“That was the fever?” I ask. “Or, like, the frog gave you germs?”
He shakes his head. “That was the fever. In disguise. Mr. Buckley killed it with a shovel, and I started getting better that night.”
Any other day, I would have laughed. Today I ask, “How’d Mr. Buckley know what to look for?”
Your pa-paw shakes his head again, drops the milfoil in the water and watches it bob away. “He learned it growing up down in the holler. Lots of my friends’ folks had come up from there after they flooded it. They’d tell stories about witches throwing curses and root-workers breaking them. Carry a lucky charm made from a buckeye or a stone with a hole in it, but thought you were crazy to walk around with two silver dollars in your pocket. That was tempting death, since when you died they put silver dollars on your eyes. They said you could heal bleeding by reading chapter sixteen of Ezekiel. And that you should never transplant a cedar tree from where it was growing. It was a different way of living down there, a whole different world.”
“What about something like this? Somebody’s soul getting trapped in the river?”
“No, I don’t think so … they talked about plenty of spooks, sure, but never anything like this. This river’s so old, though. It’s got so many secrets. Even someone like Mr. Buckley probably didn’t know half of them.”
“It has something to do with music,” Tyler says. He rolls your tarnished ring between his fingers. “The catfish came right after I played, too.”
“Rivercall! You’re right!” I gasp as it hits me. “You played, then Holly sent the catfish to us. She can still hear the music somehow. She knows it’s us somehow.”
“But why can’t she do more?” your pa-paw asks. “The first time I noticed the weeds doing that was days ago. I ain’t budged from this spot since.” He plucks another stalk of milfoil and tears it to bits. You musicians can’t think without fiddling with something. Your brains are directly connected to your hands.
“Well … what if we’re too far away?” I say. “Maybe we need to go to Swallow’s Nest Bluff and play there.”
Tyler’s mouth goes slack. His eyes beg for mercy. “Jane, I—”
“It’s where she drowned. Maybe she can’t send us a clear message because she’s too far away. We have to get as close to her as possible and pray she can tell us what’s happening.”
Tyler stares at his quivering reflection in the water. He wipes his eyes quickly. “I don’t know if I can.”
“You can. We have to.”
“Jane, I—”
“What did that ring mean? Why did you give it to Holly?”
Tyler runs the tip of his pinky along the inside of the ring—silver, tarnished bruise-brown—but he stays mute. He moves it back and forth, letting sunlight shaped by the cut-out cross play across his fingertips.
“It was more than just some pretty little present, wasn’t it?” I ask. “You wanted her to wear it and think of you, to remember you were always going to be there for her, always stand by her. Well, she remembers, Tyler. You think it was chance she used it to send her message? She remembers, and she needs you to remember.”
Tyler nods. “You’re right. You’re right.” All his goofiness is gone. The words fall heavy and certain like a lead weight in the palm.
Show me a sunbeam that can do that, Holly.
Your pa-paw gets the engine running while me and Tyler chop the houseboat loose from the milfoil. Tyler unwinds the docking ropes, then jumps back onboard as the boat eases out of its slip. The green and gray land passes in a shimmering heat-haze like a daydream. As the marina drifts away, Tyler takes the wheel from your pa-paw. Grown-ups can’t find Swallow’s Nest Bluff.
This river is so old. When the Nephilim walked the land and men were like grasshoppers at their feet, it was flashing as thin and quick as a minnow. The Mississippians came and built cities along its banks. They raised earthwork pyramids into the cool air and let the spring floods fertilize their fields with rich black silt. They carved images of eagle-beaked bird men and a monster called the underwater panther into clay. They believed animals able to move between the land, water, and sky—salamanders, turtles, ducks—and maybe catfish too?—acted as messengers of the gods, moving between our world and the spirit worlds above and below us.
The Mississippians lived and worshiped here for five hundred years, then disappeared. Nobody knows why. They vanished before Columbus came, leaving their warriors decaying within great burial mounds, surrounded by crumbling symbols of strength and wealth.
Hernando de Soto came through Muscle Shoals, exploring the New World. He forded the shoals heading into Tennessee and never came back down again. The Indians thought he was an immortal sun god. After he died of fever, his men were afraid of what the Indians might do if they discovered he’d just been a man. They weighted his body down with stones and tipped it over the side of a boat, letting the river swallow one more secret.
English and Irish settlers came and built a port on top of the Mississippians’ great burial mounds, grown lush with wildflowers by then. During the Civil War, soldiers came. They’re still here, too. From the highway, people have seen their ghosts marching, deaf and blind to the roaring cars.
It’s all still here, Holly. People built the dam, tried to tame the river, let the lake cover up the Indian mounds, but it’s all still down there. I can feel them all underneath us—curses of the Nephilim, the underwater panther, Hernando de Soto’s bones clanking around in rusted-out armor, fevers disguised as frogs—one layer of mysteries on top of another on top of another. And you’ve sunk down, down to the lightless bottom and can’t escape.
Thinking about it makes my stomach tighten; it makes breathing hard. But I won’t be afraid, Holly. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear.
Nine
Tyler scans the shoreline through his Aviators. Sitting on the deck, I try to pray for protection and guidance, but it’s hopeless. I close my eyes, but all I feel is the river’s long centuries, stretching back to the start of the world.
The bluff comes into view, a fist of striated limestone. I haven’t been here since you died, Holly. Suddenly, I can’t feel the lake anymore, only the hot, hard sadness swelling in my throat.
It was the height of summer. You were out of school, and Tyler just got his license. We went mud-riding across his cousin’s land, bouncing up and down hills, spraying dirt. He let me drive some, and I fishtailed the truck just to feel the delicious whip-crack momentum bounce us against the doors.
We should have stayed out there, or just gone home. I’m sorry, Holly. But it felt like the start of everything. It was so much fun to go fast and be loud, we didn’t want to stop. Tyler suggested we drive out to the bluff.
The water below us was pea-green and restless. We’d swing and jump, dangling in the air for a moment before gravity grabbed us by our stomachs and yanked us down. Flung hard to the water, the sting and cold-shock of it, making every nerve yowl at once, reminding us how alive we were.
Remember how excited you were about the Halogen concert? Since Tyler could drive now, you could go to shows in Huntsville, Birmingham, anywhere. Stretched out on the stone ledge, soaking in the sun, I decided to ask my parents if I could go to the concert with you.