Echo Lake

by Letitia Trent

  So now he knew everything. He did not seem surprised. He only nodded as she spoke, interjecting only for clarifications. She’d cried, but he had not acknowledged it, which was the right thing to do in the moment. She had not been asking for acknowledgment.

  It’s isolated here, and I don’t just mean geographically, he said after they had dozed for ten minutes or so, cooling their skin, and woke again. People don’t leave unless they have to or very much want to. They keep to themselves, that’s what people say. It seems almost wrong to come into a place like Heartshorne and tell people who they can and can’t kill. You sign an agreement if you’re born here—

  You can’t sign agreements when you’re born, she said. You don’t agree to being born at all.

  He sat up in bed, his head against the wall. He only shrugged and did not explain himself.

  She loved this about him, how he wasn’t afraid when she or anyone disagreed with him. He didn’t rush to clear away the hurt or confusion or anger.

  Maybe this was yet another thing she would hate about him later. She imagined an argument, her trying to get some reaction, wanting to shake him up, and him merely setting back, swallowing, closing his eyes before he began to say something completely logical.

  I just mean, he went on, that as soon as you are born, you are born into a place where these are the rules, as clear as the rules that the everyone else lives by, just different.

  Emily had nodded, sleepy from the sex, from the reading (the readings drained her, the way he did them, how he demanded her to contribute in figuring out what the cards meant and why), and she had not argued.

  Now, as she lay in bed, she thought about her mother again. Whatever had happened to her (and she’d never know, would she? This was what happened when a person died—they took everything that only they had known or could know with them) had made her the person that Emily had known, a person who she had never quite been able to love beyond the basic love of necessity and guilt.

  Jonathan stirred, first blinking, his eyes closed for long intervals. Then he pulled her close to him and breathed into her throat.

  I’m free today, he said. What should we do?

  4

  That night, it had rained so hard that the plants with closed, hard petals were forced open, their inner pollen released and drowned in the muck. The flowers that had bloomed all summer were pummeled and smashed. It rained so hard that pools of water formed in the low places on dirt roads, making some impassable, trapping men in the houses they hated, the women they loved or had once loved angry and chain smoking, the children unable to leave for school, the children trapped in houses they hated with mothers who drank and slurred and watched beautiful women and men on television shouting at each other or living in places that the children had never seen and could hardly imagine, the children afraid and angry but also desiring to pick at the wound that made the mother cry or shout or even hit, and the women trapped in the houses they hated, with the children that they loved and so could wound, with the men they loved and who wounded them with their indifference or the liquor they bought instead of bread, and the people who lived alone and the people who lived in ways that Heartshorne would not approve of—men with men, women with women, there were a few of them, lying low. They were more afraid than usual, paradoxically fearing the inability to leave the homes they’d thought of as sanctuaries from the pressures of the church pot luck or the staring eyes at the general store. It was terrifying to be stuck.

  The town muddied and the trees grew bright like jewels, the rain a glaze and the humidity so thick nothing could dry. Pools of dead leaves and drowned worms reeked when the sun came up.

  And the lake rose. It had raised an inch by morning, when the rain stopped and the skies cleared momentarily before the next torrent would begin.

  5

  As she made coffee, she watched the enormous puddle in her yard shimmer and shift, the droplets hittting it in slanted waves. It had started raining again lightly. The yard was littered with buds, branches, and stray pieces of trash which caught in corners and around anything that . At the table, Jonathan sat with the paper, which he had fetched from the convenience store down the road, along with a package of stale honey buns and a pack of Swishers Sweets.

  Do you smoke? She’d asked after he came in and set the objects down on her table.

  Would she have to think of it, soon, as our table? She did not know how she felt about that. He placed the paper and cigarettes and sticky honey-buns, their crusted sugar hardened to the cellophane in a dried film, down on the kitchen table with such certainty, not a hint of reluctance, as though it were his house in which to figure out where things should go. She wanted to pick up all of the objects and put them in different places, just to remind me that he didn’t have the right to decide where things went, but she stopped herself.

  He shrugged. Sometimes. Let’s share some tonight, outside, he said. They’re sweet.

  She nodded. She used to smoke recreationally, at Eric’s gigs, though she only filled her mouth with smoke and blew it out. Smoking had been something to do with her mouth when she had nothing to add to the conversation, which was often. Eric’s friends liked to follow their own thoughts down rabbit holes, arguing the ability to be effortlessly cool without trying to be cool, debating who fit the bill and who didn’t. Johnny Cash was cool but Radiohead were not, because even stupid people liked them and knew at least one of their songs—Creep, probably, a song that even regular people thought was about them, the kind of loser anthem that people who were decidedly non-losers in the regular world had adopted as their own and therefore ruined. They spoke at each other, not to each other, each trying to dazzle the other long enough to make them stop and listen to the clever or complex thing dancing along the surface of the monologue, or at least that was how it had seemed to her, in the background, chewing on the filter of her cigarette and waiting for Eric to wear himself out trying to be heard. It was an exhausting way to live. She had given up early on the competitive aspect of it, content to watch the others try to best each other. It made her sad to think of them now, still trying to make somebody listen but never stopping to listen to anyone else.

  She touched the pack of cigarettes, brown and slim. Sure, she said. She wondered if he was a stress smoker. Was this his version of stressed?

  She looked at him in his gray, long-sleeved shirt, ragged holes in the cuffs where he’d poked his thumbs through, his jawline at a constant two-day shadow. He crossed his legs easily at the knee, on black sock thinning at the ankle so she could almost see his skin beneath. His eyes were deep-set, giving him the appearance of being tired until you knew him and saw that it was an illusion. He folded his hands over one knee, and then on his lap, moving his hands in a circular motion to warm them. He carried himself with a compact elegance that appealed to her: he did not throw his body around as some men did, needing to prove themselves worthy of the space they inhabited. His movements were efficient and catlike; he folded and drew his limbs back into himself.

  Do I have something hanging out of my nose? he asked.

  No, she said. I was just. I don’t know. Admiring.

  He gestured to her and she walked over to him and sat in his lap.

  What do you want to do today? He asked.

  What she wanted to do was stay at home, curled up with Jonathan, not worrying about what was happening outside or about Levi’s meeting that night.

  I don’t know, she said, rising from his lap. It was too comfortable there, too easy to sink into and forget.

  She poured the boiling water into the french press and pumped the water up and down, blackening it to the color that Jonathan liked and that she was getting used to.

  She had to go to the meeting that night. It wasn’t that she wanted any kind of spiritual guidance and it wasn’t that she felt she owed it to Colleen or Levi or anyone else. She felt she had to go, that missing it would mean missing something important about her mother and Frannie and everything. It was a rare,
strong gut feeling. Emily had thought herself generally devoid of helpful intuition, completely free of the twinges and signs her mother identified everywhere: a feather floating on the porch might mean that she shouldn’t leave the house that day, a spider in the bathtub meant unexpected money, or she’s see a premonition of kitchen curtains streaming fire across the flammable wallpaper and turn the car around only to find that she’d left a kettle on a still-hot burner, the smell of melting aluminum permeating the house. Emily had never had a premonition in her life (if she had, perhaps she would have seen Eric’s womanizing coming, though perhaps it had taken only common sense to see that, something Emily was also missing). But now, she felt the need to go that night strongly, an urge as obvious and easy to relieve as the urge to sneeze.

  I want to go to that meeting tonight, that church thing, she said. She didn’t turn to watch him. Would you come along?

  Of course. She turned to bring him the carafe and poured a cup of black coffee. He grabbed the mug, folding his long fingers around it.

  It’s hot, she said, imagining him dropping the cup, scalding himself, the pieces of pottery nicking them both. She did not have intuition, but she had inherited the ability to anticipate elaborate disaster scenarios, a far less useful talent.

  I’m fine, he said, and leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs again, looking as though he lived here, really belonged here, as if anyone could.

  •

  The night before, he had suggested a simple three-card reading.

  What does Emily need to know about the murders in town? He said as he shuffled.

  This card is the problem, he said, laying down the two of swords. In it, a young man held two swords, balanced equally, blades crossed.

  This is the benefit: The Tower. Her old friend.

  This is the solution: The Wheel of Fortune. Emily noticed, this time, the man below the wheel, pressing himself as flat as possible to avoid being crushed by its enormous, wooden weight.

  So, what does it mean? She asked.

  He laughed and looked up at her. He had already commented on her Tarot face, rapt and expectant like a child waiting for the rabbit to jump from under the hat.

  She knew that he wouldn’t simply answer, and he didn’t. He looked at the card. He shifted the two of swords slightly so it overlapped the Tower.

  What do you see? He asked her.

  The two of swords were completely balanced by the boy (or woman? Somebody ascetic and ungendered, a figure in a black robe with a black cap over his or her hair). Behind the figure and the balanced swords, the sky was gray and heavy and a peephole of a moon seemed very far away.

  These two things that could kill this person, the two swords, they are balanced, she said. The balance has come from discipline, from keeping things tightly organized. She liked this idea, this boy/girl who could hold something deadly and make it safe as milk.

  How long can the boy hold up the swords?

  Forever, she said. He could hold them up forever. A storm is about to come, but he’s smiling. He knows he can hold them up.

  Why is this a problem? Remember this is a problem card.

  Emily thought of Colleen, how sure she was that the town was usually right. The people who had to die had had to die. These new deaths were different—unplanned, unsanctioned by whatever body (the people, their silence) had sanctioned the previous deaths.

  So the problem is that things could remain as they are—the swords that kill might stay balanced, Emily said. The storm comes and the boy’s just standing there, not moving, not changing.

  Emily looked up at the roof, which was slapped with rain.

  He nodded, looking down at the cards. When he read, he didn’t move his attention from the cards and her responses. He could not be distracted.

  So the problem is that things might remain exactly as they are, he repeated. The swords can be held up forever. Even a great shaking up might not move them, not if somebody doesn’t make that boy move.

  Emily nodded. So the boy has to decide to move. Or something so big he can’t help but move has to happen.

  Jonathan nodded. After a pause, he moved on.

  So here’s the benefit: The Tower. What do you see?

  She’d seen the card before, but she tried to look at it again, to see something she didn’t already know. She saw a group of people in brown and black capes, their thin, white hands clasped together, their pinched 18th century faces narrow and greenish, gathered below a falling building, too afraid to move away from the rubble, too afraid to use their sense.

  Something happening that’s beyond control, she said. She could almost feel it, then, a wind so severe that it could knock a building over, a wave of energy that they had to simply watch destroying their tower. Something so big, bigger than the storm coming—or maybe the storm coming in full force, will bring the lighting that hits the tower that will move the boy with the swords. She moved to touch the card next to it, that girl/boy with his look of complacency, no fear of being cut.

  Maybe the lightning will hit the swords like a lightning rod. She paused, not sure what she meant, but she kept speaking anyway. He had taught her this trick: don’t freeze up, just keep talking, explaining, noticing, and something interesting will come out.

  What happens will be so big, people can’t help but look at it. They can’t hide, they can’t put it into order and understand it: they have to look. They will be forced to look.

  So is it coming, he asked, or does it need to happen? Does somebody have to make it happen, or is like a natural disaster, something that you or I cannot control? Jonathan looked up at her, breaking his concentration on the cards. Remember, this is the benefit. Do you mean this needs to happen, that it will happen, or that you somehow have to make it happen?

  Emily shook her head. The card grew dark and mute, just pictures on cardboard. She felt suddenly silly.

  I don’t know.

  Ok. He touched the third card, The Wheel of Fortune. What do you see?

  She didn’t know this card, not like The Tower (her card, she liked to think, with all of that confusion and collapse and people with nothing left but prayer and dumb staring).

  The people are moving, everything’s moving, she said. The creature—person—on the bottom is the only one being crushed. He’s afraid, but he doesn’t realize he’ll spin up to the top soon and the creatures above him will be below. Everything is moving and you can’t hold it still.

  She looked at Jonathan. The boy can’t really hold the swords forever. He can hold them for a while, and then the wheel comes down on him and he has to let go.

  Jonathan pressed his lips together. So what will happen to him then?

  He’ll cut himself.

  Jonathan nodded. So he’ll cut himself. He’ll fall to the bottom of the wheel. He’ll have to drop his swords and might cut himself and maybe even somebody else. But it’s good that the swords fall—it’s the balance that’s the problem. But something will shake him up from that complacency. The wheel will swing and he’ll be on the bottom.

  So the question is, does somebody else spin the wheel? Do you have to throw that lightning that breaks the tower? Is this something that you are supposed to do?

  She looked up. Why would it be me?

  He shrugged. You seem to care. You seem to think you need to do something. Does anyone else care?

  Everyone cares, she said. Pastor Levi cares. Even Colleen cares. Everyone cares.

  Jonathan had flared up a nascent sense of pride of place. The feeling was strange and thrilling. She wouldn’t speak badly of it, now that she knew it was her own. The pride surprised her and made her even sicker. She did care. She cared about this place. But she wasn’t really from here. She felt silly; how brazen, to think that she would be the one to save the day.

  People care, she said again. They just can’t see from the outside. I feel like I’m both from the inside and the outside. My mother came from here, and so it’s inside me, but I don’t know this place.


  They paused for a moment, listening to the sound of the rain, which had regained its torrential power.

  She shook her head and busied her hands by pointed to a figure farther out from the scene than the others in the Tower card. The figure was kneeling, his hands on the ground, his head uplifted to the sight before him of the tower cracked and tumbling and bodies twisted from falling a great distance.

  I’m this person, Emily said, covering the figure completely with her finger. I’m there but not quite there. I can see what’s happening, but I’m not part of it. Look, this person is about to run, but only after they’ve bowed to whatever is happening. They know it’s terrible and important and but also that they should run as far as possible in the other direction.

  Jonathan nodded. So it’s right to run?

  She paused again, running her finger over the man on the ground.

  Pull me another card, she said. What do you call it—a clarifying card.

  He nodded and held the deck in his palms for a moment before halving it.

  The six of swords, he said, setting it down before her.

  She’d had this card before, in her previous reading.

  Water, she said. I have to cross the water. In the card, a woman held her wrapped-up child in a boat, six swords in a bundle at the back of the boat and a man at the helm, moving them through a storm.

  What does that mean? He asked.

  She shrugged. I think I need to do something for myself, I have to cross the water. I need to worry about my own Tower before I can take care of anyone else’s.

  •

  So you really don’t mind coming tonight? She asked over her shoulder.

  He nodded, looking up from the paper. He lifted it so she could see the front page, the second headline down from the first.

  FREE WILL BAPTIST CHURCH TO HOLD