“It might as well be in another country. We can swim there, perhaps, but walking is out of the question.”
“Fine, we’ll swim.”
“I can’t swim. I don’t know how.”
“The water is not that deep,” she said. “Start walking. It’s the only way to get back to Chandra. It’s the only way we’ll make it home.”
They struggled up the slimy embankment, trudged through the muddy, slick water. “Stay on the road.” Geneva’s words disappeared on a gust of wind, drowned by the falling rain. She thought Atul did not hear her, and she yelled at him again.
“I cannot see the road,” Atul said. He stumbled forward like a wounded animal.
She scraped her sodden hair out of her eyes, but she could see only a few feet in front of her. The world was gray and swollen. Her clothes were like tissue paper against her skin, insignificant and fragile. Water invaded every inch of her body. She sucked in liquid and spit it out. She coughed up mud. She didn’t know if they’d been walking for fifteen minutes or for hours. Each step required so much effort. Maybe they’d been walking for days. It was like the pilgrimage to see Pisa, where time stood still, where night and day ran together like a muddy watercolor dream. The water rose past her knees, crept up her thighs. It grabbed at her legs as she walked, pulling her and threatening to knock her down. Was this what Pisa had warned her about? Could Pisa control the weather?
“This is your fault. You should not have driven into the water. You knew that and you did it anyway.”
“I did it for you,” she said. “I did it to get you back to Chandra. You told me to.”
“I didn’t tell you to drive into a flood.”
“Well, I couldn’t drive around it.”
They argued back and forth and in circles. It was pointless and exhausting. It took every bit of strength she had just to put one foot in front of the other and keep moving forward. She hoped they were moving in the right direction. Familiar landmarks had disappeared. They had to keep moving. If they kept moving, they would wind up somewhere.
A tree limb about the length of her arm but twice as thick floated past. Then another larger branch went by. The trees are falling down, she thought. It was like a verse in a nursery rhyme, “Down fell the trees, they all fell down.” Pisa taught her to have reverence for nature, to respect the earth and not to fight against it. She remembered this as she walked into the floodwaters. Calm and steady. No struggle. No thrashing. Atul was thrashing. He fought the water like an enemy. Pisa had told her if she went to see Atul, it would be bad. This was very bad.
* * *
Atul fell. Geneva reached down and yanked him up. His hand was slick and oily with mud. “Be careful.”
“I am careful,” he said. “I am always careful. This is your fault.”
Geneva dropped his hand and walked ahead. “Do you blame me for the rain? Is the rain my fault? Is the flood my fault? The mud and the trees and the sky? All of it? Is that what you believe?”
They came to a downed oak. The oak lay across the road like a dead man, roots a terrible twisted mass of warning: Go back, go back. They could not go back. Geneva hoisted herself up and straddled the massive trunk. Pisa would tell her to respect the water, float don’t fight. Atul fought and fell behind, fell down again. The bark scraped her hands and tore her clothes. Her skirt ripped open along a side seam. She pointed. “I can see the steeple from the Sulphur Springs AME Church. The sheriff’s office is in the same block. We’re almost there.”
Atul was still several feet from her, still struggling to reach the tree. His face contorted. She held out her hand. “Here, let me help you.” He swatted at her, reached out, and grabbed a jutting branch of the oak, hoisting his body forward and up. The tree shifted, and Geneva grasped its thick trunk tight between her thighs. The water rose impossibly fast. Mother Nature was not fooling around today.
“We should swim from here,” she said. Atul didn’t respond. He held on to the branch, struggled forward. “You need to pull yourself up,” she said. This time he grabbed her hand. She pulled, but his body was heavier than the hundred-year-old tree between her legs. She repositioned for greater leverage, wedged her hands beneath his armpits. She pulled until her back ached, but Atul didn’t budge.
“Why are you so stubborn? I’m trying to help you.”
“I don’t know,” he said. He was crying, though it was hard to tell with so much rain falling.
“Just pull yourself up and over.”
“I don’t know,” he said again.
The water was up to his neck, almost to his chin. It should be easy, Geneva knew, to lift him up. He should float into her arms. Something was wrong.
“I don’t know.”
“Stop saying that.”
The water rose to Atul’s mouth. He sobbed and choked on the dirty water.
“You’ll be sick,” she said. “Don’t drink it.”
When her arms were limp as taffy, she realized he was stuck. She dived down to see where he was caught. Dark water swirled, muddy and brown. Atul’s leg was caught in something, branches from the tree or vines sprouting from the earth. She yanked on his leg, but it didn’t budge. Her lungs seemed about to burst. She surfaced, gasped. Atul stared up at the sky, his face lifted to the falling rain. His neck craned to keep his mouth and nose above the rising water. Time was running out. Geneva sucked in a deep breath and dived again. She felt down the length of his leg. His foot, his left foot, was pinned beneath the trunk. She pushed, remembering how it had moved so gracefully just a moment earlier. The oak didn’t budge, and Geneva floated away. She swam back, grateful for years spent swimming in rivers and lakes. She was strong enough to swim through these waters, but Atul could not swim. Even once he was free, she’d have to drag him along. How could he live surrounded by rivers and lakes and never learn how to swim? It was like living on top of a mountain and never learning how to walk downhill.
The water rose to Atul’s ears. He was stretched as tall as he could stretch. It was not enough.
“Can you get your foot out of your shoe?”
“I don’t know.”
It seemed these were the only words left in his vocabulary. He choked on a stream of water and coughed, which caused him to swallow more water. His head disappeared beneath the surface, and Geneva pulled him up and tilted his head back.
“I’m going to untie your shoe, make it loose. You pull.” She was strong, but also tired. The swirling waters left her muscles soft. She filled her lungs and dived deep, using Atul’s body as a guide. His shoe was wedged beneath a large heavy branch, enmeshed in a ropy heap of Spanish moss. She couldn’t tell the moss from the shoelaces and kept yanking at the wrong thing. She tugged at his ankle, but the foot was pinned tight. Her body floated to the surface against her will. She had to have air.
Atul’s mouth was submerged. He kept his nose above water by holding his head back and craning his neck forward like a rooster crowing. She didn’t speak, knowing that he couldn’t answer. She dived down and grabbed at the shoe again. The branch pinned his toes and the ball of his foot. If she could lift his heel up, maybe his foot would slide out of the shoe. She worked her fingers around the back of the shoe, pushed his ankle forward, pulled from side to side. She yanked his foot. She yanked the branch. His body shifted. She surfaced and vomited a great mouthful of muddy water. Atul disappeared. Geneva turned round and round, searched for him until she felt the thunk of his body against her leg. She tried to drag him up to the surface, but the water swallowed him whole. Pisa said there would be death. Pisa had warned her.
Plenty of women would have stayed and fought to free the body, dead or alive. Plenty of women would have drowned trying, but not Geneva. In her years, she’d witnessed two unnatural and brutal deaths. Nothing she did now would change the course of tragedy. She left Atul to the beastly water and swam on to save herself.
Chapter Nineteen
Melody told Maurice what the sheriff’s deputy had said, about Obi being dang
erous.
“It was your friend who nearly got us all killed. You should have seen the way he was driving. He almost hit the little boy. If that man hadn’t pulled the kid out of the car, I don’t see how he’d have survived.” Maurice shook his head. “I’ve never seen anyone run so fast. I think the only way he’d be dangerous is if someone tried to hurt his son.”
Melody didn’t think Obi seemed dangerous, either. In fact, he seemed familiar.
“What’s going on?” Her father’s voice echoed. Without electricity, without the normal hum and buzz of appliances, every word seemed louder. The rain pounding against the roof and windows was such a constant clatter it was almost soothing.
“It’s okay, Daddy. Everything’s fine.”
“Stop saying that. Everything is not fine. Who are all these people in my house?”
“I’m trying to figure that out myself,” she snapped at him, and was ashamed. Just minutes ago, she’d thought he was practically dead. “There were some people camping on the land, a man and a young boy. They weren’t safe out there.”
“They aren’t safe in here, either. Get me my gun, boy.”
Maurice flinched. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“What gun?” Melody said.
“I’ll get it myself.” He dropped his arm down the side of the bed and felt around on the floor.
“Mr. Mahaffey, I don’t think it’s necessary,” Maurice said.
“I’ll decide what’s necessary. Give me some help, boy.”
“I’m not helping you reach that gun. And don’t call me boy. We’ve talked about that.”
“I’ll call you whatever I want. You’re in my house, nigger.”
Melody’s stomach turned over. She looked at Maurice. The word hung between them, poisoned the air. “Daddy, no,” she whispered. “No.”
“That’s it!” Maurice pointed his finger at Melody. “I already had this out with your mother. I won’t put up with that kind of language. I quit. You’re on your own.”
“Maurice, please.” Melody grabbed his arm. She needed his help. The thought of dealing with Obi and Daddy and Bobby and Chris all by herself was too much. “I’m sorry. He knows better. It’s the medication. It’s the illness.”
“It’s not, and you know it. He’s like every other old white man, thinks he’s better than me. Well, I have to draw the line somewhere.” Maurice gathered up his bag of syringes and pain medication. “You’ll want to get him to a hospital. That oxygen won’t last the night.” He started toward the kitchen. “I’m going to say good-bye to Bobby.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Melody said. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”
“The hospital will take care of everything,” Maurice said.
“Daddy,” Melody pleaded with him. “Apologize. You have to apologize to Maurice right now. Say you’re sorry.”
“It won’t make any difference,” Maurice said.
“He won’t go to a hospital. You know that.” Melody followed Maurice into the kitchen. “The phone lines are down. I can’t even call the hospital.”
“Not my problem.”
“You can’t just abandon him. He’ll die.”
“That old man is gonna die soon, no matter what I do.”
Melody panicked. She needed Maurice, not just for her father but also for Chris. She needed another adult in the house who wasn’t sick or damaged. She didn’t know Obi well enough to judge his state of mind. “Please,” she said to Maurice. “Please, I’m begging you, don’t leave now.”
“Leave? Why?” Bobby rushed to Maurice’s side. “No! Leave, no. Leave, no. Leave, no.”
“I have to.” Maurice reached out and touched Bobby’s arm. “I’m not leaving you, I’m leaving your father. You know what he’s like.”
“With you, with you, with you.”
“Not now,” Maurice said. “Help your sister.”
“Me help, me help, me help. Help me.” Bobby’s mouth contorted. He let out an agonized wail. Melody reached for him as he ran from the kitchen. Maurice followed. She looked around. Chris sat mumbling, hands cradling his injured head. Liam stared up at her. Obi was gone. “Where is your father?”
Chris shifted forward in his chair, rested his elbows on the table. Purple bruises spread across his face, and his swollen nose bent to one side. “I don’t feel so great.” He sounded like someone with a terrible cold. “Will you pray with me?”
“No,” Melody said. “I won’t.”
“I need help. I keep trying to pray, but it isn’t working. I don’t feel anything.”
Melody knew what it was like to pray and feel nothing. She turned back to Liam. “Where did your father go?”
Liam pointed at the back door. Melody glanced at the windows, but all she saw was the steady gray downpour.
“Our Father,” Chris said. “Who art in heaven, hollow is thy name.” He stopped, looked up at Melody. “See, that’s not right.”
“Where is your mother?” Melody asked Liam.
“She left.” Liam let out a frustrated sigh.
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t remember her.” He spoke in a solemn whisper. “Don’t tell Daddy, okay?”
Melody pulled Liam into her arms. She didn’t know where her own mother was. There was no point interrogating a child. She rocked back and sat on the floor, settling Liam into her lap. “It’s okay.” She closed her eyes and sniffed his hair. He smelled wild and sweet, like honeysuckle vine.
“Are you going to kick us out?”
“No,” Melody said. “Of course not.”
“You kicked me out,” Chris said.
“I didn’t know this would happen, Chris.”
“Daddy’s nice,” Liam said. “You’ll see. You don’t need to be mad at him.”
“Kingdom come, will be done,” Chris muttered. “The problem is that it makes no sense.”
“I’m not mad.” She stroked Liam’s hair. It was true; for the first time in a long time, she wasn’t angry. Something about the comforting weight of the child on her lap calmed her, even in the middle of this chaos. “Chris, it goes like this: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.”
“But what does it mean?”
Melody knew exactly how he felt. The words that once seemed so comforting, so profound, slipped into nothingness.
Melody pushed herself up from the floor. Liam hung around her neck like a monkey. She shifted his weight over to her right hip. He fit perfectly against her, legs wrapped around her waist, arms around her shoulders. “You keep an eye out for Obi,” she told Chris. “I’ll be right back. Don’t go to sleep, okay? Promise me.”
“I’m awake,” Chris said.
“Keep that ice on your head.”
“It’s melting.” He held up the bag full of slushy water. A stream of it dripped onto the table.
“That’s okay,” Melody said. “Everything’s wet. A little more water won’t hurt anything. I have to check on Bobby. I’ll be right back.”
She carried Liam with her. “Who is that?” he asked when they passed the bed in the living room.
“That’s my daddy,” Melody said.
“He’s very sick,” Liam said.
She pushed open the door to Bobby’s room and saw Bobby and Maurice mid-clench. They sprang apart when she walked in, but she’d seen enough to know just how close they’d become.
She stepped back and slammed the door on the whole scene. Her face went hot and her legs went weak. She felt winded, like she’d been sprinting. Liam played with her hair, pulled a strand of it between his fingers. He sang a soft, unfamiliar song. He did not seem surprised to find two men kissing. It made sense now, the way Bobby acted around Maurice, the way Maurice touched Bobby with such familiarity and affection. She should have realized. She pulled Liam closer to her, holding him so tightly he began to squirm.
Maurice stepped out into the hallway.
“He’s a grown man.”
“He is not. Do you know what happened to him? How it affected his brain? He has the mind of a child!”
Maurice narrowed his eyes. “I know about the baptism. I know all about it.”
“He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand.”
“He understands plenty. Give him some credit.”
“You’re going to hurt him.”
“You don’t know that.” Maurice fumbled with his shirt collar. “Look, no one knows about this. We’ve been very careful.”
“Careful? You haven’t been careful. You’re going to destroy him,” Melody said. “Shame on you.”
“Hello?” Chris called up the stairs. “Are you up here?”
“We’re here,” Maurice said.
Chris held his face as he walked. He panted with the effort of climbing the stairs. “I just—” He stopped to rest. “There’s water. Downstairs, there’s water coming in. It’s pretty fast.”
“For God’s sake, you can’t just be wandering around,” Melody said. “I told you to stay put.”
“No,” Maurice said. “It’s okay. As long as he feels okay. Probably better to keep the muscles limber.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Melody snapped.
“I wouldn’t say I feel okay.” Chris’s voice wobbled and broke. “I really wouldn’t.”
Maurice went to Chris, looked into his eyes. “Your nose is broken,” Maurice said. “That’s why your face is bruised. Your eyes are dilated.”
Liam played with a strand of Melody’s hair. Bobby was a boy just like this one. It was not so long ago. “How could you do this to him?” Melody said to Maurice. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“What bothers you most?” Maurice spat at her in an angry whisper. “Is it that I’m a man or that I’m black?”
“That’s not fair,” Melody said.
“You’re no better than your father,” Maurice said. “Bobby told me what happened. He told me all about it. Not that he had to. Everyone knows about that baptism. It’s no secret. It changed him, but he isn’t ruined and he isn’t a child. You can’t keep him one by making him stay here.”
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