Kristopher Reisz - The Drowned Forest

Mom let me wear my new ladybug dress; I was so excited about that. She waited until we were in the car before telling me your parents had passed away. You lived with your grandparents now, Mr. and Mrs. Alton from church.

“How’d they die?”

Mom shook her head. “It’s not important. Listen. She might be sad and not feel like playing. She might even start crying. But you have to be nice no matter what. Can you do that? You need to be like the Good Samaritan.”

“But were they sick?”

“I told you it doesn’t matter. Don’t ask. Don’t even mention it to her.”

So I didn’t know about the car wreck yet, the shriek of metal and glass that killed two grown-ups and left a seven-year-old without a scratch. I didn’t know you were a miracle in the flesh. All I knew was my stomach suddenly hurt and I wanted to go home.

We pulled up to that prim brick house skirted with impatiens. Your me-maw came out to the porch as we walked up. “Oh, look at all the ladybugs! So summery!”

I tried to stick close to Mom, but she nudged me out into the backyard. And there you were—crouching under the hydrangeas, mostly knees and elbows and bits of leaf stuck in your hair.

You would always be mostly knees and elbows, Holly.

When I walked over, you turned away. Picking cream-colored blossoms off the bushes, you pretended not to notice me. “Hi. I’m Jane.” I held my scrubbed pink hand out for your grubby one. You wouldn’t look up.

“Want to have a wedding? You can be the bride if you want.”

You shook your head. Busy, busy, busy, sorting the flower petals into piles.

I walked back to the sliding glass door. Mom and your me-maw chatted in the kitchen. Looking over your me-maw’s shoulder, Mom hit me with a hard glare. I knew better than to try going back inside.

Instead, I sat on the concrete steps, tearing blades of grass to bits. I kept having to move away from the bees murmuring through the clover. I was getting hot and mad, and this place was boring, and I couldn’t be like the Good Samaritan because you wouldn’t even talk to me.

You pulled off one of the hydrangea’s powder-puff flower clusters, studying it carefully. Squinting against the sun, you studied me. Finally you walked over, holding the cluster in your hand. You spoke in a hoarse whisper. “This can be my bouquet.”

“Okay. But you have to throw it and let me catch it.”

“Okay. Then you can get married.”

We played wedding all morning. I didn’t ask about your parents, and you didn’t mention them. I wasn’t afraid anymore, though.

Days, months, and years flow together after that. Growing up, we lived like swallows of the air who neither sow nor reap. We roamed a backyard full of castles and zoos, then helped your pa-paw dig up the hydrangeas to make space for the sunporch. That old dry-erase board became our classroom, and you always got to be the teacher because you went to real school. No matter how much it pleased God to see me home-schooled, I wanted to eat in a cafeteria so bad.

And have a food fight. Just one good food fight, and my life would be complete.

Dad took us out in the boat and taught us to water-ski on Wilson Lake. We caught fish and cleaned them ourselves. Sometimes summer storms caught us out on the water. Saw-toothed waves the color of iron gnashed at the boat. The wind howled. But we tipped our faces to the stinging rain and howled right back, thrilled by all of lashing creation.

We heard stories about the giant catfish living in the deep black water at the lake bottom, squeezed down between the roots of submerged trees and under the foundations of flooded sharecropper cabins. Ancient scavenger-demons full of bile and spines, they were half-mythical beasts. But every once in a while, a fisherman wrestled one of the massive channel cats up into the sunlight. It would get in the newspaper then, with photos for everybody to gape at.

We dove off Swallow’s Nest Bluff a thousand times.

The bluff is one of those secret children’s places. Grown-ups can’t find it. The first time anyone goes, they need a cousin or older neighborhood kid to lead them past the No Trespassing signs and down into the wild land the city owns but has forgotten about. The path is just a line of dirt stomped out between blackberry bushes. Near the bluff, the thorny vines curl into circles and weave themselves together to mimic Jesus’s crown. Berries dangle from the crowns, as dark and glossy as blood drops. They’re the most delicious fruit I’ve ever tasted. I’ve eaten them until juice stained my chin and ran down my arms, and I still wanted more.

Push past the bushes, and there’s Swallow’s Nest Bluff, a wedge of red limestone shoving out into Wilson Lake like the prow of a ship. And there’s the squat pine tree sending wrist-thick roots over the edge of the bluff. And there’s the tire swing, its rubber cracked from the sun.

When we were little, it took all our courage just to swing out over the lake, watching the land drop away, watching the swallows that built their nests on the bluff’s tilting face dart and wheel below us. But soon enough, we trusted ourselves enough to jump. We waited until the tire reached the vertex of its arc over the water, then kicked away, tumbling, flipping, jackknifing, cannonballing, and swan-diving into the water again and again.

When I told my cousin I’d finally jumped off Swallow’s Nest Bluff, I was swelling with pride. But she didn’t know what I was talking about. She’d already grown up too much and couldn’t remember the bluff. It became our place then, Holly. It became our wilderness to scurry through—to test ourselves against—dirty, wet, and laughing our heads off. I remember the sunlight filtering through the pines, touching the fine hair on your arms, legs, and the back of your neck. The light made them burn like filaments.

We had bad times. We had arguments and weeks when we were too busy for each other. And your raw-nerve days, scratching lyrics into the dry skin of your arm with a pen cap or whatever. But when I try to think about them, all I can remember is you doing a hair-whipping backflip into the water, a miracle in the flesh.

We dove off the bluff a thousand times and never got hurt. Nobody dies the thousand-and-first time they do something. It’s stupid, Holly. It’s not fair.

It’s just not fair.

Dad drives through downtown and swings into the church parking lot, jostling me out of happier days and back into this one. There’s a mountain of stuff to unload. A steady trickle of people carry coolers, steam trays, buckets, and bins back to the cinder-block storage shed. Everything is stenciled with Magnolia Street Baptist Church—Florence, Alabama .

Tyler’s truck, dusty and rumbling, swings into the space beside me. Stepping out, he whispers, “So what now?”

“Just help unload everything, then we can find Pastor Wesley.”

We tried getting Pastor Wesley alone at the park, but couldn’t. And I’m sorry, Holly, but I can’t start talking about fish delivering rings and messages from the dead in the middle of Rivercall. Most people would think I’m crazy. The ones who believe me would freak out. Heck, it’s freaking me out.

But Pastor Wesley is a man of God. He’s smart, calm, and he knows how to read the signs and exhortations of the Lord. He’ll know what’s happening.

Dad calls out, “Come on, guys. Let’s get this done. Tyler, help us old men out.” Dad has two stainless steel urns in the back of the van. He tips one out, and Tyler hurries to catch it. Mr. Olsen grabs the other one. I take the Rubbermaid bin full of tablecloths. Dad tries to give Yuri the few that fell out, but Yuri won’t take them.

“That’s okay, pal. Go with Jane.”