The Drowned Forest (3 page)

Tyler nods and drums his palms against the steering wheel, thinking. The tune he was playing at Rivercall while we sat together is stuck in my head, its sad little melody running over and over.

“Mr. Alton!” Tyler says. “We’ll go talk to Holly’s pa-paw. If she’s trying to talk to us, maybe she’s tried talking to him already.”

“That’s actually a good idea.”

“‘Actually’?”

“You can turn around in this gas station. Come on.”

Tyler steers into a gas station and turns around. We fall into stiff silence again, nothing but wheels on the road and the shimmering heat above the highway as it rolls out of town.

Then Tyler says, “Hey. Sorry you’re having such a rough time.”

“Thanks.”

“If you ever want to talk to somebody about it … you know, like … ”

“I know. Thanks.” If I need to talk to somebody, I can
talk to Tyler. He’ll be awkward and embarrassed and useless, but he’ll still listen. That’s something. Actually, it’s a lot.

Foster Mill Road curls away from downtown like a morning glory tendril. We drive into the hot hungry green, kudzu swallowing fences and cloaking the trees. When your house swings into view, I remember playing in the backyard. And watching
Grease
every sleepover. Then in the morning, we’d cook waffles and watch it again, or maybe
Les Miz
.

Tyler groans. “Nobody home.”

I look at him, then back at the house. Your pa-paw’s truck is gone. A pile of newspapers in blue plastic bags lies at the head of the driveway, and the hungry green has spread here too, with ragged grass growing to the second porch step.

“What happened? Where is he?”

Tyler shakes his head. We climb out and walk up to the porch. While Tyler knocks on the door, I walk around peeking through windows. Nothing moves inside. Your bedroom looks just the way it did the day you died, Holly. The bed sheets are rumpled, and that heart collage you made in art class hangs on the closet door. A cardinal feather marks your place in the book you were reading so you could get back to it later.

Peeking into your room hurts, Holly. I want to go home. I want to hide under my covers and sleep. But we’ve got to find your pa-paw first. Walking back around to the porch, I flutter the neck of my dress to let some cool air in. This heat is like being wrapped in damp gauze.

Tyler sits on the glider, pushing with the toe of his loafer. Back, forth, back, forth.

“He talked to you at Rivercall. Did he mention … ?”

Tyler shakes his head.

“Well, think for a second!”

“Jane, he didn’t say anything.”

Turning with a huff, I walk to the end of the driveway and count the newspapers. There’s four of them, dew-
wrinkled in their plastic bags. I walk over to the neighbors, but they aren’t any help. Mrs. Lewis says he comes back every few days but never stays the night. The Devines across the street didn’t even notice he was gone, just that the grass was getting awfully tall.

I walk back. Still sitting in the glider, Tyler asks, “Well?”

I shake my head.

“He was at Rivercall, so we know he didn’t move to Alaska at least,” Tyler says. “I guess we’ll have to wait until next Sunday. Talk to him at church.”

“What if Holly can’t wait a week?”

“Then tell me what to do.”

I drop my head in my hands. “I kept meaning to visit him. If I’d gone once, we might know where he is. I kept saying I would and saying I would, but … ”

“Yeah, me too,” Tyler says.

“It’s just hard. Coming here and knowing she’s not here anymore.” I take your ring out and play with it, rolling it between my fingers.

“I know, I know.”

“So what are we going to do?”

Tyler shrugs and stares into the weeds swallowing the flower beds.

On the road again, we drive back past Veterans Park. I stare out at the swelling belly of land and the red-shimmering river beyond it.

“Think Pastor Wesley’ll call our parents?” I ask. “Tell them all the stuff we told him?”

“I don’t know. Probably.”

“They’re going to freak out.”

“So? Let them.”

“Tyler, they already think I’m losing it.”

“But you’re not.” Tyler takes the tarnished ring from me, holds it between two thick fingertips. “I saw a catfish drop this ring. Is that what you saw?”

I nod. “But—”

“I can see it has
HELP
written on it. Is that what you see?”

I nod, stuffing my trembling hands under my thighs.

“You sure? You sure it’s not magical thinking?”

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

“Then it doesn’t matter what Pastor Wesley thinks, right? It doesn’t matter what your parents or anybody thinks. We saw what we saw. We’re not losing it. Holly’s soul is trapped in the river somehow. And she needs us, and we can’t worry about what anybody else thinks, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“For Holly.”

“For Holly, yeah.”

He tucks the ring into his pocket again, then gives me a bolstering punch in the arm. We turn onto the road that crosses the top of Wilson Dam, heading toward the southern shore of the lake and my house. The water has turned molten in the sunlight. Staring down at it, I hear Tyler’s melody in my head again, an ugly earworm burrowing into my brain. “That tune you played? It’s been stuck in my head all day.”

“Oh, ‘The Drowned Forest’?” Tyler laughs. “Sorry.”

“Just fits with how today’s gone, I guess.”

“I’ve been working on it with Ultimate Steve. He’s got this great drum break, this sorta
dum dum da-da-dum
thing for it.”

When did Tyler start hanging out with Steve the Nine-Digit Idiot again? I bite my tongue. “So why is it called ‘The Drowned Forest’?”

“Well, it’s named for, y’know, the lake.”

“Oh.”

“It’s kind of sick, I know.”

“Yeah, a little.”

When the government dammed up the river many de-cades ago, all that backed-up water needed somewhere to go. It flooded acres of pine forest, farms, churches, graveyards, whole communities, creating Wilson Lake. The lake is a great place to fish and ski and swim. But if you swim down and down, past where the water turns suddenly cold, down and down into the slow, strange heartbeat of the river, you find yourself in the pines—dead trees preserved by the cold and dark. Black branches bloom algae and colonies of mussels. The forest has become the dominion of monster catfish and all the slithering things swarming without number.

The trees make it impossible to dredge the lake. When you drowned, they didn’t even try to bring up your body. It makes me sick to my stomach thinking about you down there all alone, Holly. Lost in the drowned forest.

Four

Go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee.

“Jane! Come slice these tomatoes for me.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The only footnote says that the “piece of money” would have been a silver shekel, worth four drachmas. How the heck does that help us?

“Jane, I need help here,” Mom calls again.

“Okay. Give me one second.” My finger moves back up to the beginning of the verse.

“Jane, your mom asked you to do something.” Dad sits on the floor, trying to keep Yuri interested in their word games. “Your studying can wait.”

The Bible drops to the coffee table. I stalk into the kitchen without looking at him.

Spaghetti bubbles on the stove. Steam swirls below the oven hood. The tomatoes are from Dad’s garden, and pieces of fuzzy green stem still poke up from their navels. When Jesus and Peter needed to pay their temple tax, Peter caught a fish with money in its mouth. Is that some clue to what’s happening now? I cut the tomatoes into wedges, pulp oozing between my fingers.

“When you’re done, Tim needs you to look over his math work.”

I groan. “I’m kind of doing something right now.”

“
What, Jane? What’s more important than helping your brother?”

“It’s … just … nothing.” I glance over at Tim doing his worksheet at the kitchen table. “I’ll help you in a sec, okay, buddy?”

Tim gives me two thumbs-up. Mom says, “And slow down, honey. You’ll cut yourself.”

“I know what I’m doing.” I pare a bruise out of the tomato’s drum-tight flesh.

At least Pastor Wesley didn’t call my parents. But still, he should be guiding us through this. It’s on him that he couldn’t hear the truth.

“Jane, give me the knife if you’re not going to be careful.”

“I’m being careful! You yell at me to come do this, then you hover over me like I’m six. Let me do it.”

Mom reaches for the knife. “Jane, give me—”

I jerk back. The blade skates across the edge of her palm, and Mom’s yelp silences the chatter in my head. Clutching her hand—blood runs and smears—Mom glares at me like she hates me. Everybody rushes up, talking at once.

“What happened?” Tim asks.

“Mom? What happened?”

“Nothing. Just an accident.”

“Let me see. What happened?” Dad tries to take charge.

“I’m fine. Take the sauce off the stove, or it’ll burn.”

“Mom.” I speak above the rest. “Mom, I’m sorry.”

Her lips press together until they’re white. “If you weren’t acting like a brat, it wouldn’t have happened.”

Mom? Something happened at Rivercall.

“Not one of the good towels.”

Dad shakes his head. “I don’t care about towels.”

“I do. Get one of the old ones from the linen closet.”

Something happened, Dad. I need help.
The words bunch in my throat, aching to be said. But I can’t say them. Mom and Dad will think I’m insane.

“There’s antibiotic ointment in the cabinet,” Mom tells Tim. “And the big bandages. No, behind there.”

I walk away. Nobody notices except Yuri, but he doesn’t say anything. Grabbing my Bible, I go upstairs.

The moment I’m in my bedroom and it’s finally quiet, I remember the mission trip email.

Dang it, who cares about the stupid email right now?

But if I don’t take care of it, nobody else will. I’ve spent my whole life helping to take care of my brothers and sister, and it’s given me a deep love of order, lists, and Post-its. So I’m the youth group leader. I’m in charge of the winter mission trip and collecting items for the women’s shelter. I’m the responsible one, the one who sweats the small stuff. I’m the Type A personality everybody avoids until they need me.

Sitting down, I tap it out quick: dates, location, goals, driving times, more information at the next youth group meeting. I add a reminder that everything for the women’s shelter has to be collected by the first of next month. Sending it out, I go back to chapter seventeen of Matthew. Before they find the piece of money in the fish’s mouth, Jesus casts a devil out of an insane boy, then scolds His disciples for not having the faith to save the boy themselves.

If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.
Holly, is that why you used a fish to deliver your message? To lead me to this passage and warn me that I’ve lost the faith to save anybody?

Or maybe I really am going crazy, and this is … no, no! The catfish was real; Tyler saw it too. The ring is real. All of this is happening.

I kneel down, resting my elbows on the seat of my desk chair.
Holy God, in Jesus’s name, I pray. Help us. Give me some sign. I don’t know how or why any of this is happening, but I know that You are good and infinitely merciful. I know that You will never abandon us …

No. I don’t know any of that anymore.

Want to hear something I never told you, Holly?

It was after your me-maw got really sick, when we were waiting at the hospital. Remember the too-bright halls always bustling, even late at night? Sometimes it was actually fun—exploring everywhere and playing tag up and down and across the elevator bank. Remember the corner of the lobby we’d staked out, watching people and talking and laughing until our faces hurt?

But that whole time, I felt like there was something I needed to do. Something I’d forgotten kept wiggling at the base of my brain. I thought and thought, but I couldn’t figure out what. So I followed you around like a puppy. Whenever any little chore came up—running to the Chevron for snacks and toothbrushes, going to find the nurse—I jumped to it. But no matter what, God kept prodding me, prodding me. There was something else He expected me to do.

I remember you were braiding my hair when your pa-paw found us in the lobby. He hadn’t left her room for three days, and when we saw him, we knew. Knowing couldn’t cushion the blow. All our waiting couldn’t make us ready.

Your pa-paw held you while you both cried, and I sat watching, one sneaker pressing down on the other. I prayed for God to tell me what to do. Fingers digging into the chair’s slick vinyl, I prayed to take some of your pain on my shoulders, one pebble from the heap. I was furious because God refused.

I didn’t know what I was asking, Holly. Now you’re gone, gone, gone, and I know the Lord refused my prayer because I couldn’t have handled it. One pebble would have crushed me.

While your pa-paw talked to the funeral home, you squeezed my hand—I can still almost feel your fingers in mine—and asked me to spend the night with you. Of course I said yes to camping out on your floor in clothes I’d worn for two days.

The next morning, your pa-paw fixed sausage and eggs and said we were going to Robbins’ Music.

Your mouth was full of biscuit when you asked, “You’re getting a new guitar?”

He shook his head. “It’s for you, Little Bit. If you’ll play it at your me-maw’s service.”

“What song?”

“Don’t think she’ll care.”

The guitar you picked was cream and chrome, so pretty I hated to touch it and get fingerprints on it. You decided to play “I Know Who Holds Tomorrow,” digging the song out of the big suitcase where your pa-paw kept his sheet music. It was a good choice, Holly, but remember trying to learn it? You’d been playing your pa-paw’s guitars for years by then. Picking up songs was as easy for you as picking wildflowers; I’d seen you work out a song after three or four listens. But that day, for whatever reason, you wrestled with it. You had to rip the tune out of the strings. The new electric guitar wouldn’t play right. It didn’t feel like your pa-paw’s black thumping acoustic. You fiddled with the knobs and chords, but nothing helped.

I sat cross-legged on your bed while the night drew down. God pushing me to do something. He needed me to
tell
you something, but I didn’t know what.

Then the melody tore in your hands again. You grabbed the guitar’s neck like you wanted to strangle it.

“Come on, Holly. You can do this.” Hollow words clanged like empty gas cans.

“No, I can’t.”

“Just relax, stop getting upset, and—”

“Jane, shut up, okay? This guitar’s messed up. The pick-ups aren’t right or something.”

“I don’t think it’s messed up. Let’s just take a break—”

“It’s messed up, okay? I can’t do this! I can’t!” You swung the guitar up, ready to smash it. I caught your wrists before I even realized I’d jumped off the bed.

“Stop! It’s not messed up. It’s new. It’s new, and … and you’re scared. You’re just scared of it.” It sounded like gibberish, even to me, but somehow I knew it was what I needed to say. “How are you going to stop being scared of it?”

“Jane—”

“How are you going to be fearless, Holly? Because you have to. You have to be.” God held both of us, Holly. I felt Him. The days of waiting, of standing by being useless, it was so I could be with you right then, telling you to be fearless.

We walked out to the garage in that cool red hour before nightfall, when fireflies flash and every tree, bird, and blade of grass seems enchanted, when you can’t help but see it all, really
see
it. Scrounging through the tools and boxes of scrap wood, we found stencils and spray paint. You glorified the guitar’s white base in sunrise crimson:
FEAR NOT
.

At the funeral, your lonely guitar sounded thin under the steepled roof, but the song never broke or stumbled. You were fearless, beautiful and fearless.

Then what? A week later? Gail Bailey invited you to join the praise band. Eleven with chewed fingernails, or fifteen and gorgeous, I watched you yank grown men to their feet with your music. You could make them sing and dance and cry.

God’s love used to surround us, Holly. When I prayed, I felt it fill my chest, swelling until it burst up in tea kettle shouts. And the more I shouted the more it swelled inside me. Holly, it was nearly too much to handle sometimes.

But then you died, and God ran away. He’s gone, and I don’t know why. I kneel and bow my head and say the words, but they can’t open my heart anymore. My heart is broken and useless like an old watch. It’s a lump of rusted-up metal in my chest. All I do is kneel here and talk to you.

You remember those evenings when we had the run of downtown, Holly? After youth group, walking over to Court Street to get coffee or whatever, but mostly just burning to rush around and be loud and be alive? Sometimes I’d glance up past the lampposts, and there was no sky. The moon was dark. City lights blotted out the stars. I’d look up into dead black forever.

That’s what it feels like since you disappeared. I shut my eyes and whisper praise. I grovel, I threaten, but none of it matters. God stole my best friend, then left me in the darkness. That’s what it feels like deep down in my belly. Deep, deep down where I’m afraid to look.
O Lord, how long shall I cry, and thou will not hear? Even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save!

But five barn swallows are sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten by God. How could I spend hours praying and not sense one glimmer of Him?

Last Tuesday, I decided it must be a test. God couldn’t really leave me; it was a test of faith. I knelt here for hours, Holly, not getting up for a sip of water, praying until my tongue got gummy and stuck to my teeth. Praying while the carpet chewed my knees raw, then offering the pain up as a sign of devotion. Tim was just worried about me, but when he wouldn’t leave me alone, I threatened to throw him down the stairs.

That’s when Dad called Dr. Haq, the psychiatrist. I told him I hadn’t been sleeping. I promised him and my parents I’d keep it together. But I couldn’t tell them I don’t feel God anymore, that whenever I close my eyes, it feels like I’m alone in ten billion miles of darkness. They would assure me that God will never give me more than I can handle. They’d make it seem like I’d given up on Him, not the other way around.

A knock on the door makes me jump. “Jane! Dinner.”

“I’m asleep. Go away.”

Tim leaves without another word. After a while, I hear Faye’s birdsong laugh from the kitchen. I’ve worn their patience down to a sullen nub. They cried at your funeral, and they were there for me afterward, but they’re exhausted now. They want everything to go back to normal. They want me to get back to normal and stop scaring them.

I try my best, Holly. Dr. Haq gave me a prescription for Tenex to help me sleep. I take my pill every night and show everybody a smiling face, just some days are harder than others. I miss you. Without you, I don’t have anybody to talk to about this stuff anymore.

Fear not, fear not, fear not. God commands His followers to “fear not” 365 times throughout the Old and New Testaments, once for every day of the year. Sitting cross-legged on the carpet, I flip through my Bible. My fingers find those words, your creed, again and again.

Fear not, for I am with thee …

Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not …

I whisper the verses, tasting the dry papery words on my tongue and lips. Please, let them change me, make me as faithful as you were. But they’re just words; they aren’t real anymore.

Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, He it is that doth go with thee; He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.

I throw the Bible. It hits the wall, falling splayed like a dead swallow. The violence feels good.

Then I feel guilty, then ashamed, then scared. I grab the Bible again, smoothing out the bent pages. Setting it on the bed, I fold to the floor, hiding my face in my hands. I want to cry, but I can’t anymore. I cried and cried for weeks, then my tears just ran out. I’m nothing but stomach acid and too-tight skin anymore.