Coldwater Revival: A Novel (10 page)

I stood close to Micah, even after Papa returned to his chair. It discomfited me to no end that his body felt cold. And it troubled me that he slept alone. He’d never slept alone in his life, even in the womb. I turned, watching Papa through bleary vision. When I determined that he dozed, I did what needed doing.

“Roan … come look at this.”

I awoke at the sound of Mama’s voice, but stayed my lids from opening, though they betrayed me with a bit of fluttering as the moments passed. A quick peek revealed the night’s persistent darkness. Its slow passage had frittered away a portion of candle near the head of the coffin, puddling it into a saucer of melted wax.

“What in the world?” Papa whispered.

Mama and Papa circled the table, Papa hefting me from my nesting spot beside Micah’s casket. I had tried to cram myself into his burying box, but hadn’t fit. At least I’d gotten an arm inside, to comfort him and let him know he wasn’t alone. And I’d pleated the yards of my nightgown over his chilled body, warming him best I could.

“We know you’re awake, Emma Grace. Come on, child, open up and talk to us.” Much weeping had deepened Papa’s voice, coating it with the gravelly hoarseness of a sore throat.

As Papa steadied my stance on the floor, I blurted out the question I’d been most fearful of asking. “Is Caleb going to live?” I sought Mama’s face, my reluctant eyes finally agreeing to meet the penetrating sorrow in hers.

“He’s not awake yet, but he’s—”

“He’s gonna die too,” I exploded, detonated by the anguish in my heart. Turning my back on Mama, I grasped the table’s polished edge, battening myself against more of grief’s savage attacks.

“It’s too early to know, honey, but Doctor Landers says Caleb’s got more than a fighting chance.” Mama’s hands rested on my shoulders with heaviness, her magnetic fingers exerting force as they persuaded me to turn and face her.

Micah’s death had robbed Mama of her usual vivacity. She seemed older, depleted. Gone from her face was the youthful laughter that could tease the pout out of me with the wink of an eye. Staring into Mama’s face was like looking into the mirror of my soul and discovering nothing but impoverishment. It was then that the shakes streaked up my legs in a fearful rush. As tears washed Mama’s semblance into a watery mirage, she wrapped me in her arms, swaddling my twitches and spasms as only she could. The quavers were a long time leaving.

At noon the next day, we gathered on a knoll above Two-Toe Creek, more people bending the grass there than I had energy to count.

It was on this hilltop that my grandparents lay buried, along with a baby Mama had birthed three years after the twins were born. Though my little sister had never drawn breath, Mama had reverenced her life with a name: Elena Dawn Falin. It was beside her that Micah would forever rest.

“Friends, we gather today for the saddest of life’s occasions—the burial of our little brother, Micah Roan Falin. He departed this world on August 25, 1928, at the tender age of six.”

I closed my ears to the remainder of Pastor Emery’s remarks and kept them closed until Polly sang a hymn that ended the service. Leaning on my crutch a few feet from the casket, my mind gnawed on thoughts more palatable to my soul: Micah as a babe and as a toddler. For all the gladness in his heart, I’d often imagined he would grow up to be a preacher, or a song-and-dance man. He had a smile that ignited sparks. Not in my eyes, alone, but in all who got caught up in his bright burst of sunlight. In his brief six years on earth, he’d lavished more love and affection on my heart than a girl could expect from a lifetime of loving.

I’ll never kiss him good night again.
The thought ripped through me like a spring twister. All I could see in the whirlwind was a lifetime without Micah. A lifetime of heartache. I heaved the scene from my mind, knowing my survival depended on keeping Micah alive in my heart. Not in accepting his death. But how could I deny the truth when he lay before me—bundled in Mama’s favorite quilt—and packaged in a box carved by Elo’s masterstroke? The answer? His death could not be denied.

Micah’s coffin leaked a familiar, intimate scent into the air; a scent that spoke of happier times and places. It smelled like the siding boards Papa used to erect our tree house in the backyard. It brought to mind cedar shanks Elo peeled and scraped to frame our chicken coop. And it reminded me of Mama’s cedar-lined closet. Though moths fled its fulsomeness, I had acquired a liking for the sharp fragrance; inhaling it during stowaway times, when I crept into the dark closet and dreamed up wild, hard-to-swallow tales.

I turned my eyes from the coffin and gazed at my family. Outwardly, they showed me no contempt, but I wondered if my failure to protect the boys would someday sift into their considerations. Would they eventually place the blame where it belonged? I glanced up at the bulwark of our family. Papa would never speak of blame. Not aloud. Nor would he allow my negligence addressed in our home. But over the course of time, would my carelessness eat its way into his secret thoughts? Would it gnaw away his love for me?

Mama stood straight, her chin maintaining a high tilt, perhaps to contain the flow of tears. Papa clenched his arm around Mama’s shoulder, keeping her vertical. Flynn had enveloped Holly in his arms, and Polly and Molly embraced each other like twins joined at the hip. Nathan stood hunched beneath a tree, standing brave against the pain while gentle breezes set his overlong hair adrift. Elo had distanced himself from the crowd, his solitary gaze fastened on the ground, but then rising to the clouds. Did he think to spy Micah amidst the snow-white pillows of heaven? I wished Elo and I could share our sorrow, as we’d shared the woods and creek in our youth. But it seemed Elo was inclined to fight his battle alone.

Overnight my proud family had turned into a stoop-shouldered bunch, wide Falin shoulders not squaring the air this day. Nor did our laughter fill the void with an Irish flair. We had shrunk and aged in a day’s time. Would we ever walk tall again? Would the sparkle in Papa’s eye ever reappear?

Friends withdrew, granting us privacy while we said good-bye to Micah. As Papa wedged a sturdy wooden cross in the mound of earth, Elo dug a second burial hole, this one near the foot of Micah’s grave. Nathan placed Whisper’s body in the narrow pit and covered him with rich, crumbly soil. The puppy had saved Caleb’s life, buffering his fall against a caved-in foundation of deadly stones. I thought my family had no more tears to cry, but I was wrong. Joining hands, we formed a circle of broken hearts around the two graves.

“Show us your mercy, Lord. We’re broken and afraid. We can’t bear this sorrow alone,” Papa whispered. “Spare Caleb. Heal him, Father. And please, Lord … hold our beloved Micah in your arms … until we can all be together again.”

“Oh, Roan … I want my baby … I just want to hold my baby again,” Mama wailed, her despair collapsing her to a near faint.

Papa lifted Mama off her feet, sheltering her in his able arms. He carried her down the rolling hill that cradled Micah within its folds, his flock following his lead like dull-witted sheep. Our descent to the valley floor was as silent as a deerstalker, words meaningless in sight of our loss.

Fourteen

“She’s wasting away before our eyes, Doctor … grieving herself to death, and we can’t do a thing to stop it.”

Mama’s weepiness plucked a mournful chord in my heart, joining the dirge that had echoed across my days and nights for most of a month. I shifted my stance in the hall, leaning against the wall as tears plopped from my chin to my nightgown. A fitting baptism, it seemed, for my new life of constant sorrow.

“I want her well, Doc! She’s been on this downhill slide too long … you hear me?” Papa’s words sounded fierce, demanding. I welcomed them as though they were the bells of Christmas morn. I, too, wanted healing, though I merited nothing of the sort.

I sneaked a peek into the kitchen from my vantage point in the hallway. Mama and Papa sat across the table from Doctor Landers, who drank from a mug as though in a weary daze. Elbows resting on the table, his haggard appearance suggested he wasn’t immune to the high toll imposed upon our family. A satchel rested on the floor by his feet, old leather collapsing into the cavity like a canister vacuumed of air. A man of middle years, Doc Landers looked as crumpled and worn out as his ancient medical bag.

I had halted my steps to the bathroom minutes ago when I heard Mama’s voice. Wary of being detected, I listened now with ears that had been useless of late, except for eavesdropping.

“Depression is sometimes difficult to diagnose, Mr. Falin. But not in Emma Grace’s case. Based on studies I’ve read, she exhibits all the classic symptoms: pervasive sadness, lethargy, excessive sleep, loss of appetite, and the inability to function in normal circumstances.” As Doctor Landers cleared his throat, I detected the soft sound of his mug settling onto the table. “I believe she’s sleeping through her pain instead of facing it … instead of accepting it. Guilt just adds another dimension to depression. I’m afraid it’s not going to go away overnight. It could last for months—even years. But that’s rare in one so young.”

“It could last for years?” Mama parroted the doctor’s words, her voice raised in a raspy squawk.

“There’s got to be a way to reach her, Doc. We can’t lose another child. This blackness is
not
going to take our Emma Grace!” I jumped when Papa’s fist pounded the table, rattling Mama’s teacup in its saucer.

Papa understood! My pain
was
blackness, darker than the blackness of midnight. The somber gluttony had feasted on my heart for weeks now, sparing little, save a few hollow crumbs.

“I have a suggestion that wouldn’t require hospitalization,” Doctor Landers said. “If you were to move her elsewhere, it might speed up the healing process.”

“I’m moving the family back to the farm this week. My work’s done here.” Papa’s words were hushed, almost imperceptible. I leaned forward to hear them better. “I never should have taken this job in the first place.”

Please, Papa … don’t …

“Oh, Roan—don’t you go blaming yourself for what happened.”

Most likely, Mama clasped Papa’s hand as she spoke, trying to stroke the hurt away.

It wasn’t your fault, Papa … it was mine … mine …

“Do you think she’ll get better when we move back to the farm?” Mama asked, notching her voice to a hopeful pitch.

“I doubt that will help, Mrs. Falin. No, I had something else in mind. A location far enough away so that people and places don’t serve as constant reminders of her loss.”

Mama’s keen vision spied me as I stumbled down the hallway. She called for me to join them in the kitchen, but I plowed on, locking myself behind the bathroom door. Visions of my family packing me off to some faraway hospital or home for wayward girls clamored my head. I gathered tissue, wiping perspiration from my brow and upper lip, then opened the faucet full force, drowning out the pitiful whimpers that shinnied up my throat.

I blew my nose, wiped my eyes, and lifted my gaze to the medicine cabinet mirror. A stranger peered back at me. The girl’s brown hair bounded far beyond the allowed limits of Mama’s scissors. Could she be me? Her windblown effect looked similar to the one that perpetually marked my appearance, yet her face looked unfamiliar. She had overlarge eyes, a tight face, and prominent cheekbones that cast shadows onto her sunken cheeks. There was a look about her: a look of hopelessness.

I sank to the rim of the tub, sitting on the edge while my knees thwacked each other beneath my gown. As I agonized over what Mama and Papa’s decision would be, I pined for the earth to split in two and swallow me whole. I knew I would obey their wishes, no matter what.

Suddenly, a chunk of awareness smacked me with the truth. I had no choice but to leave. How could Mama’s heart mend if the blackness and I hung around, waving our red flags before her eyes? She had worried herself to reed-thinness, her mother-hands tending Caleb’s every need, even as she grieved for the son buried on the hilltop. A heart could endure only so much pain. Mama didn’t need me under thumb, adding more misery to her life.

But—could I survive separation from my family? A more dangerous prospect I couldn’t imagine, being that they stood in the gap for me. They were my safety net when blackness hurled me into the distant night, snatching away my every resolve to get well. Even Elo’s churlish put-downs held restorative power.

As Mama banged on the bathroom door, a high wailing skirl buzzed my head. Had a banshee piped out the garish squall, or had it risen from within me? The door splintered from its hinges, Papa rushing through to halt my slow sinkage to the floor. Before my eyelids closed, a thought passed through my consciousness:
Any sacrifice I make will blanch pale when laid beside the tombstone of little Micah.