Southernmost Page 2

  Asher hollered his name, over and over.

  He couldn’t see much except the black silhouettes of the trees closest to him. Once Asher had found Justin and Roscoe in a grassy bald back in the woods, asleep. Roscoe’s head rested on Justin’s arm like a pillow, his wet black nose touching Justin’s neck.

  Asher had come to the boundary fence and he was sure Justin wouldn’t have gone past that, so he took off at a jog until he had come back out into the starlit yard behind their house.

  He looked under the porch, in the toolshed (where he grabbed a great hank of thick rope, just in case, wrapping it around his torso from shoulder to hip), even in the doghouse. He cupped his hands and hollered his son’s name but his voice was lost on the wall of noise. He ran back into the house and told Lydia and Zelda to come help him look.

  “Vanished?” Lydia said.

  He had seen the lightning earlier and knew that it was most likely raining again to the east. More water back there could drive this flood up in seconds. Or Justin could just stumble into the water trying to save Roscoe. He was out there and they had to find him immediately. “We’ve got to look.”

  All three of them roamed the yard, calling Justin’s name. Lydia prayed aloud that he would be found. Asher felt sick to his stomach; they had lost him. He was gone. Just like Roscoe.

  “I’m going down to the river,” Asher called.

  “Asher, wait!” Zelda hollered, one hand out in front of her as if she were about to catch a ball being thrown to her. But Asher did not wait and didn’t realize for a moment that Lydia was right at his heels even though it would have made more sense for them to look in different directions to cover more ground.

  They had no other choice but to go to the flood. Here the tree cover was not so thick; the starlight managed to shine through the willows. Asher could see the flood growing before his eyes as if a tidal wave was sweeping toward them. He could see only the very tops of the concrete railings of the bridge and even they were disappearing as the water heightened.

  Then: the great screeching grind of the house pirouetting as it was swept down the Cumberland toward them, the surge of water unfolding itself across the valley, the three figures hollering as they ran toward them, the screaming of a child.

  3

  Asher didn’t know the two men running with Justin down the water’s edge, yelling and pointing to the floating house as if Asher and Lydia hadn’t seen it, hadn’t heard the people screaming from inside it. Asher didn’t know how he had the foresight to run to the nearest willow that wasn’t already submerged and tie the rope there. The men with Justin were shouting to him but he could not hear over the groaning of the floodwaters. He could see that the house was going to slam into the bridge and when that happened, the people inside might be forced into the water. He could make out two: a man, he thought, holding a child in his arms as he thrust his body out of a window that was crowded with tree limbs. The man was screaming and the child was crying and both were little more than silhouettes about to die.

  The larger of the two men with Justin saw what Asher was doing and ran to him. Asher thrust the rope into the man’s hands and hoped he would be able to hold it taut. Already the man had looped and tied the rope around his waist.

  Asher watched as the man disappeared into the water.

  They could no longer see the concrete bridge but it was clear to them when the house crashed into it. The lumber splintered and cried out. Trees and a car and cow corpses had been bobbing behind the house in the surge and now they all plowed into the side of it, the nose of the car bursting through a wall. The man and child were still in the window, the man folded over the windowsill like a towel, the child still holding on to him, still crying out. Now Asher could see only glimpses of them behind the building debris, but they were there. He did not think to pray and later he would remember this with guilt.

  The roped man had disappeared. Then, there was a jolt on the rope, like a monstrous catfish at the end of a fishing line, and the man was crawling along the top of the overturned car, hurrying but also careful in where he stepped across the underbelly of the vehicle. The child was screaming more loudly now, then pounded on the man’s shoulder to rouse him.

  The rope was burning Asher’s hands, cutting into his fingers and across the meat of his palm.

  Then, even though Asher had not prayed (perhaps someone else had, perhaps all of them had except him), the house turned in one ninety-degree angle so that the people in the window neared the bank. The rescuer wrested them out of the house and then pulled them across a few feet of the frothing water.

  When the roped man handed off the little girl—Asher could see her now—over his shoulder, the father in the window instinctively reached out for her as if the flood was carrying her away. He leaned out so far that he nearly fell from his precarious perch in the window. The rescuer pushed through the water—going under once, the child along with him, causing all of them on the bank to cry out and step forward.

  The father pushed himself out of the window and was swallowed by the river.

  The girl lay on the ground near Asher’s feet, Lydia and Zelda descending upon her as she coughed up floodwater and clutched at her throat as if being strangled. Only then did Asher see that most of her clothes had been ripped off and he looked away because she was older than he had thought, a teenager. He pulled his soaked tee shirt over his head and handed it to Lydia so she could cover the girl’s small breasts. The man with the rope turned to go back but then he collapsed, spewing forth a green spray of the river that had gulped down his throat.

  Asher let go of the rope and ran to the edge of the thrashing water, where the father had made it to a shallow spot where he could lie with the top half of his body out of the flood. He wasn’t able to pull himself forward any farther but he reached for his child, his hands out to her even as he fought to find air instead of river in his lungs.

  Asher waded in, hooked his arms under the man’s armpits and pulled him out of the water. He stood over him, suddenly aware that he was out of breath himself. He bent, his hands on his knees as he tried to gather himself. When he turned his head he saw them. The other two men farther down the slope. The one with the rope cutting into his waist lay gasping for breath. The other squatted on the ground, leaning over him, and then kissed the rescuer’s face (forehead, under each eye, even on the mouth), begging him to be alright.

  4

  Of course they knew them once they were able to see their faces clearly: Caleb Carey, one of the deacons at Asher’s church, and his daughter, Rosalee, just five years older than Justin. Their house had been washed nearly two miles down the river. Asher and the stranger helped Caleb walk up the ridge to the house. The other man carried Rosalee in his arms. They had not gone far before Caleb vomited up floodwater. Only a trickle, but he heaved violently as if there was more that never came. He ate at great gulps of breath.

  “He’s having a panic attack,” Lydia said.

  “No, I think he’s in shock,” Asher said. He’d been a lifeguard at Montgomery Bell one summer and had not realized until now that he had retained some of his first-aid training. Caleb collapsed under their arms. They carried his deadweight up to the house and laid him down on the couch, stacking two pillows beneath his feet.

  Caleb’s skin was grayish, his eyes very narrow. “She’s drowned,” he mumbled. “She’s drowned, Asher.”

  “No, no, Rosalee is right here with us. She’s fine.”

  “No. She.” He couldn’t say more, but his eyes had become large, unfocused.

  Of course, Asher thought. Not Rosalee. Caleb’s wife. She was nowhere to be found.

  By candlelight the others put Rosalee in the guest bedroom where Zelda would tend to her.

  “Is he dead?” Justin asked, suddenly next to Asher.

  “No, he’s just exhausted, and in shock,” Asher said. “But he’ll be okay, buddy. There’s no getting him out to a hospital tonight.”

  “I thought I heard Roscoe,”
Justin said. “That’s why I ran off. I thought he was down there, barking.”

  “He ran right into me,” said the man, who had tied the rope about his waist, and when Asher got a good look at him he saw that he was the songwriter who lived down the road. He had that look of country music singers who never become stars nowadays, but always used to: square-jawed, handsome, but with too much worry on his face, too much living through the hard times. These days those men were the songwriters but not the singers.

  “Thank you for bringing him back,” Asher said.

  The other one laughed in a good-natured way. He was black-headed, black-eyed. “He brought us,” the dark one said.

  “I’m sure glad he did,” Asher said. “I could have never gotten them out by myself.”

  “I’m ashamed,” the smaller one said, “that I froze down there. I couldn’t make my legs move. I just couldn’t move.”

  No one said anything. It seemed that if they did his shame would bloom larger.

  For a brief time they watched Caleb breathe, gulping at air, then breathing so shallowly they could barely see his chest rising. Then the songwriter said his name was Jimmy and his partner was Stephen and they had only recently built the house down the road, the one Zelda and Asher had watched collapse earlier. Since Asher knew a songwriter owned the place, at first he thought Jimmy meant Stephen was his songwriting partner. But the way Jimmy said the word let Asher know he was searching for a reaction. Then he remembered Jimmy kissing Stephen down there by the water. He had not imagined it.

  Asher said “Oh,” nodded. He had never met a gay couple in his life—that he knew of, anyway. More than one of his congregants today had blamed this new flood on the Supreme Court’s ruling. No coincidence that the rain had started the same day as the marriages started happening over in Nashville, they said. Asher had said nothing because how could he argue with people who had just watched their lives carried away on the river?

  “We lost our house today,” Stephen said. “We’d been following the water’s edge for the last couple hours, and then this little feller showed up.”

  “I told them they could stay with us, Dad,” Justin said.

  “You’re that preacher, right?” Stephen said. There was some amount of suspicion in his voice.

  Asher told him he was and saw the men’s eyes meet.

  Justin’s head came to rest against Asher’s arm.

  “Poor little feller,” Jimmy said. “He’s a sight, now, ain’t he?”

  “He sure is,” Asher said, and situated Justin on the seat so that his neck wouldn’t be cricked.

  “We didn’t know what else to do,” Jimmy said, “but to keep walking until we found somewhere—”

  Then Asher realized how tired they must be, standing in that rain since early this morning, wading along the muddy edges of the water, saving Caleb and his daughter, clad in soaking wet jeans that must have been rubbing their skin raw. And then it dawned on Asher that he was sitting there in muddied clothes, too. And that the skin had peeled away from his hands in a half-inch stripe where the rope had burned through. They all needed food. They needed to rest.

  Asher took them into the house and then into his and Lydia’s bedroom and gave them pants and shirts, left them alone to change. Candlelight stuttered against the walls of Justin’s room as Asher passed and he could hear Zelda in there talking softly to Rosalee about her mother. Rosalee had seen her go under. “I had a hold of her hand,” Rosalee said, then could say no more. He eavesdropped long enough to hear that.

  The house seemed completely different with nothing more than candlelight. The ceilings higher, the rooms larger. All was shadows around Lydia as she stood in the middle of the living room.

  “Will he be alright?” she said, her eyes on Caleb, who was trembling in a kind of sleep.

  “I think so. His breathing is calmed down. I can’t find any wounds on him anywhere. He got bruised up a little, but that’s all.”

  “Did those men leave?”

  “No,” Asher said. “They’re putting on some dry clothes.”

  “We can’t have them in here, Asher,” she said quietly.

  “They don’t have anywhere else to go,” Asher whispered. “We’re the lucky ones.”

  “What would the congregation say? It’s not right—”

  “Not right to help people in trouble?”

  “I know who they are,” she said. “They’re—you know what they are, Asher. We can’t have them in here around Justin.”

  “So you wouldn’t want Justin around my own brother?”

  “That’s not the same.”

  “But you wouldn’t,” he said.

  She kept her eyes on his, unyielding.

  “They’ve lost everything they have,” Asher said.

  “I feel bad for them, but I don’t know what we’re supposed to do,” she said.

  “We give them a place to stay. That’s what. We be kind to them.”

  “Asher, you know as well as—”

  “Hebrews says to entertain strangers,” Asher said, thinking the Bible might have some sway on her.

  “Asher.” Lydia’s face was golden but hard-edged in the candlelight. “We can’t let them share a bed in this house.”

  Only then did Asher realize the men were standing in the hallway.

  “If you could direct us to the next closest place that didn’t flood, we’d appreciate it,” Jimmy said, his face lost to the shadows.

  “We’ve got plenty of room right here,” Asher said.

  Lydia started to speak, then put a hand to her mouth.

  “We won’t trouble you,” Jimmy said in his even way.

  “We don’t go where we’re not wanted,” Stephen added.

  They were all frozen there with silence between them: Jimmy’s hand on the doorknob, Stephen in the shadows, Lydia tucked behind Asher as if he were a shield, Asher in the middle of the room, feeling like a fool.

  “We appreciate the clothes,” Jimmy said.

  Stephen moved toward the door. “We’ll get them back to you.”

  Asher wanted to beg them to stay but he didn’t want to shame them any further.

  “At least let me get you something to eat,” Asher offered.

  “I can make you up a plate,” Lydia said, then, too late.

  They slipped out the door and Asher followed but they were down the steps and enveloped in darkness before he even got to the porch steps. He hollered and told them to follow the ridgeline north on up to their neighbor Kathi’s; she’d be good to them. He didn’t know then that the Cumberland had risen so high it had taken her home, too.

  “I’m sorry!” Asher called out above the roar of the flood.

  Asher looked up at all those stars again. It wasn’t right for such a sky to be shining above them when so many people had lost so much. But the sky doesn’t pay a bit of attention to the things that happen to us, the joys or sorrows either one.

  5

  When the water receded later that week, Asher took Caleb and Rosalee to Caleb’s sister in Nash­ville. Then he drove Zelda to her house, which had miraculously survived with nothing more than the front porch washed away. He made his way back in silence, weaving through Cumberland Valley to check on the members of his congregation and his neighbors. Most of the bridges had washed out, replaced with piles of brush and twisted guardrails, stoves, recliners, chunks of Sheetrock that had once been the walls of homes. The county roads had buckled under the weight of the water, and were now undulating strips of blacktop that occasionally broke away, as if the sides of the road had been bitten off. The bottomland along the river had morphed into ponds pocked with johnboats carrying people trying to find their belongings. Down near Greene’s Branch two men in a wobbly rowboat nearly tipped over as they pulled a body onboard. They were out in the middle of a cornfield and did not seem real until Asher caught sight of the corpse, a man whose clothes had been ripped away by the water, his side gashed open.

  He tried to pray but could not find
it in himself to do so.

  Asher watched as his neighbors trod the soaked ground or waded the water, picking among the debris to see if there was anything that held some semblance of Before the Flood, picture albums whose photographs had miraculously not been destroyed, a stuffed animal, a pistol still in its lockbox.

  At the water’s edge, he found Roscoe.

  The dog’s coat was so matted with mud and dirt that Asher didn’t know him at first—but when Asher put his hand on Roscoe’s head and felt the familiar shape of his skull, he knew.

  “Oh, buddy,” Asher said, squatting down. Roscoe’s red collar had been ripped off, but it was certainly him, their good boy who had watched over Justin his whole life. Asher was overcome by a kind of grief he had never felt before, a feeling more like injustice. He carried Roscoe over to a patch of pinewoods and buried him with the shovel he had been using to dig out his neighbor’s belongings and he cried over the dog, over all the loss of today and before.

  But again he could not pray and felt no sense of that kind of prayer anywhere in him. He had spent his life finding words to make himself and others feel comforted. Always before the words were right there, without having to think much about them. Perhaps that had been the problem all along.