Kristopher Reisz - The Drowned Forest

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!