The story: the Comanche did it. Whites were not welcome in Indian territory. A pipe was found at the scene, evidence of Comanche. For years, this story was passed around. Every actual witness to the girl’s body passed away, and so the tales became memories of memories.
But then the descendants of the settlers started to speak up, and their story was different. A man named Ned Cook, who still lives in Llano, told a story about his uncle David Webster, whose father, M. L. Webster, once told him a story about a mob of wealthy ranchers. They wanted to get rid of the homesteaders, and they went to M. L. and wanted him to take part. They said that the girl’s family was “poor white trash” and that nobody would miss them. They said that if the U.S. Cavalry thought that the Comanche had done it, that they would send a unit to the area for protection. And also, Ned Cook said, the massacre would keep other settlers from coming in to the country, as the ranchers wanted all the land to themselves. Ned Cook’s great-grandfather wanted no part in it, but it was done anyway.
Other descendants say the same, but there’s no real evidence either way. Other than the pipe, easily planted.
But if your family has been in this area for years, you know about Mary Elizabeth—about Beth—and her head on the summit. A girl, an innocent, used. No cavalry ever came, but the settlers still did.
9:05 A.M.
Lou and Aunt Fern went on ahead. Lucy Maud watched them go and silently wished them well. Kevin lifted a hand in a wave, much more concerned about rescuing Ruben King, though this was the last time he would ever see them.
Before they disappeared over the ridge, Lucy Maud and Kevin turned back to the task at hand. They knelt at the mine shaft and shouted, but they couldn’t hear Ruben or he couldn’t hear them.
Kevin looked at her, then looked around them, scanning the landscape for something. “If only there was a tree.” He ran his gaze up and down Lucy Maud.
She blushed.
He rose and put his hands around her waist, measuring with the span of his fingers. “You’re sturdy.” He wrapped one end of the yellow vinyl rope around her. She raised her hands to give him better access as he jerked her body forward. She doubted that the grad student was sturdy, which was likely part of the grad student’s appeal.
Kevin finished tying the rope around her. “I wish you were a tree.” He rested his hands for a moment on the waist that was not as small as it had been. “Sit down.” She sat on the poky gravel and he tugged. She jerked forward. He frowned. “Lie down. Like corpse pose in yoga.”
She winced at the gravel on the back of her head. He saw and grabbed the shirt she’d left as landmark, balled it up, and put it behind her head. His hands were gentle as he lifted her skull.
“You do yoga?” Sometimes his whole life was a surprise to her.
He shrugged, sheepish. She realized whom he did yoga with and why he didn’t want to talk about it. His fingertips were on her temple and she closed her eyes and tried not to think about anything. For a moment, Kevin blocked the sun, standing over her, legs wide, jerking his end of the rope until he was satisfied. “If it begins to pull you in, brace your feet on the edges of the mine shaft.”
She nodded. “Okay.” He was tying the other end of the rope around his own waist when he stopped suddenly and looked at the rope. “What am I doing? There will be too much slack. What do I do? Do I wrap it around my waist?”
“Boyd would know,” Lucy Maud said from the ground.
“Yep.” He was quiet for a minute, palming the end of the rope.
In the morning light, she saw the shadows in the creases of his face. In a different life, she would have seen these changes in him over their morning coffee. She hated the anger that accompanied this thought, so she lay back down, watching his unsteady, unsure hands.
“Tie it around your waist anyway,” she said. “Even if there is too much slack. Use your arms to control the slack and your waist as a backup.”
He looked at her, his brows pinched at the bridge of his nose, an expression he wanted her to read. After a second, she realized he was sorry. She’d take it, but it wasn’t enough; she wanted him to really apologize for everything.
He said, “I wish we had a better plan. I don’t know how we’re going to pull him up.”
“Go down. Get him over to the shaft. Come up one by one with the rope.” She sat up suddenly. “I should go. I’m lighter.”
She hated that look of hope in his eyes. He didn’t think it was a good idea because it made more sense; he thought it was a good idea because it transferred the danger to her.
“No, no, I’ll go.” He waited for her to protest, to say it made more sense for her to go. But that look of hope in his eyes—that sense that he wanted her to save him again and would prefer for her to be in danger—she knew that look. She wondered if the grad student knew that look.
That look made her say, “Okay,” in a bright and chirpy voice, despite knowing it would be more practical for her to go.
He emptied his pockets on the ground beside her: keys, ChapStick, his dead phone. He stood at the shaft’s entrance for a moment, lost. The rope was nothing more than a tether, a way for him to find his way back out.
She stood and twisted, pulling the rope around her like a winch. The coil on the ground disappeared until only six feet or so was between them. She wrapped her hands around the rope at her waist. “I’ll let it out as you go.”
He nodded. His face looked like a different man’s face—thin in the wrong places, silver stubble on his chin—with Kevin’s old eyes. Then he sat on the ground with his feet dangling into the darkness of the shaft and turned and lowered himself, elbows at a strained angle as he held on to the edge for as long as he could.
Then he was gone. The rope still had slack, so though she couldn’t see him well, she knew he was within a few feet of her, descending the wall. It had been half an hour since they had heard from Ruben.
Something You Couldn’t Know,
No Matter Where You Grew Up
What Kevin Would Find in the Dark
Things You Would Know If You Grew Up Around Here
Different Kinds of Floods and How Long They Take to Dissipate
In central Texas, we have different types of floods. An overbank flood happens when a river cannot contain itself, when it spills out over its banks. A flash flood happens when water has nowhere to go, when it encounters resistance from concrete, saturated ground, or solid rock, then stacks up and finds itself a conduit. In man-made floods, water breaks or something like a dam fails. In those floods, there were failures, sure. In Bastrop State Park, thirty-five million gallons of water took out a century-old dam. The failure of this low-hazard dam killed nobody and affected no roads.
But mainly what we dealt with in the aftermath of the Memorial Day storms were overbank and flash floods, and the worst damage was when both phenomena combined. A flash flood is quick and deadly, but it dissipates in hours. An overbank flood, a flood where a body of water has forgotten its borders, lasts for days, even weeks. The body of water is slow to find its shape again, resists the limits it formerly knew, and wants more.
9:05 A.M.
Isaac, who felt as if he’d been awake for hours, stiff and unfolding in the tree. He took a deep breath, and what should have been clean air was thick and fetid, humid to the point of mold. His skin was marked with the patchwork pattern of pecan bark, even underneath his clothes, a crisscrossed brand as if the tree had claimed him. Everything around him smelled and sounded like water; the leaves in the pecan trees rippled gently, like a stream unaware of the waterfall around the next bend.
His legs had become almost rigid during the night, as if he were a corpse on an embalming table. His back was kinked and his body L-shaped, and he wanted desperately to stand or to lie fully down, to unfold himself so that he would not be permanently bent.
He was amazed that he had made it through the night—the branch he was on was maybe a foot wide, and his back was to the trunk. Such a precarious position, ye
t not once had he felt himself about to tumble. Now, as he roused himself and shook whatever limbs he could, he took stock of his situation.
High in the tree, still about twenty feet above the water. The river looked less angry today, but more powerful. The current was still strong—he saw things float by: parts of boats and Jet Skis and water toys. But now, the river looked less roiling, more in control. Monolithic. If he fell into it now, he might never get out.
But he wouldn’t fall—he would just wait it out, hanging on to his branch in the canopy. This flood wouldn’t last forever. Already the rain had slowed and now here was the sun, glinting on the water. He didn’t know how long he would have to be here, but he would stay as long as he needed to.
But no. After a night of peace, of lion and lamb, the denizens of the tree began to grow restless, as if they had only just now noticed him. A fire ant bit him in the webbing between thumb and index finger, and he jumped at the pain and in sheer surprise. They—he and all of the animals—had shared this tree all night without any confrontation or conflict, and to have such a thing introduced now seemed a betrayal. Another bite on the back of his neck, then the beetles on the branch above began to move toward him, clicking and in unison, and he felt for a second as if all of nature had turned on him.
He grabbed the branch on which he perched, fingers beneath his thighs, nails scraping the bark. Fire ant bites were acutely painful, but he held on, and the pain was temporary—each bite’s sting would disappear in seconds. Hard, though, not to panic when they swarmed one hand en masse—he lifted that hand and shook the fingers, and the motion nearly caused him to fall before he caught himself. Now a fear bubbled up inside him, a sense that he had come so close—he had felt, for a moment, the open air, the pull of gravity.
He froze, trying to will himself stuck to the branch that for all that long night had been such a haven. The sound of the water below him was deeper than it had been, more bass and less treble, and he was keenly aware of the sun filtering through the leaves. It seemed, for a second, as if the earth were breathing, a measured calmness that felt like a long inhale.
The snake reared before him, coiled like a cobra, though he knew of no Texas snakes that could do such a thing, could contort in such a way. Through his shirt, he felt another one behind him, and this snake was the one that undid him. He rose in a panic, imagining that he could stand on that high branch, and when he fell, he could not say if the fall was accidental. Branches tore at his clothes and ripped his skin as the water rose up to claim him. He thought of Boyd, broadcast his panic, then felt it immediately lessen, and for the first time since he’d known her, he understood how she had such a hold on people, and what it was about her that made her hide from the world.
9:05 A.M.
Boyd thought of her promise to the mother on the floor as she carried Lily, who made noises in the early morning that reminded Boyd of mourning doves. Boyd still felt the pull of Isaac, the compulsion to find her friend, but she was quickly being distracted by Lily’s delight at the world, and by the way the child was trying to have a conversation with her.
They were under the canopy of a stand of juniper, and as always in this part of the country, the juniper tinged everything with a hint of magic, a sense of old-world forests, and hushed, other lives lived in the spaces between. The canopy had been thinned by the heavy rain, and light streamed down upon them, and when Lily became too heavy on one hip, Boyd shifted her to the other.
Half an hour after Boyd left the trailer behind, she was shocked to realize that she had been talking to the baby for some time. She thought back to what she’d said and could remember nothing but telling the baby stories: the story of the woman and her daughter in the house with the vines, the story of Babyhead Mountain, the birds in the hanging tree. The way the bridge had crumbled and disappeared down the river. Now she paid more attention, and what she said surprised her.
“When you get big enough to understand, Lily”—Boyd recognized the thought but not its articulation—“you’ll see, I can’t be around too many people at once. I couldn’t go to school. It’s hard even to go to the grocery store, unbearable to know that so many people are hungry.” Boyd felt for a second that sharpness in the belly, the way other people’s hollowness hurt her, and somehow, this longing made her think of the vines in her garden, of the way they’d grabbed her in the late spring. “They are not the only hungry ones either.” The river had pulled on her ankle, trying to suck her down, and this near-sentient voracity reminded her of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, as if she were a central Texas version of Danny Torrance. The world wanted something from her, but she didn’t know what.
She looked at the baby. Lily’s eyes were large in her face, rimmed in the longest lashes Boyd had ever seen. The pink to her cheeks went even to the ball of her chin. She was rosy and creamy and had hardly cried, some sort of dream child. Her blue eyes looked as if she understood what Boyd was saying, and her mouth was parted as if she wanted to reply. Indeed, she had for some time been replying, and though Boyd hadn’t discerned actual words, she thought she knew what the baby wanted her to know. Boyd thought that she detected a sensitivity in the girl, a special understanding, and at this thought Boyd’s step hitched in an even greater realization.
What must she herself have been like as a child? At what point did her mother realize that Boyd knew things about other people, that Boyd could pay attention in a way that was more than just paying attention? Boyd pulled Lily from her hip and held her at eye level, Boyd’s hands underneath Lily’s armpits, fingers wrapped around the child’s shoulder blades. Boyd narrowed her eyes, then thought hard about the woman on the floor, examining the child as she did so, the baby’s fingers cupping so that it looked as if she was reaching for Boyd.
She shook her head to clear the thought, but then had a thought that was somehow even less welcome. “If you are like me, you’ll never be the kind of woman men want,” she said, shifting Lily to the other hip because the girl had become too heavy. “You just won’t. You have to understand this. You shouldn’t let it bother you, but it will. It sucks. You can’t ever really be independent of someone you love, and the other person will sense this. You can’t ever be aloof, like the graduate student.”
Lily opened her mouth and made a sound, and Boyd imagined that she understood the baby. “Oh, no, no, you won’t hate her. Not quite. That idea will be there, but mostly you’ll just feel kind of jealous, or aspirational, like you want to copy her. You’ll wonder what it would be like to be that kind of woman, the kind of woman a man would leave his life for.”
Boyd stopped short, surprised again by what she’d said, by how it seemed so out of nowhere. Something about Lily was making Boyd speak her deepest secrets. Lily took a hunk of Boyd’s hair in her hands. Boyd felt a sudden press at the back of her throat, the beginning of tears, and she caught herself. “But don’t worry, Lily. I will help you.” Lily couldn’t be the one Boyd had imagined was out there, could she? She was a baby, not even talking yet.
The child understood. Oh, she did not know that her mother was dead and that Boyd was carrying her across a wasted country. But she did understand that Boyd was now in charge, that Boyd was somehow in her own sort of pain, and that Boyd held the same trick of empathy and understanding. Boyd had never met a person like herself, a person who shared this quality, and even though Lily was a baby, Boyd did not know how to react. She blinked in the juniper-filtered sunshine, and Lily cooed again, trying to say something. Boyd thought that Lily was forgiving her, that the baby understood why they’d had to leave her mother in the trailer.
Boyd thought suddenly of a day in seventh-grade social studies when Ruben King had assigned them a story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” by Ursula K. Le Guin. A society in that story was a utopia, a singularly amazing place to live, but for that society to exist, its pain had had to go somewhere. It went to a child who lived in a basement, who lived in filth and could not speak. When the citizens of that society ca
me of age, they learned the truth about their own happiness. Some could not bear this truth, and these were the ones who left Omelas. Having Lily in her arms made the story somehow more real to Boyd: Would she walk away, knowing that she could not save a child like Lily, but could she live with the knowledge of the price of her own joy?
As Boyd was turning over this new information, a wave of panic buckled her, and she nearly dropped Lily. She felt wet again, as if she’d been submerged and the flood were pulling on her. She knew that Isaac was in the water, and Boyd gasped, feeling the press against her chest, imagining her lungs taking on the river, feeling Isaac’s terror in the center of her torso. “Oh my God,” she whispered, seeing that wake on the water as something she loved sank beneath the surface. “Help. Please help.” She did not know how far she was, or what she could do to help him.
Behind her at the edge of the juniper grove, though she didn’t yet see it, pink lawn sleeves and cat’s-head buttons were coming closer, trailing straw behind them.
9:10 A.M.
And then people came out of the woods, displaced and bedraggled. Some had bags or suitcases; some had nothing but the muddy clothes they wore. They emerged on the bank like the sodden remnants of an apocalypse. Sam slowed the boat and brought it up along the bank, distributing bottled water, checking to see if anybody needed medical care. They took an old woman into the boat with them, her knuckles and wrists and ankles thick with arthritis. Carla made room for her in the bottom of the vessel. Patches of scalp showed through the woman’s thin hair, and her mouth hung open in shock. Her white dress was streaked with sepia; in the night, she had been in the water. Boyd would know what the woman had been through, but Carla was astonished by the pain etched on her features.
Things You Would Know If You Grew Up Around Here Page 24