Obi laughed. He liked Melody more and more. She was fleshy and soft and pretty in a natural way, not like Eileen, who hid her beauty behind too much makeup and expensive haircuts. “My mother is a seer. She comes from a long line of seers, and her mother taught her how to use herbs and plants to heal. That’s not magic.”
“Then what is it?” Melody’s father moaned and shifted in the bed. She pulled the quilt up over his legs, touched his forehead. “I think his fever is down.”
“It’s medicine,” Obi said. “It’s just not medicine cooked up in a lab somewhere.”
“We could use some of her medicine right now. I don’t know what will happen if the waters keep rising or if Daddy runs out of oxygen. I don’t know what to do. I guess your mother would know. That’s what a seer is right? Someone who knows what to do?” Her voice sounded thick. She was emotional, but she didn’t break down. “I never know the right thing to do.”
“Yes, you do,” Obi said. “You’re doing just fine.”
“I’ve let my brother down.”
“You’ll make it up to him.”
“What if it isn’t enough?”
“Then you let it go.”
“That’s no help at all.”
“I’m not my mother. I’m no seer.”
Melody walked across the room to the window. “I think the levees have failed. It’s the only reason the water would be so high. It’ll get worse before it gets better.”
“We were camping on the river.” Obi decided to trust Melody. If anything happened to him during this storm or in the future, he knew he could trust her with Liam. “There was a misunderstanding with some boys.”
“Is that what happened to your face? A misunderstanding?”
Obi touched the wound beneath his eye. “This? This was just an accident.”
“What happened on the river?”
Obi told her most of it. “Those boys were on something. They were crazed.” He told her about how the boy came at him with a knife and how he fought back, how anyone would fight back under the circumstances. He told her his knife slipped, that he hadn’t meant to hurt the boy. He did not tell her he thought he’d killed the boy. He did not want this woman to think of him as a killer. That would not serve any of them.
“Accidents, misunderstandings, a failure to read the weather. You really aren’t a seer. You’d think you might get some of your mother’s gifts.”
“Not me,” Obi said. “I think Liam shows promise, though.”
Liam stood at the foot of the bed, looking at the old man.
“I’ll do anything to protect my son,” Obi said. “You can understand that. I can’t afford trouble with the law, with anyone. That’s why I went for my rifle. I don’t want to use it, but I will.”
“You’ll be safe here,” Melody assured him. “At least as safe as the rest of us.”
Before Obi could thank her, the old man sat straight up in bed. He looked filled with strength. His hair stood out around his head, and color rushed into his face. Obi saw what he must have looked like in better times: a robust man, a strong man.
“Daddy.” Melody leaned in and Obi saw that she loved her father. Her eyes locked on his and she reached for his hands. “Daddy, what is it?”
“Genie,” the dying man said.
“No, Daddy, it’s me. It’s Melody.” Her voice was gentle, soft. Obi wished he could help her, but he knew he could not.
“Genie.” The man’s voice was strong and clear, not a hint of weakness. “Genie, I’m dying.”
Obi watched the man’s spirit leave his body and he knew the man’s life had been filled with sorrow and darkness and terrible pain. Death was a relief, if only a temporary one. Obi whispered the words his mother had taught him to say in the presence of death. “Mother Earth, Father of Ancestors, He Who Lives Beyond the Heavens, make a new world for this man. No death, only a new world.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Geneva became a wild animal. Somewhere between the tree that took Atul and the sheriff’s office, she gave up on being civilized and threw her full lot in with Mother Nature. Bruised and tossed around mercilessly by the rising waters, her skin was scraped raw, her clothes torn and useless. By the time she clawed her way up the concrete steps of the county building, she considered each new pain a triumph. Pain was just proof of life. That was true for as long as Geneva could remember.
She stumbled, barefoot and half-dressed, into the sheriff’s office, where Boggs and Chandra sat. Her teeth clacked together violently. She couldn’t stop shivering.
Boggs stood. “Dear God. Are you okay?”
“No.” She heaved up a vile stream of mustard-colored water. “I’m not okay.” She kept retching even when her body was empty. A faint bit of cinnamon stuck in the back of her throat, and that was worse than the bitter bile that filled her mouth.
“No, I reckon you are not.” Boggs brought her a dry wool blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders, handed her a stack of brown paper towels. She took the towels and scraped the wad across her tongue. She was shivering so hard she bit her own hand.
“Where’s my father?” Chandra said. “Where is he?”
Geneva sat in a hard plastic chair, put her head between her knees. “I lost him.”
“What do you mean, you lost him? How could you lose him?” Chandra spat at Geneva, angry and full of contempt. Soon enough she’d figure out that grief was a more appropriate emotion.
Geneva lifted her head. The room spun. “The water was too high. He couldn’t swim.”
“Now, just a minute.” Boggs brought her a paper cup filled with lukewarm water. “What are you saying?”
“I tried to save him, but the tree wouldn’t let him go. He couldn’t swim.” She kept saying he couldn’t swim, though she knew damn well that swimming wouldn’t have saved him. There was nothing logical about what she said. There was no reason left in the world.
“Where is my father?” Chandra lunged and slapped Geneva again and again across the face.
“Settle down.” Boggs pulled Chandra away. “You wanna tell me what happened?”
“He couldn’t swim.” Geneva didn’t know why they were having such a hard time understanding. “We wrecked the car and tried to walk. The water kept rising. He got stuck. There was a tree, a beautiful tree. The tree wanted Atul and it took him. If you want to blame someone, blame the tree. Blame the rain.” She couldn’t say it any plainer.
“You are the rain.” Chandra said. “You are a flood of misery.”
“We have rescue boats out now,” Boggs said. “Where did you lose track of him? I’ll radio for help.”
“I didn’t lose track of him. He’s gone.” She peered into the rain. “There are no boats out there.”
“There are,” Bogg said. “The Red Cross radioed in; they’re evacuating the low-lying areas. They’re evacuating damn near everything. Shelter’s at the middle school. It’s on a ridge. Trustees are out with sandbags.”
“It’s too late for Atul.” She looked at Chandra. “Do you understand?” Chandra glared, her face tight and red. She would kill Geneva if given the chance. Geneva could see that. “Do you understand what I’m telling you, Chandra? Your father is gone.”
She pulled the blanket tight around her chest. “Please,” she said to Boggs. “You need to send someone to my house. It takes on water even in small storms. My husband is dying. He won’t make it upstairs. He won’t escape if the water rises.”
“We’re covering the whole county,” Boggs said. “It’s a big county.”
“We’re on the far edge. About a quarter mile off County Road 240.”
“I spoke with your daughter,” Boggs said. “They’re fine.”
“But our house floods,” Geneva said. “If the levees give way, our house will flood quickly. You have to do something.”
“The levees gave way some time ago,” Boggs said. “We’re doing what we can. We’re doing everything we can.”
“We have to find my father.” C
handra’s voice was tight and small. She turned to Boggs, balled her fists, and slammed against his chest. “Do something! Send someone!”
“Look,” Boggs said. “The boats are out. We’ll find him.”
They might find him, Geneva knew, but they wouldn’t save him. It was too late for that. Chandra sat, slack-jawed and ugly in her ill-fitting clothes and her deliberately unflattering haircut. Geneva should never have brought her here. Geneva should have listened to Pisa.
“My family needs help,” Geneva said. “I have a bad feeling. Can I get on one of those boats?”
“Ma’am, I can’t call a rescue boat off the job because you have a bad feeling.” Boggs walked to his desk, scooped the wad of wet tobacco from a sheet of paper, and tucked it into his jaw.
“My husband is dying. They need me.”
“You only care about yourself,” Chandra said. “What about my father? How could you leave him?”
“If it weren’t for you, your father wouldn’t be out in this storm.” Geneva turned her anger on Chandra. “He was worried sick about you. He wanted to get back here to you. That’s why we were stuck in the flood. That’s why we had the wreck. That’s why your father is not here.”
“I hate you.” Chandra wiped her nose on the back of her bare arm. A thin, viscous strand of snot hung down in front of her lip.
Boggs spit into a Styrofoam cup, passed Chandra a box of tissues. “Sheriff has a fishing boat out back. Wife won’t let him keep it at the house.”
“I can drive.” Geneva shrugged off the blanket.
“Your daughter mentioned that a man and a little boy were camping out on your land. You know anything about that?” Boggs spit a wet brown stream into his cup. “Matches the description of the man Chandra says attacked her friend. Could be dangerous.”
“I can handle a boat,” Geneva said. “You can stay here with Chandra.”
“We’re all sticking together,” Boggs said. “I’ll radio for one of the rescue boats to meet us. By the time we get there, they should be sweeping the edge of the county anyhow, and you should all get to the shelter.” He pulled on a pair of thigh-high waders as he spoke, dropped a pair in front of Chandra, and handed a pair to Geneva. “They’ll be too big, but better than nothing. Put ’em on.”
* * *
Boggs steered the boat through the thick, dirty water. Geneva thought she would never be dry again. Water poured into the boat. They should be prepared to bail, Boggs told them. His cheek bulged and he spit great brown streams of tobacco overboard at regular intervals. Geneva pointed out the way she thought they should go, but the familiar landmarks had disappeared. Without a sun in the sky, without black roads and green signs and yellow houses and brown fields, she was lost in a world of sodden gray. The churches were her only guideposts. Monuments to God and man rose up through the colorless anonymity. If she kept them to her left, they would be heading in the right direction. They passed the tall white cross of Crossroads Baptist, the bright blue cross of Friendship AME, the steeple of First Baptist, the bell tower of Holy Mary. Geneva directed Deputy Boggs through the Bible Belt one notch at a time. For the first time since the baptism of her son, she was grateful for man’s enormous ego in building houses of worship.
“Hoo boy, this is a mess!” Boggs had to shout to be heard. “Sheriff’s daughter isn’t going to be happy. Bet they’ll cancel the wedding.”
“Who cares about some stupid wedding?” Chandra screamed, but her voice was thin against the storm.
“Right,” Boggs said. “Not so important in the scheme of things.”
Chandra bared her teeth and tucked her chin. She folded her arms up tight. She might have been trying to protect herself from the rain, but Geneva knew better. The girl was wound tight, literally and figuratively. She was in a rage and, like the river in a storm, she would not be contained for long.
Geneva wished she had the package Pisa had given her, the one with the herbs and the chants. She tried to remember the blessings she’d said over Bobby and Melody through the years, but they all ran together like gibberish. She wondered if that was all Pisa had ever given her, just a bunch of gibberish. But, of course, it was Pisa who’d warned her that there would be great violence if she went to see Atul. There was no gibberish in that warning, and Geneva should have heeded it. She directed Boggs east through a forest of trees, a path dense and dark on a sunny day turned gothic nightmare by the storm. Chandra huddled herself tighter. She seemed to be shrinking.
Finally Geneva’s home appeared. It was squat, a mere half the house she remembered, much of it hidden beneath the water. “That’s it.”
Boggs approached slowly. “Don’t want to alarm anyone. Keep your eyes on the house. If you see anyone moving around, let me know.”
Geneva squinted into the rain. She wished there were some way to signal to them.
“The first floor is flooded.” She hoped Melody had managed to get Bruce upstairs. “I need to go in. I can’t see anything from here.”
“You’re not going anywhere.” Boggs spit for emphasis.
“It’s my family,” Geneva said. “I have to go. Let me go inside.”
“Can’t do it,” Boggs said. “Might be dangerous, and I can’t send you in there. I’ll go in and send them out.”
He spoke to Chandra. “I’ll bring everyone out. If the man is in there, you can identify him. You don’t need to be afraid. I’ll apprehend him.”
“What if he isn’t in there?” Chandra said. “What if he’s out here somewhere, watching us? What if he’s just waiting for you to leave so he can come over here and shut me up? He’ll kill me. I know he will.”
“I don’t think that’s particularly likely in this storm.” Boggs reached under his seat in the boat and pulled out a box. He fumbled with the latch until the box sprang open.
“Is that a gun?” Chandra leaned forward, hand out.
“A flare gun.” Boggs released a stream of brown spit. “If you need me, just shoot this into the air.” He showed her how to use the gun.
“You won’t see it if you’re inside.”
“This is ridiculous,” Geneva said. “She’ll kill us with that thing. She’ll blow a hole in the boat.”
“I will not!”
As they argued, Boggs stepped from the boat to the submerged front porch. Water rose as high as his hips. He tethered a rope around a porch railing and let the boat float away from the house. The rope was long and left them bobbing in the rain a good twenty feet away.
“Hey!” Geneva shouted, but Boggs was gone.
Chandra turned the flare gun over and over in her hands, like a child with a new toy.
“Be careful with that!” Geneva said. “It’s dangerous.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.” Chandra cradled the flare gun against her chest and glared at Geneva. “You just sit there and shut up.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Melody’s father collapsed onto the pillow, onto the quilt his mother had sewn in her dying days when her eyesight grew weak, a quilt with mismatched threads, orange turning to red and red to black. Melody had always loved the quilt in spite of its ugly flaws. She loved her father the same way. The fabric of the quilt was thin, so soft that lumps of cotton batting shown through. The blue veins in her father’s arms were stark, his rib cage a ladder. His chest convulsed as the last rattling breath left his body. His face transformed from a mask of agitation and pain to a calm and peaceful expression. His eyes remained open. He smiled.
Melody felt like she’d been punched. His death shocked her. Shocked her despite its inevitability. She’d had only a couple of days to get used to the idea that her father was dying, and while those two days were pretty damned convincing, she wasn’t ready for this.
“I’m sorry,” Obi said.
“Oh, God.” Melody fell back into an old rocking chair. “He was so sick. But still, I…”
Liam climbed on the bed before Melody could stop him. He pulled a woven strand from around his neck and laid it
on her father’s chest. “Don’t be sad,” he told her. “He feels better now.”
Melody touched the woven strand. “What is this?”
“It’s for safe travels,” he explained. “Protection.”
“Did your grandma give you this?”
Liam nodded. “He needs it more than I do.”
Melody doubted that was true, but she appreciated the thought. Liam climbed onto her lap, rested his head against her chest. Maybe he did have his grandmother’s gifts. She rocked him and stroked his silky hair. She could sit there forever, not caring if the waters rose, not worrying about what her brother was doing with some strange man, not knowing whether Chris was okay, not fretting about her mother. None of it seemed to matter more than this boy on her lap. Melody was worn out and sick of trying. She was sick of being angry, sick of feeling useless. And it wasn’t just the past two days that left her feeling that way. She’d been pissed off for the past three years. Hell, she’d been furious since Bobby’s baptism. All that anger was a waste of time. It didn’t change a thing, and it left her feeling wrung out. A man’s voice cut through her reverie. He called for her, called her by name. Melody thought God was coming for her, coming to prove his existence in the midst of disaster. It was the first sign of God she’d witnessed in years. It seemed appropriate that he’d show up now. But, of course, it wasn’t God at all.
Obi stood, put his hands on his rifle. Melody jumped up, holding Liam in her arms. “I’ll handle it,” she said. “No need to pull out the artillery.”
She hugged Liam closer and stepped into the hallway. Chris was still hunched in a corner, mumbling meaningless prayers. Maurice and Bobby appeared from Bobby’s room. A man wearing a uniform draped in a plastic poncho emerged at the top of the stairs.
“Melody? I’m Deputy Buster Boggs.”
Melody stared at him.
“We talked on the phone.”
“You’re that man from the sheriff’s office?”
“Deputy Boggs.”
Melody sighed. “Daddy’s dead.” She didn’t know why she said it. This man didn’t know her father.
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