Saturday night. The same man I tried to punch in the chest for saying they had to call off the search for the night.
