by River Jordan
“You know what’s missing, Billy?”
“Yeah, the sound of water.”
The underground rivers, their much-celebrated waters in these dark places, are missing.
Suddenly, Sonny Boy howls, runs ahead of them. He turns to the right and through a small opening in the wall. They bend, shuffle, rise up into the larger room, following the howling that reverberates off the dry rock. They follow him with the beams of their lights, pick up the pace of their steps. Just ahead lies an almost discernable form. A form who turns out to be their Trice. They find her eyes closed and motionless beneath an outcropping of rock, an interior shelf, wearing the same clothes she had on last night.
Nehemiah bends down, lowers his ear to her mouth, feels her warm breath. In her hand is her note paper from their conversation, the lines and circles forming a wild diagram around the word TIME. Nehemiah pulls the paper from her hand, refolds the edges, and places it in his shirt pocket. He lifts her from the floor, while Billy cautiously looks around. Nehemiah could tell him something but he doesn’t. Not yet. He could tell him that as long as the rain falls outside they are still safe.
They retrace their steps, walking out from the cave’s entrance and into the rain. Now the wind is gone. Only a soft rain that follows them as they retrace their steps until they reach Old Blue. Billy opens the door for Nehemiah, who climbs up inside, holding Trice across his lap and in his arms. Once settled, he pulls off the helmet, drops it to the floor. Sonny Boy jumps in back as Billy starts the truck. He has driven away before he realizes the rain stops at the road. He looks back to see this anomaly, this rain with jurisdiction, but there is no rain. No rain anywhere. He looks over at Nehemiah, who is brushing the dirt from Trice’s face. A dry, dirt-caked face. He runs a hand across his chest, his clothes now dry with the exception of wet rings beneath his arms.
“You want to explain this to me?” Billy asks. But Nehemiah just says, “Not now, let’s get her home first.”
Without a second thought, Billy knows where home means. He turns the truck east and drives past Magnolia, makes a silent note to call Kate and Magnus and Blister as soon as he walks in the door. He will simply say that she’s all right. He will simply say that she is sleeping. But he’s not sure that’s the case. He’s not sure of anything but the fact that his brother is finally back. Finally home again. And from the way he is holding Trice, there’s a chance he might just stay.
Saturday Night, 7:44 P.M.
Nehemiah places Trice in his mother’s bed. He carefully takes off her shoes and pulls the quilt up over her. Before he leaves, he searches the cover of the quilt, looks for gold, any pockets of forgotten dust, but there is nothing but the faded fabric.
Nehemiah joins Billy where he finds him on the porch. He imagines that before he will be able to get some much-needed rest, he might have some explaining to do. That’s something he’d like to put off for another eight or ten or twelve hours, and if his brother will let him, he’ll do just that.
“She still asleep?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t seem natural.”
“It’s not, but she’ll be all right.”
“How do you know that? For certain, I mean. Just how do you know that?”
“Momma’s bed happens to be good medicine. Don’t ask me why or how, because those things I don’t know. I just know it is what it is.”
“You want to talk about what happened out there today? Or what happened out here last night?” he says, pointing toward the tree. “Or maybe what happened at Kate’s with that clock, or how about we jump to after the tree and the clock to some dang thing breathing in my face that I can’t see…”
“You know, Billy, I do. I really do. But right now, my eyes feel fried. I’m thinking just a few hours would do me better than good.” He parks in the rocking chair on Billy’s right, but they are too tired to even rock. They just sit flat and heavy. Unmoving.
“So you were right about that fox.”
“The one you tried to shoot.”
“If I’d’ve tried, he’d be shot.”
“Not that fox.”
“Now, see here, that’s what I want to talk to you about, as in, how do you know?”
“That fox made me remember. That’s the most of it. Made me remember, but you know, Billy, I’d like to rest. Just to have a moment to catch my breath. And if we can talk tomorrow…”
“No sir, no sir, Brother. I’m as whipped as you are but you got a few minutes to catch your breath and then do some explaining. You know, enough weird is enough. What about all that slithering, crawling, blowing attack out there? Huh? What was that? And what about all that rain and then, bam, bam, just like that I’m dry again? Huh?” Billy means it. All the way through. And he means it so much that he hasn’t even heard Nehemiah whisper, “Hell,” or seen when he closes his eyes and says, “Wasn’t rain.” And Billy means it when he stands up and walks across the porch, still saying, “Huh? Huh?” and walks down the steps and out into the yard.
What I know that Billy doesn’t is that there is space now for a small pause from their battle. For the moment, Nehemiah has remembered who he is. And with that knowing, his soul can sigh with satisfaction. Tonight the smell in the air is pure spring. The magnolia tree on the side of the house, the one you can’t see from just where you’re sitting, has its first flower quietly opening. It’s the one at the very top of the tree, so very far out of reach. Tonight the dark scent of death is not hiding on the backside of the petals. Just calm. A supernatural curve of peace. And if Twila’s old bed is good medicine for Trice, it’s the peace on the porch that reaches out to Nehemiah and settles over him just like his momma’s quilt.
Peace will find even Billy when he stops considering over and over again the day’s circumstances. When he walks a few steps out into the yard, stopping to listen to the insects, to look up at the sky, searching for the moon. For the first time in so many years, here he is with Nehemiah on the porch and that blond cotton-top Trice, after so much scare and worry, tucked a stone’s throw away in his momma’s bed. It’s the peace of their closeness that reaches him as he bends down and scratches Sonny’s ear and tells him, “That’s okay, boy, you done just fine today. Just fine.” When he rises and turns around, he finds Nehemiah fast asleep in the rocking chair. Billy starts to wake him, shake a shoulder and ask him again about the night, but decides not to. Instead he turns back and takes his place beside his brother so that, side-by-side, they may ride out the night together. Whatever it may bring.
Sunday Morning
It is Trice who wakes first, wanders through the house, and eventually opens the screen door to discover Nehemiah and Billy where we left them, recovering the sleep sacrificed in the last forty-eight hours. She carefully closes the screen door, pulls her jean jacket tighter about her in the morning chill and tiptoes out in her sock feet to sit on the top porch step, her back against the railing. She thinks of the absence of cats and wonders about Magnus, but it’s a passing wonder.
Right now over on Magnolia, Magnus is holding court with the cats. She is fussing with them about Trice’s disappearance. About the fact that she hasn’t showed up at the door, not even called her since she went off into the night. And all the worrying, all the stomach-tied-up-in-knots minutes, not worth a thing to Trice. All the…
And Magnus stops and catches her breath, as tears well up in her eyes, pour down her cheeks, because it’s not the fussing or the hurt feelings that pull her up short, it’s the knowing that without Trice, she would have turned to dust years ago. Without the life of Trice, she didn’t have a hope. Never did and never will. She wipes her eyes, says, “You understand, don’t you, General?” The cat appears to slightly nod his head and blink as if to say, “Of course, Magnus. I’ve know that all along.”
The sun is not fully up, the world still in the delicious stage of opening. It’s Trice’s favorite time of day. She is Shibboleth’s miracle. Their baby from the Well. And although Kate said she’d found her so she
rightfully belonged to her, no one would allow it. Oh yes, they nodded their heads. They said, “Of course, of course.” But Shibboleth adopted Trice that day, even while she was still in Kate’s arms. You can hold the baby all you want, they could have said, but she is ours. All of ours. And that never changed. Not in the way they watched her grow. Not in the way they claimed her. Whether it was Blister as he used to be, or the Gettys (with twelve children of their own), or least of all Magnus, whom Trice visited regularly in spite of Kate’s frustration. It seemed Trice had no favorites. No belonging to a person, but instead belonging to a people. With the slightest of exceptions: she had belonged the most to Billy and Nehemiah. Or at least had belonged to the gang that the three of them had formed. And sitting here on their front porch watching them sleeping, Trice was back in the gang. And in the middle of such, the gang was back together. Triumphant, she thinks. But it’s not the three of them that she is referring to. That word is directed at the sleeping face of Nehemiah. She wants to say “Thank you,” to brush the hair back from his eyes and to ask him how he found her. But then she knows he won’t be able to answer that any more than she could tell him this: that she knew all along, in the recesses of her mind, in her vague, waterless memories of lost, that she would be found. And that he would be the finder.
Nehemiah opens his eyes and sees her quietly watching him, her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them, her chin resting on her arms.
“How are you?” These are his first words.
“Okay,” she says.
From the Gallas’ place, a rooster is crowing. Close enough to be real morning, far enough to echo last night’s storm.
He moves to the porch stair, sits down on the front porch step with her. “We’re caught up in something, Trice.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Do you know what just yet?”
“I know we have some backing up to do. Something about recovering history.”
“Should we wake the sleeping bear?”
“Bear’s awake. Just resting my eyes and waiting for you two to say something that makes sense.” Billy keeps his bear eyes closed.
“Maybe the two of you could tell me, truly, what’s been happening since I’ve been gone?” Nehemiah looks at both of them. “You know what’s going on is too…” and he thinks but it is Trice that fills in the word.
“Powerful,” she says and stands to stretch her legs.
“Yes, too powerful to be something that happened overnight.” He cups his chin in his hand, elbow on his knee, and stares off into the distance.
Trice looks hard at Nehemiah and notices for the first time this morning that he is home again in a different way. An old way. Why, for a second he looked all of ten again. She’d seen that same pose in that same place. Top stair. Him staring off across the yard and the open field beyond.
“When did the water start to disappear?”
Billy rolls it over, thinking, but Trice doesn’t miss a beat; she says, “The day that you left town.” Then she leans out over the railing looking down the road. “Who could that be at this hour?” Trice stands up and looks hard into the dawning light. A trail of dust a mile long is flying out behind a car, which, as it comes into focus, is a ’92 Buick, and behind the wheel is Kate in all her glory. She wheels into the front yard, cutting a sharp right, brakes at the last minute, and throws the car into park. She gets out, still moving at the speed of light.
“Y’all just gonna set there or can you give me a hand unloading what I got? Seems to me a person gets up at dark to make you breakfast and carts it all the way over here to you, the least you can do is help unload.” But already her hands are full. Full, I tell you, of sacks holding biscuits and bowls of gravy, and a dozen scrambled eggs, and a ration of bacon, and some fried fruit tarts just for a taste of sweet. “Oh never mind, y’all move like molasses, it’ll be cold for sure if I wait on any of you. Get out of my way.” And with that, still talking, she has stepped over them and is tearing down the hall and into the kitchen before anyone has barely made a move. Isn’t she something? Don’t you just love her? God does. This much I know to be true.
They will smile and shake their heads and be so very thankful for Kate, for the substance of her being, for her unchanging predictability. They will wander like small children to the kitchen, where they’ll be scolded for not washing and sent to clean up. They’ll grow younger by the minute as she makes a pot of coffee and gets down her sister’s plates, sets out her sister’s cups and tells them not to take a bite until someone has asked the blessing, and that someone she’ll appoint. That’s her job. On occasion, when she is in a hurry, she will ask the blessing herself. But this morning, she looks seriously at Nehemiah and tells, not asks, him to bless the food. The word rusty comes to mind, but Nehemiah pulls out an age-old prayer of health and blessing and good fortune and thankfulness. And with a round of amens, they begin to eat.
They will be full and fatter when Kate gets up and refills their coffee cups (she doesn’t care for other people working in the kitchen). Then she will settle down and say, “Let’s have it. Where were you, Trice, and how’d you get there?”
Trice leans back in her chair with her scrubbed face, picks up her coffee cup, and says, “The only part I can tell you is the part that I remember.”
“That seems like a good place to start.” Billy is impatient, has been waiting for this information all night.
Nehemiah spins the lazy Susan, keeping his eyes locked on the centerpiece until Kate tells him to stop. He does.
Trice leans back in her chair, standing it on its hind legs, slightly rocking back and forth. Normally, Kate would correct her, tell her to set that chair down right before she wears out the legs, but as long as Trice is talking, she’s quiet, except for the parts where she says, “Go on.” The sun’s rays come streaming through the kitchen window, a golden light of consecration settling on the heads of the four of them. They go on unaware of what I see, but I have no doubt they feel the healing warmth.
“Strange things happened last night,” Trice is saying, “Not just strange later but strange to begin with, when Billy came to get me and…”
Billy interrupts her, “That was two nights ago.”
“Then Nehemiah was here, and we all started talking. Just sitting around the table talking. Me just listening mostly. Nehemiah did most of the talking, about what all has happened to him—well, maybe more aptly put, around him—since he came home. I guess you saw the oak tree out front. Well, that’s one of the things. The oak tree being attacked.” And this is where Trice is the only one who gets the word right, understands the fact about the tree.
Kate nods her understanding, “Lot of history in an oak tree.”
“But more than that, it was the talking. And I was taking notes. Just scribbling really, but somewhere in those scribbling, those doodles, there was something trying to surface in the back of my mind the whole time. My notes…” Trice begins to search her pockets, front and back, jeans and jacket.
Nehemiah pulls the worn piece of paper from his pocket, passes it across the table.
“Like I was saying, I was writing everything down, listening to the words and the way that some of them would jump out at me like they were heavier than the others. Like this one,” and she points to the word TIME in large, bold letters where she has retraced it over and over. “And I knew right away that time and memory were linked together so I drew that link in.”
Now you would think that people would be hurrying Trice along, trying to get her to get to the place where she stepped off the world and out of sight. But not at least two of these. They know that Trice has a purpose and a place, and that now she is the one holding court. She is the one who has the closest indication of where they’re going to from here. And what you can see in Trice, all the way from there if you look, is that she is fearless. Fearless in the way that there is the absolute absence of fear, not a place where it is locked away, not a place where it is hidden, covered,
and rubbed over, but completely missing. But then what else would you expect from a child from the Well?
“There was something about this,” she traces the lines again with her bare finger, following the crosses and dashes and angles, “something about this that made me wonder. And when Nehemiah and Billy dropped me off, I sat there at the kitchen table staring at the paper. The biggest thing was the feeling that we,” she stops, looks up at Nehemiah and Billy, “and I mean the three of us, had been at this place before.”
Nehemiah nods his head. It’s something he already understands. They are backtracking.
“And right after that realization, I had a creeping feeling about the two of you. That you were headed into serious trouble.”
“You are right about that, Trice, ’cause we sure did run into trouble.”
“Let her finish, Billy,” Kate says.
“And I felt like I needed to warn you both. Felt like I somehow had to get help to you. But I didn’t know how. I stepped out on the porch, stood, and listened for a while. Thought I’d call you at home, but you didn’t go home and I knew that too. Just knew it. Then I was looking at the moon, it almost being full, and I admit I got lost in the moon for a while. And when I remembered what I was doing, what I was thinking, the picture was in my hand. The map of last night.”
Nehemiah jerks his head up. He has been listening all along, but now he is listening intently.
“And I knew I had to get out of where I was and get help to where it needed to be.”
“Tell it, Trice, tell it. Tell how you walked all the way from Magnus’s house, all the way that I cannot understand down to the springs to find us. And you went down there and either passed us or we passed you on the road after the funky light saved us.”
Nehemiah says, “Billy, you don’t even use the word funky. Matter of fact, nobody does.”
“Like I said, that funky light saved us. And then you just went sound to sleep right down there where we couldn’t breathe. Where we couldn’t breathe, you hear me?” Trice’s eyes are growing wider as Billy keeps talking. “How come you could sleep down there where we couldn’t even breathe?” Billy is at his limit on strange.