Erika Swyler - The Book of Speculation

In the night the Stavish farm livestock perished. The cows and pigs had crowded into the corner of the barn, trying to escape. Under the press of water and the weight of so many bodies, the structure gave way and crushed the animals. Those that survived made for a curious sight as heifers paddled down Sugar Creek, necks straining to keep above the tide.

In the creek, along with the cattle, floated the body of Eustace Wilder, a drunkard who had the day prior touched bloated lips to Evangeline’s hand. He had stepped from his porch to shout at the storm, only to fall. The bald back of his head shone in the moonlight as the river coursed over it like a stone. The Presbyterian Church crashed down and pews piled against the courthouse walls like matchsticks. The streets of Charlotte were running over with scriptures.

On the second day of labor Evangeline took no food or drink. Melina was sent upstairs with bread but was turned away. The kitchen maid, fearing running through the dry flour, began to ration biscuits. The troupe became confined to tabletops. Peabody spread himself out over a stretch of the bar.

Amos dealt cards on the bed around Evangeline. What he read brought no peace, but he could not fight the slick rightness of a properly set card. He began to pick the trumps he desired, their words — happiness set beside her ear, home by her feet. He surrounded her with hope, each card a wish. He thought of life before her, the years in the wood and the running.

With night, the storm passed and the Catawba receded with the same swiftness as it had risen, pulling the creeks back with it. A last lightning crack signaled the birth of a girl, small, blinking, and silent. The father looked at the infant, red-faced and wrinkled with a dusting of hair as black as her mother’s. Her wide animal eyes met his. Amos felt his heart begin to slow and still, finding the weight of the air, and the rhythm of his daughter’s heart. On the crown of her head a circle of skin pulsed, shouting wonderful life, and terrifying him with her fragility. Had Evangeline been awake she might have seen Amos fade into the fabric of the room, vanishing into the gaze of their unnamed child. It was the first time he had ever vanished in joy.

The parlor of Cook’s Tavern woke. Chairs that had rolled with the water came to rest once more. Benno climbed from a perch near the rafters. Peabody set booted foot to sodden board. With Meixel’s help Mrs. Tyghe moved the rags, sandbags, and tables that had held back the water.

Into this slow-waking movement Evangeline descended, careful not to stir the child in the bend of her arm. Amos followed. One by one heads turned. Amos took the infant from Evangeline and handed her to Peabody. The girl yawned at the touch of Peabody’s delicate hands. A smile crept from under the curled ends of his moustache. He’d not held a baby since his son.

“Dear little signet,” he cooed. “Perfection, darling children. You have wrought perfection.” He looked to Amos. “Shall we, my lad?”

Amos nodded and Peabody held the child aloft. All eyes fixed on the squirming baby. He began.

“Friends, children, grandest fellows. We are touched by the ethereal. From such loss as we have of late suffered, the gods have blessed us with a child of our children, a daughter of the menagerie as there has never been. Most precious friends, ’tis our solemn duty to grant this child a name.”

Amos looked at his daughter and thought of the night he’d stood on a tree stump, when Ryzhkova had told him who he would be. His heart was tired.

“Ruth.” Meixel began the calling of the names. Faces crowded around the wriggling child.

“Dorcas.” This from Susanna, it being the name of a favorite aunt.

“Veronique.”

From Nat, “Mariah.”

“Danielle.”

“Lucinda.”

Names passed to and fro until Mrs. Tyghe emerged from the kitchen. “Bess,” she said. The baby shrieked out a piercing wail. “My mother’s name was Bess.”

“It seems the whelp has chosen,” Peabody said, returning the child to her mother with a soft pat on the back. “Bess she shall be. Quite well, for we must thank the goodly woman who has been kind in allowing our imposition.” He flashed a smile to Mrs. Tyghe.

The warmth of beginning unfurled. With tenuous hope they set forth to greet the day, and Mrs. Tyghe went about the business of running the tavern. Stark, cold light filled the entry as they opened the door on the world left by the flood. A small wave rolled in over the threshold.

Charlotte had been stripped away.

“God in Heaven,” Peabody whispered.

Gone were the tailors and the smiths. The grain mill lay in waste, destroyed. The courthouse had fallen to its brick-pillar knees. Trees lay like drunken men against hills and embankments. Bricks made pockmarks in shallow pools; there, the sign from Mason’s; there a child’s wooden horse half-hidden below the dark slurry. All that remained was encased in thick red silt. Mixed among the detritus were the same odd creatures that had been at the river. Dead, spidery legs in the air, their pointed tails stuck up from the mud like spikes. Though it lay far to the east, the air smelled of ocean salt.

Charlotte was no more. Cook’s stood, the lone building that remained unharmed.

Mrs. Tyghe clenched her apron in her fists. “Should my son be—”

The kitchen maid took her by the shoulders and patted her gently. “Hush, Louisa. He may yet return.”

Mrs. Tyghe lifted her head to survey the wreckage once more, and to search for her son. It was then that she spied, resting against the remains of a mounting block, the twisted filigree of the weather vane that had once sat proudly on the roof of the doctor’s home. Any small hope she had was consumed by fury.

“You’ve killed him,” she said. “You killed him sure as you stand here. Never have I met such cursed people. You brought this.” She nodded at Evangeline. “You come here, saying you tell the future, things only the Lord would know, then lie up in my bed and bring the flood. You took my son, ” she shouted and turned to Amos. “You Devil, take you and your child. Leave here or I’ll find who still lives and let them set their guns on you. Get.”

Evangeline clutched Bess.

On the outskirts of what had been Charlotte, the menagerie’s wagons were waterlogged yet functional, the llama and pig had been lost, but the horses remained dry, safe atop the hill past Sugar Creek. They packed in haste. Peabody insisted that distance and time would remedy their misfortunes, though he found the words difficult to believe. Before the sun hit its peak they rolled onward.

“North,” Peabody told them. “I find I am done with the South. Philadelphia,” he said. “Philadelphia will welcome us.”

Evangeline knew his words were empty. Looking over the destruction and at the strange peacefulness of her child’s quiet face, she agreed with Mrs. Tyghe. Never had there been two such cursed beings.

We flee the rain, clinging to the library’s walls. Blue security lights fix us flat like a photograph, burning everything away: Doyle, ink and skin; Enola, bones and a ravenous stare. She hasn’t spoken to him since the car. Alice’s key trips into the lock and turns with a satisfying crunch. The alarm squeals the moment the door opens. I find the keypad, punching in the numbers my hand has memorized the same way it knows to hold a pen or turn a page. The air is musky with paper, dust, and Grainger’s unique redolence of disrepair. I move for the lights.

“No worries, man. I got it,” says Doyle. He trots over to circulation and puts his hand to a desk lamp. One at a time, the fluorescents stutter on with percussive hisses, bathing books in cold green light. It’s an uncanny thing to watch, but Doyle merely shakes out his hands when he’s finished, as though this is as mundane as tying his shoes. Enola walks ahead, a visible shiver working its way up her spine.