Three Rivers (29 page)

These were the stories people told in the days after the flood. Redemption, miracles, supernatural visions, close brushes with God. Not since Noah and Moses and Abraham had there been so many people receiving messages from on high. Everyone, it seemed, knew someone who knew someone who swore each tall tale was the gospel truth.

Melody was inclined to believe none of it, except of course the part about the woman with her dead husband, the woman whose hair turned suddenly silver, though Melody suspected the transformation had more to do with the corrosive floodwaters stripping away Miss Clairol than with any sort of divine intervention.

She stroked Mama's hair, wiry and coarse between her fingers. At the shelter, everyone said her mother was dead. Sheriff Randall was the one who told her that her mother was alive and had been airlifted to a hospital in Memphis. Melody's first thought on seeing Mama was that death might have been a blessing. Her body was broken, her face marked with lines Melody hadn't seen before and, of course, there was the loss of that beautiful black hair. When Melody found herself alone in the hospital room with Mama for a few brief moments, she was struck with the dark thought that she could spare Mama the pain of recovery, the pain of seeing herself suddenly aged. A pillow across her face or a bit of poison inserted into the tube delivering medicine, either would do the trick. As soon as she thought it, she went cold. When had she become capable of such thoughts?

“Melody?” Mama opened her eyes.

“I'm here, Mama.”

“Don't hurt me.”

It was like her mother had read her dark thoughts. Melody flushed with shame. She called for the nurse, who adjusted the drip attached to Mama's arm. Mama slipped back into unconsciousness.

“She seems scared.”

The nurse made a note on a chart. “Who knows what she's thinking. She's been through a terrible trauma.” The nurse looked at Melody. “So have you. You should get some sleep.”

“I know,” Melody said. “I will.” She knew she wouldn't, not anytime soon. She didn't mind. Since the storm, she'd been busy and useful. It felt good to be useful.

“The painkillers sometimes cause strange dreams,” the woman told her. “We'll start weaning her off as soon as we can.”

The woman in the bed across the room called out, “Praise Jesus!” in a high-pitched voice.

“See what I mean?” The nurse disappeared behind the curtain to tend to the woman, another flood victim.

Melody had asked about a private room, but the hospital was crowded. Since they rolled the woman in, she'd been telling the same story. This woman swore she'd seen a man in the water, a man unfazed by the rushing currents and the swirling depths. The man, she said, floated past her as gently as if he were out for a leisurely swim. The man had dark hair and skin the color of cedar. “He didn't walk on water,” the woman told Melody. “It was more like he was part of the water.” The woman thought she'd seen Jesus and that he had saved her. She was rescued moments later and had been close to drowning. “Thank you, Jesus!” she shouted. “Praise Jesus!”

Bobby pushed open the heavy door and entered the room with Liam. The child's mouth was covered in something. Chocolate? “Come here.” She pulled Liam onto her lap and used a tissue to wipe his face. He grinned at her. It was blackberry jam smeared across his lips. Slightly better than chocolate, Melody figured. Obi would not approve of too much junk food. Her stomach ached when she thought of Obi. There was no word of him, and Melody wanted to believe that no news meant he was alive somewhere, hiding and waiting. Pisa seemed to believe that was true. How had she put it? She said she could feel her son's “essence in the physical world and not yet in the spiritual realm.” It had not been difficult to track down Pisa. Many women knew her, knew where her house stood three counties away. The sheriff managed to find a phone number and get the woman on the line once the phones were restored. Melody filled her in, told her that her grandson was safe and her son was missing. Melody explained they were heading to Memphis with an emergency crew to see her mother. “I'd like to bring Liam along,” she said. “The roads to get him back to you won't open for a few more days at least, maybe a week. I'll bring him to you as soon as I'm able. I promise.”

She handed the phone to Liam and let him talk to his grandmother until the volunteer in charge of the phone started shooting her dirty looks. The phone lines were only sporadically in use, and people were waiting for a turn.

Today, just three days later, when the man on the news announced the roads were open, Melody prepared to make the drive. It would be even better to wait a few more days, she knew. There would be traffic and still some detours, but she had promised. She would get Liam to his grandmother by nightfall.

Her mother's eyes fluttered opened again. The fear was gone, but she didn't seem to recognize Melody.

“Mama,” Melody said. “This is Liam, do you remember Liam?”

Geneva stared at the boy, a blank expression on her face.

“This is Obi's son, Pisa's grandson.”

At the mention of Pisa, Mama's eyes flickered. Somewhere, beneath the drugs and the trauma, Mama remembered. The nurses told Melody to talk to her, to be conversational, normal. Melody read to her. She bought a newspaper and read from different sections. Mostly, she read news from the style section, beauty tips and Hollywood gossip and fashion advice. She avoided news of the flood, which filled the front section. Occasionally she read a dry article from the business section or something about national politics. Mama drifted in and out of sleep. She seemed to be dreaming even when awake.

“We're taking him home,” Melody said. “We're going back today.”

“You're leaving me?”

“Just for a day. Bobby will stay with you.”

“We're a family,” she said. “You can't keep secrets from me.”

Melody didn't know what kind of secrets her mother thought she was keeping, but she played along. “I wouldn't dream of keeping secrets from you, Mama.”

“I'm going to tell you all about the shed. We can't have secrets.”

“I can't wait to hear all about it. It sounds like one hell of a story.” Melody wondered if she meant Old Granddaddy's toolshed or some other shed long gone. Her mother seemed haunted by memories and kept mixing up the past with the present.

Bobby stood beside Melody. “Mama, Mama, Mama.”

“Angel boy.” Mama reached out and took Bobby's hand. She squeezed her eyes shut. Fat tears rolled across her temples and into her hair.

“You'll be okay here today?” Melody asked Bobby. “I'll be back tonight. It'll be late.”

“My boy,” Mama said. “My beautiful boy.”

“Come back,” Bobby said.

“I promise.” She touched his arm, was grateful he didn't pull away. “I'll drive like the wind.”

At the shelter, after sitting for hours with Bobby and Liam on the hard bleachers, she'd stood to stretch her legs. Bobby grabbed her arm and begged, “Don't!” People turned to stare at them as Melody shushed Bobby and tried to pull away. He was scared of being left alone. Melody stayed by his side. She and Bobby and Liam walked the floors of the shelter together and made a game of it. “Jumping jacks,” Bobby would call out, and the three of them would stop where they were and perform a set of ten. “Somersault!” Liam called, and they rolled across the dirty floor. Melody tried to enlist the girl from the boat to join them, but the girl sat hunched in a corner like a rodent, feasting on handfuls of sugary breakfast cereal. Maurice had disappeared. The crowds in the gym were segregated, not by any formal agreement but just because that's the way things were done. Bobby understood that Maurice could not sit with him and that he could not join the large, dark knot of people on the far side of the gym.

Liam told them stories about white dogs and hawks and coyotes. He spoke of his father as if he would see him soon. Melody hoped that was true. She knew Boggs had neither arrested Obi nor brought him in for questioning. The sheriff told her Obi had disappeared into the storm. Could he survive? Melody hoped he could.

The sheriff asked her about the girl who'd been rescued with them. “Deputy Boggs thinks she knows more than she's saying. Deputy Boggs thinks she's hiding something.”

“I don't know anything about her,” Melody said.

“I'm sorry about your father.”

He turned to leave. Melody called after him. “If you do find Obi, what will happen to him?”

The sheriff shrugged. “All we have is the story from the girl, and she seems confused. No one else has reported a thing. No missing persons report, nothing. Boggs only wanted to question him. He may have been overzealous in his efforts. He feels terrible about scaring the man. Unless we find some evidence to support the girl's story, I don't know what we'd charge him with.” Sheriff Randall dropped his head and scuffed his foot against the floor. He wrapped her in a big bear hug that left her gasping. “Tell your mama that I said hello. You take good care of Genie, you hear?”

*   *   *

Now Melody handed Liam over to Bobby, asked her brother to wash the child's face. “We'll be leaving soon.” She turned to her mother. Seeing her laid out in a hospital bed took Melody back to the day of Bobby's baptism. Back then, she was filled with terror and fury, and she realized she'd carried those feelings around for a solid decade. But no more. Somewhere in the midst of the storm, her terror and fury were washed away. Back then, her mother said she'd saved Bobby and she didn't have the strength to save Melody, too. Now Melody knew she didn't need saving, not by her mother and not by religion. “I'm going to see Pisa,” she said. “Is there anything you want me to tell her?”

“I'm sorry,” Geneva said.

“I'll let her know.”

“Not her.”

Melody's mother had never apologized to her for anything, and she wasn't apologizing now. She was in her head, hallucinating from the drugs. “I killed her. I didn't know what else to do. I was so young, just like you are now. I couldn't see any other way. She wanted to go. You'd have done the same.”

“What are you talking about, Mama?”

“We were trapped,” she said. “I set her free. I saved myself. You don't know what it's like to be stuck. I did the best I could, you know. I always did the best I could.”

When her mother was better and no longer on heavy painkillers, Melody planned to tell her that she knew exactly what it felt like to be stuck. There was no point trying to get through to her now, though. “I'll be back soon,” she said.

“I did the only thing I knew to do,” her mother said. “I did the best I could.”

*   *   *

Melody made one more stop before leaving the hospital. Chris's face was swathed in bandages. The doctors broke his nose again to reset it, but it would always be crooked. The bruising around his eyes had softened, and the black was fading into spectacular shades of mottled green and yellow. His head, where the doctors had drilled in and removed fluid from his brain, was shaved and stark on the white pillow.

“They said I can go home tomorrow,” Chris said. “I don't really have a home.” She knew what he meant. He didn't have anywhere that felt like home.

“Your parents will be glad to see you. I'm sure they're worried sick.”

“My mother organized a prayer chain with the women at church. Someone is praying for me around the clock. They all took half-hour increments. Dad said she posted a schedule on the refrigerator.”

Melody laughed. “She wants to do something. It's what she knows.”

Chris grimaced. “I can't feel God anymore. I used to pray and know that he was there, listening. Now, it's just empty.”

“Maybe that's what God is,” she said. “Just emptiness that we fill up with whatever we need.”

“That's depressing.”

“Well, I haven't really got it figured out. I could be wrong.”

“I feel like a fraud,” Chris said. “I don't know what I'm supposed to do now.”

“No one has to do anything in this world,” Melody said, parroting George Walter. The strange man who had picked her up on the side of the road had been right about so many things. “Everything in life is a choice.”

“If that's true, you should choose to keep singing. There's nothing phony about your voice.”

“I'll see you tomorrow,” Melody said. “I'll stop by and say good-bye before they release you.”

Melody drove for more than five hours, navigating the cheap rental car through numerous detours. She bounced across old, rutted roads marked only by numbers or not marked at all. Mud caked the tires, and dust settled over the car until it became a clay-colored insect crawling across the land. She taught Liam songs to pass the time, taught him how to sing in rounds, how to do simple harmonies. He had a clear, sweet alto. By the time she pulled into the gravel drive in front of Pisa's small wooden house, she knew she would miss Liam terribly.

There was not much storm damage here, just scattered tree limbs and shingles blown off the roof. Pisa stepped onto the front porch, and Liam sprinted to her. Melody recognized her from the childhood visit. She hadn't changed.

“You are Geneva's lost songbird,” Pisa said.

“Not lost,” Melody said. “Found.”

“I see that.” Pisa gestured for her to come inside the house, but Melody stayed put.

“Let me fix you something to eat.”

“I have a long drive back to Memphis. The roads are still tricky, and I'd like to get the worst of it behind me while I have some light.”

“Wait a moment. I have something for you.” Pisa ducked into the house. Liam followed, and Melody wondered if she'd get a chance to say good-bye. Pisa emerged with a small wooden box. “There are some things in here for you and some for your mother.” She pried open the lid, and Melody smelled the strong scent of cedar. Pisa pulled out a transparent fabric pouch that smelled of camphor and overripe plums. “Give this to your mother. Tell her to hold it against her chest and say these words.” She plucked out a folded piece of paper. “It will speed her healing.” She handed Melody a bit of whitewashed fossil or bone suspended on a frayed bit of red thread. “This is for you.”