The only dead person he had ever seen was his grandmother, who had died when he was a child. He remembered her in the coffin, powdered and in a dress she’d only worn to marriages and graduations, her skin cold and her wrinkles hardened (according to his sister, who had bent down to kiss her on the hand—he had not had the guts to touch her). Since then, he’d been lucky—everyone in his family that he cared about or knew still alive, his job at worst showing him only a dog with its insides spilling out of its body on the road or dead birds, piles of feather and bone with pink, almost pretty entrails.
This was more than what he could understand. He liked children. His girlfriend wanted children, though he had urged her to wait and insisted on condoms, though she didn’t want to use them.
It can’t hurt to skip it just this one time, she’d say, though they both knew this to be untrue. How many babies had their friends brought into the world that way? He’d insist, though, citing his shit job, her desire to go to beauty school.
We can’t afford a baby, he’d say, and he meant it. He just wanted to be ready. He wanted to buy his future children good swing sets, the kind you had to set into the ground with a cone of concrete, and he wanted to put them in clothes that would not shame them (he remembered a rare unpleasant occurrence from his childhood, when he had been called a white trash for wearing a jacket with a rip in the armpit and paint stain across the chest).
Seeing the children made something inside of him dislocate. He had believed in the goodness of the world, in children playing outdoors without parental supervision, in sunny days at lakes and drinking beer in the afternoon while you watch the children catch lightning bugs in jelly-jars. For most people, these things were no longer real or possible, but they were real for him here in Heartshorne. He loved living here, far away from places that made him nervous, like malls with expensive clothing stores, the mannequins headless and wearing asymmetrical pieces of fabric, restaurants with live music, and hushed museums filled with art that seemed, to him, like ugly affronts to everything that was simple and good. He had believed without irony that Heartshorne was the best possible place to be born in and the best place to grow up. The children here on the ground, the blue-blotching and brokenness of their skin, their arms and legs bound, their bodies swollen—this was not something he could understand. It was cold. They should be covered. This had been his first, stupid, thought—he had to cover them to keep them warm, though by the looks of the bodies they had not been warm in a very long time. He put his coat over them anyway.
He could not leave their side. What if they woke up, afraid, and did not know where they were?
They’re sleeping, he said, and then again they’re sleeping, believing suddenly that yes, this was possible. He could press his mouth to their mouths. He could make them alive again. Martin pulled him away as he began to cry, something he had not done since he was ten, since his grandmother’s funeral. The men, knowing how much it took to cry in front of other men, looked away from him.
Something was happening that they could not understand. They held him and he hung heavy in their arms, his weight dragging down toward the ground.
Still, there was more.
What had been whispered about, gossiped about, even joked about, now washed up onto their lawns: frayed pieces of rope, tattered county boots with a plate of steel inserted over the toe, a single human hand still wearing a class ring, all remnants of acts that they had heard had happened, but most had not fully understood as real.
Before, it had been easy for people to disappear. They always had, drifting in and out, never heard from again, and how they disappeared, whether by choice, like the Collins family, or by death, like the many others, hadn’t seemed so important. Like a working body, the town had flushed out what did not serve it, had sent antibodies to fight any sign of sickness. Now, those who had disappeared were speaking with their boots and ropes and remnants of bone and nobody knew how to shut them up.
11
In the early morning hours, after leaving Emily’s house, Levi walked back to his own house, about two miles away, around the lake. He had sprained his elbow while swimming and the forearm was swollen, the elbow itself shooting pain each time he move it from its only comfortable position: pressed gently against his side, bent.
He didn’t know what to do. He could turn himself in, but he no longer had the hairnet; somebody had taken it from the podium and probably destroyed it. Still yet, surely the police wouldn’t turn him away if he came to them. He would tell them what happened.
He thought of Emily, telling him that turning himself in would be pointless. It would only serve to make him feel better and to shame the town. Despite what he had said at the meeting, people still thought of him as their pastor, as a man of God. What would it do to them to have him in prison? To have everyone know? He would shame them all by association.
Killing himself seemed stupid now. A momentary madness that he probably couldn’t have gone through with anyway.
Maybe God had wanted him to live. God had put Emily there, had wanted them to meet that night. God wanted him to live.
Since he was a child, he had loved God. He had spoken to Jesus like other children spoke to imaginary friends. He had heard God’s voice in his head at a revival in Tulsa, one record hot summer. He had been kneeling beneath a white tent, the air still and sticky and unrelenting, the preacher in the front in his gray suit, shouting that God would tell each person who he was in the Kingdom, what role he had to play, how he would bring the Kingdom of God into the world, and Levi had heard, just as they described, a still, small voice, telling him to preach. To preach the word to his small town. He had obeyed that word, and had never regretted it.
Levi stood on the porch of his small house, a house he’d owned outright for five years, he’d been so diligent about his money, so careful to never be in the position of losing something that he had loved, of always having security.
He’d lost all security now. And what did he have left?
He stepped inside, shut the door, and got down on his knees. He spoke to God as he had when he was a boy, not as a preacher. When he was done, he stood up.
He said goodbye to his house, taking only what he needed (his definition of need now refined—canned goods, his toothbrush and toothpaste, a few changes of clothes), and then left, touching the door before he left. The gesture seemed right, though he didn’t feel anything electric beneath his palm to tell him that there was life here. His home now had the hollowed-out look of a recently abandoned house that had not yet fallen into disrepair, the grass still short and the windows still intact, but clearly without anyone inside it. Maybe this was how it had always looked, even when he had lived there. He drove away from it easily. He’d abandon the car when he’d gotten far enough away.
Leaving what he’d known was enough like death.
12
Emily woke groggy, her throat sore, her body aching. Her hair was still damp from the rain, and her socks were black and slick on her feet, so wet that they’d made basketball-sized rings of damp on her sheets. She peeled them off and observed her white, blue-veined feet beneath, looking vulnerable and flaky like fish meat. She tried to sit up, but her blood, hot and choppy in her head, rioted and set her back down. She touched Jonathan’s bare shoulder and pressed against it until he woke.
I don’t feel well, she said.
He looked at her wet hair, her exposed, pale feet. Where have you been?
She looked down at the bed; she had smeared the bed sheets where she’d slipped between them and her muddy hand prints smudged the edge of the blankets where she had pulled the covers up over her head.
I had to go out, she said. I had to cross the water and put out the fire, like the cards said.
She thought that what she said made sense—didn’t he remember?—but the way he was looking at her made her stop talking. She sank back down into the dirty blankets.
It’s too hot, she said, even as she tried to curl back into the hea
d of her chest and belly for warmth. She was both freezing and sweating, her head a hot, heavy thing connected to the cold, plastic sack of her body.
Stay down, Jonathan said. I’m going to bring you water. Don’t try to get up.
She no longer could get up, so she only nodded and sunk under the covers.
I’m lucky to have you here, she mumbled, though she didn’t know if he was still in the room. I would have been alone if not for you. Alone like Frannie.
He came back soon and pressed something cold against her lips and the liquid fell into her mouth and slid down her throat, making her cough.
She could hear him speaking and felt the press of his colder hand against her cheek and forehead, but she could not respond. She was so tired.
Emily thought that this would be the perfect time for her mother to come back, for the dreams to return, but they didn’t. She did dream, of course, just not as she had for the last few months, and when she dreamed of her mother, it was in scenes from her memory, her mother moving and speaking in the ways that Emily remembered her, but she said and did nothing new. Her mother did not speak directly to her anymore.
I miss her, Emily said once, as Jonathan woke her momentarily and placed a cup against her lip, the glass clicking against her teeth.
Shhhh, he said. Go back to sleep.
Somebody else was in the room. A woman, Emily could tell, because she could smell sweet shampoo and hear a rustling of hair.
Mom, she said, and then, embarrassed even in her sickness, tried to explain: I know it’s not her, but I thought I’d see her.
Shhh, Jonathan said again. Just sleep. It’s okay.
She dreamed of the lake rising, until it overtook Heartshorne, plunging it underwater just like the town that had been flooded before it to make the lake. She imagined herself floating up, her body washed on a new shore.
She dreamed of Levi, too. He was in the water, drowning, and she stood at the shore, watching him bob up and down in the black water. He was naked and she did not call to him, knowing he would be embarrassed if she acknowledged his body.
Don’t come out to me, he shouted to her as he bobbed up and down. She thought of the poem Not Waving, But Drowning and remembered, maybe, that the poet had killed herself. Or was that some other poet? It could have been any number of them. Since Levi didn’t want her to come, she stood at the shore, watching until he didn’t come back up anymore.
Once the fever broke (a phrase she knew from Victorian novels) and she could sit up, she remained in a haze. Jonathan came in and out, bringing her broth and vitamin water. His sister had come from Keno, bearing medicinal teas, actual medicine, and other accoutrements of health: a humidifier, Vicks rub, and a mint candle made with natural beeswax.
Who has been watching the store? Emily asked, as soon as she could sit up.
Our parents.
How long have I been sick? How long was I sleeping?
Just two and a half days, he said. We weren’t sure if we should bring you to the hospital: we thought we’d wait a day, see if you were feeling better. But what a day it’s been. Look at the paper.
He unfolded it on her lap:
LOCAL PASTOR GONE MISSING:
Suspected Suicide by Drowning
Oh Jesus, she said, her hand over her mouth.
I’m not so sure he’s dead, Jonathan said. No body found yet, and they’ve been dragging the lake. They mention what he said about Fran here, briefly, but they call it an “episode” and say there was no evidence to support Pastor Roberts’ “extraordinary claims”—he pointed to a paragraph, but her head was still too clouded to read the entire article.
And look here. Jonathan pointed to the headline below it, accompanied by a photograph she’d seen before, the two Harris children.
HARRIS CHILDREN FOUND:
Two-month Search Ends in Tragedy
They were killed, she said. She couldn’t bear to read the article past the first sentence: A month of searching and a family still hopeful to somehow have their children home safe ends in tragedy after two bodies washed up in the Echo Lake flood last night. She set it down on her lap. Jonathan sat at the edge of her bed, his face untroubled. She didn’t want to be upset with him, but she was. She could hardly think straight, and he was filling her head with visions of drowned children.
You didn’t have to show me all of this right now, she said.
I’m sorry, Jonathan said. He shook his head. What happened to them is terrible, but I wanted you to see this. He lifted the paper again, pointing to a paragraph halfway through the article:
The discovery of the Harris children is only one of the mysteries uncovered by the Echo Lake flood. Physical evidence from the James Kirkland, Luke Medders and Douglas Morrison missing persons cases have washed up in the flood. Although the physical evidence has been badly damaged by the exposure to water, the presence of these items give police a place to focus their investigations and new leads.
Things are changing, Jonathan said. That’s what I wanted you to see. I don’t know what happened, or why you were out that night, or even it is somehow had something to do with you—he pressed against Emily’s cold hand then, hard, and looked her in the eye—but something’s different now. This newspaper is saying things it wouldn’t otherwise say. Thing are coming out into the open.
He stopped speaking as Claire entered, wearing a black, long-sleeved shirt that went down to her knees and black stockings. Claire was as beautiful and remote as she had been the few times Emily had met her. She was the kind of person who, upon meeting somebody new, offered a limp hand and smiled, briefly, before pulling herself away.
Claire, Jonathan said. Tell Emily what Mom and Dad said.
It was such an effortless exchange, but it almost made Emily tear up. They were cozily familiar, he and Claire. They loved each other and shared things. They had two parents who they visited on holidays and talked to on the phone and even visited out of the blue, just to see them. Emily could hardly imagine it. Claire sat at the edge of the bed and smiled at Emily.
They said they’ve never seen anything like it. They can’t remember hearing so much talk about missing persons, about investigations. The FBI has come to investigate the Harris twins’ murders—it fits a familiar profile, or something. Other children have been found over in Arkansas. People don’t usually talk like that around here.
Dad has a friend on the Keno force, Jonathan said. He let it slip about the FBI thing.
So what does it mean? Emily motioned toward the glass of water, which she now desperately needed. Her tongue felt enormous and covered in fuzz.
It means something might actually happen. The murders might end. They might figure out who did it, and they can stop. Jonathan reached over and grasped the glass of water, passing it up to her as she struggled upright into bed.
Emily laughed, spitting water onto the quilt. The lake did it, she said, wiping her mouth and dabbing at the covers with the sleeve of her nightgown. Don’t you remember what Levi told me? He said that the lake made him do it.
Well, no matter what Levi thought, it’s been happening since before then—those other guys, the ones in the article, they happened before all of this, Jonathan said, tapping the surface of the newspaper, where a few grainy faces shaped a square above the article. The murders left out in the open are new. The ones that happened that nobody ever talks about, those have been happening for a long time. People never used to say these things out loud. A year ago, that boot they found would’ve just been thrown back into the lake where it came from.
Emily nodded, though her eyes felt heavy and she fought sleep. She knew that she should be happy. Of course, Jonathan was right. This was what she had wanted, but it didn’t feel like enough. The children were still dead. Her mother was dead. Frannie was dead and the person who might have killed her was also probably dead, or at least gone. Whatever had happened to her family so many years ago was buried. The people who knew anything were dead, and those still alive weren’t talkin
g.
What do I want, then? She thought.
I have to sleep a while, she said, patting Jonathan on the hand. Thank you, she said. You two have been sweet.
They were sweet, but they, too, weren’t enough. What did she want? She didn’t know.
•
When she felt well enough to go outside, a week later, Heartshorne seemed like a completely new place. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees, finally, and the leaves on the trees, though still mostly green, had become dark and limp and curled into themselves. Frost had gotten them while still green, Jonathan explained, and this caused them to roll up, exposing their lighter undersides. The grass crunched beneath her shoes, dried and fragile from the long, hot summer.
Everything looks tired, Jonathan said, doesn’t it?
Emily agreed. She was wrapped in a sweater and Jonathan’s coat, a stocking cap on her head and her cold hands tucked in the fur-lined pockets.
Are you cold? he asked, and she was, but she shook her head.
I’m going to go walk around for a while, she said. Feel free to go back in. Or you can go home, if you want to. I’m sure you want to see your store again. I’m going to be OK.
He had been at her house daily for the last two weeks, feeding her when she was too weak to get out of bed, bringing her magazines and books to keep her busy.
He nodded. I’ll run out to the store. That’s a good idea.
She didn’t take the road, as she had led him to believe she would as she waved and watched his car drive away. When he was out of sight, she went back to the house and to the backyard, which had both grown up and been cut down since she’d last seen it. The grass, tall, had been battered down by the rain and bowed, yellowing at the tips. The yard was still littered with fallen trees from the storm. She stepped over the branches and into the woods.
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