Echo Lake: A Novel (36 page)

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 head 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.