The Drowned Forest (15 page)

Twenty-one

How powerful have you become, Holly? Your swallows found us, a mile from the river, and told you where we were. Are they searching the whole city for us now? We’re driving away from Stratofortress’s house, but it’s not done. You’ll come back. You’ll keep coming back and coming back. You’ll never let go of me.

And you’ve made Stratofortress into runaways too, leaving behind everything except each other. We head to Britney’s apartment on Greene Street, behind Domino’s.

Britney opens the door. “Hey, Steve. Um … what’s up?” She glances past his shoulder at us.

“Hey, how you doing, honey?” We crowd into the living room and Steve tells her the story. Britney offers to order a pizza, but nobody’s worried about food. LeighAnn holds Hobbit in her lap, and Max holds her.

“Got anything to drink?” LeighAnn asks.

Britney finds a bottle of liquor. Ultimate pours some into a Panama City shot glass for LeighAnn and takes a swig from the bottle himself. They both twitch their heads like horses as the stuff goes down.

While Britney goes to find extra blankets for us, LeighAnn murmurs, “So what happens now?”

“We stay here tonight. And tomorrow … ” Max glances at me, then away. “Tomorrow, we’ll figure out what to do tomorrow.”

Taking the bottle, LeighAnn pours another shot and downs it. “Jane, you can’t come back. I’m sorry. Tyler, same thing.”

“Come on, Lee-lee. We’re not kicking them to the curb.”

“Don’t you remember when that thing touched you?” LeighAnn snaps. “I do. I remember pulling flowers out of—” She hits him, then starts to cry, managing, “Now it’s coming to my house? Killed my damn dog.”

Ultimate tries to say something; I cut him off. “She’s right. Tyler, if those birds, and whatever else Holly has searching for us, found us at their house, they can find you at yours. We’ve got to get away. Get away from the lake, maybe from this whole stretch of river.”

“You have anywhere you can go? Some family you can stay with?” Ultimate asks.

“Family that wouldn’t immediately call our parents?”

“Well, we’ll loan you some cash,” LeighAnn says. “Plus maybe you can sell the Dreadnought. An antique like that should be worth a couple thousand.”

“No.” I jerk my head up. “That’s—”

“Quiet,” Ultimate says.

“No, we can’t sell the—”

“Shut up!” Ultimate hisses. “Bird. It’s one of the birds.”

Perched on the window sill—a shadow against the glass—it cocks its head and stares in at us. Nobody speaks. Nobody moves.

The swallow’s attention drops down to something on the sill. It pecks at it, seeming to forget about us, then flicks its forked tail and swoops back into the dull orange glow of the city.

“Did it see us? Is it going to tell Holly?”

“Well, in the first place, was it one of Holly’s birds?”

“It must be.”

“So what now? They followed us? Or are they looking in every window in the city?”

“And still, did it see us? It didn’t look like it noticed us.”

“I don’t know, but tomorrow morning, you guys have to leave.” Max looks at me and Tyler, squeezing LeighAnn’s hand. “Sorry.”

Tyler nods. This is the best thing. The only thing, really.

“Guys, I’m so sorry,” Britney walks back in, arms loaded down. “I don’t have enough extra blankets, just some sleeping bags.”

“Don’t worry. I’m used to it.” I take one of the bags from her, giving her a hug in exchange.

Things settle down, and the next time I look up, Britney and Ultimate have slipped off to the bedroom. Tyler and Max decide somebody should keep watch. Tyler offers to stay up first, and he’ll wake Max up at four. I stay up with him. We sit in the kitchen, the guitar on the table. It’s the only clue we have—it’s my last link to you. Selling it just doesn’t feel right, Holly.

The apartment grows quiet, just LeighAnn’s gentle snores. We keep the curtains drawn and only the light above the sink burning.

“Listen,” Tyler whispers. “We’re going to keep looking for answers to all this, okay? We’ll sell the Dreadnought and keep looking for Dr. Frazier’s missing transcripts, okay?”

I drop my face into the snug darkness between my arms. “I want to go home.”

“I know.”

He really doesn’t, does he, Holly? Tyler doesn’t have a clue what it’ll be like to leave everyone behind, not even saying goodbye. He can’t imagine how bad he’ll want to touch their hands again, to hear their voices. He doesn’t know yet, but he will soon.

He rubs my back, whispering, “It’ll be okay. We’re going—”

“Quit.” I shove his meaty arm away.

We sit hunched into ourselves, together but alone. After a long time, I pick up the guitar, running my fingers along the strings. They sound like far away groans.

“What are you doing?” Tyler hisses. “We have to be quiet.”

“I’ll play quiet. Just for you and me.” No pick, barely brushing the strings with the edge of my thumb. Soft snatches of songs and things I make up. The Dreadnought is big and clumsy. It was made for giants—Johnny Cash, your pa-paw—and I can hardly get my arms around it. Tyler listens until his eyes slip closed. Head in his hand, he starts snoring. It’s hours until we’re supposed to wake Max up. I let them all sleep for now.

I play “Down by the Riverside” so softly I have to strain to hear it. It’s a song for everybody who’s been cast out and cut away, everybody lost in the wilderness. Tonight, I play for me and Tyler. And LeighAnn with the job she hates, and the rest of Stratofortress. I really hope they make it someday. I play for you too, Holly. Despite all this, I still love you. I wish you knew that. I’m still chatting with you like you’re right beside me because I always talked to you when I was afraid. Because how can I get through this without my best friend?

Grimacing as I shape my wounded hand into the right chords, I push through them a little smoother every time. I feel the Dreadnought’s mojo as it sings about the heaviness in my bones that I don’t have the words to explain. It comes from everyone who’s played this guitar, every song it’s sung. It makes the guitar more than what I can see with my eyes or hold in my hands.

Then God speaks. His whisper falls like an atom bomb.
Dread not
.

I hold the guitar and feel you holding it too. I can feel the magic you put into it with every song, with the first song you ever played. It was before we ever met, Holly, but the guitar holds the moment within its whorled grain.

Seven years old and an orphan and scared—scared in a way you didn’t even have words for. One day, your pa-paw folds his calloused fingers over your soft ones. Together, you strum loud and laugh and the music makes you feel brave. You squint through the sound hole, searching for that magic. The guitar is just wood and metal strings, nothing mysterious. You keep searching, though. You touch the curling gold letters behind the headstock, sounding them out.

C. F. Martin & Co. Dreadnought.

Dread not.

God laid His hand upon your head and made a promise. Dread not, and even when you couldn’t be strong, music would make you as stubborn as spring. Dread not, Holly, and music would be your deep roots. You would survive drought and freeze. You played and played that old Dreadnaught until your fingers blistered and bled and calloused. You kept your end of the covenant. When your me-maw died, you almost forgot, but I helped you remember. I helped you decorate—dedicate—your new guitar.

Fear not.

In Britney’s kitchen, I start playing fearlessly, strings biting my fingertips. We just have to make you remember again.

Tyler’s head jerks up. “Jane! Jane, quit!”

“I know why Auntie Peake’s prayer didn’t work!” I say. “Holly had her own way of praying. She connected to God through music. See? Dreadnought. Like ‘fear not.’ Like she painted on her guitar. We just have to get her to pray her way.”

He blinks at me, eyes dull with sleep. “Huh?”

I explain everything, slower this time. In the living room, LeighAnn and Max sit up and listen.

“You want to get her to play music?” LeighAnn asks. “How do you even try without getting killed? And even if she remembers, how can that help?”

“
If Holly remembers anything, it’s music. Music made her feel close to God.” I laugh as it all slides so easily into place. “That’s why Auntie Peake’s prayer wouldn’t work; Holly talked to God, heard God, in music. So if we get her to play, reconnect her to God, she’ll find her way out of the drowned forest.”

“You haven’t answered the ‘without getting killed’ part.”

“We have to try,” Tyler says. “Me and Jane, we loved her. We owe her. But you guys don’t owe Holly anything. You guys should stay clear.”

“Are you kidding me?” The bedroom door swings open. Ultimate steps out, zipping up his pants. “Back when we were in the Banana Hammocks, Holly came to our first-ever gig. Can’t leave a fan hanging.”

“Thanks, man.” Tyler gives him a shoulder-bumping half-hug.

Max and LeighAnn look at each other. Max says, “If Steve dies, we gotta find a new drummer.”

“Yeah … wanna ask Davis?”

“He’s in Gypsy Fingers now. What about Twitchy?”

“Twitchy’s a pothead. He’ll never come to practice. Maybe Karen?”

“I’m not putting up with that Britpop crap.”

LeighAnn groans and kicks out of the sleeping bag. “Forget it. Easier just to keep this one alive.”

Ultimate Steve bumps shoulders with her too. “Leave Hobbit here. I’ll write a note for Britney.”

Slipping on shoes, grabbing the Dreadnought, we head out into the night.

Twenty-two

When you prayed like us, did you feel anything at all, Holly? Or was it just endless dark behind your eyelids and clasped hands itching for steel strings?

The lights still burn in Stratofortress’s house. I walk through carrying your pa-paw’s guitar. Ultimate grabs a mic stand and follows me.

“Holly?” Through the kitchen, out to the patio. “Holly?”

But your latest body lies still, the cymbal stand’s rusted leg planted deep in its chest. Ultimate didn’t just draw a magic circle around you, he poured the chalk and lime on top of you like he was salting a slug.

Tyler kicks at a clump of pokeweed that’s sprung up where Cookie died. There’s nothing left of the dog except a few brittle bones. Then we go back to the others, standing on the patio.

“So what now?” LeighAnn asks. “Just sit around and wait until she comes back?”

Tyler shakes his head. “Every time she dies, her soul gets pulled back to the drowned forest. That’s where she must be now. We need to go to her, now that we’re ready.”

“But what if she’s scared and angry?” I ask. “What if she doesn’t want to come out of the water?”

“We’ll make sure she can’t ignore us,” Max says. “Load up the gear. We’ll bring the two-by-twelve and the mini colossal.”

“Where are you going to plug in an amp by the river?”

“I’m an electrician, Lee-Lee. We
always
know where to plug it in.” When LeighAnn rolls her eyes, Max grins. “That was a joke. A dirty one. See, by ‘plug it in’ I could have been referring—”

“I got it, cowboy. I just didn’t want it.”

LeighAnn and Ultimate have loaded and unloaded the gear so many times, they work without a word passed between them. They only have to speak to tell me or Tyler where stuff fits and how to strap down the amps.

While the rest of us load the van, Max buries Cookie’s bones in the backyard. We’re sitting in the van when he comes around, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Ready?”

LeighAnn nods, sniffling back tears for Cookie.

The streets are empty. The van’s pale reflection slithers across darkened windows of law offices and the Starbucks. I’ll always remember our nights downtown, Holly. Just running around, burning to be loud and be alive. Sometimes I’d look up and there wasn’t any sky. The moon was hidden. City lights blinded us to the stars. I’d look up into dead black forever. You saw it too, didn’t you? It’s why you always laughed louder than me, howled and sang. You were the most alive person I ever knew. I get it now. It was the only way you had to keep all that horrible nothing from reaching inside you.

I have to remember that tonight. Tonight and the rest of my life.

They padlock the gate to Veterans Park after sundown. Pulling up, Max says, “There’s a hacksaw in the toolbox by your foot there.”

“Got it.” Hopping out, LeighAnn cuts through the lock and waves us through.

We drive behind the baseball diamonds, the van swaying hard as Max pulls off the paved road and onto the grass near the shore.

Hidden in the tall grass, crickets thrum like a pulse. As I help set the amps on the ground, the van’s headlights are warm against my skin. They stretch our shadows out across the land and the water.

Kneeling by one of the stadium light poles, Max opens the steel panel in its base with a special wrench. He hooks up the amps with alligator clamps, and they fill with their electric, wasp-nest murmur. Tyler pours the last of the chalk and lime on the grass, sketching out a stage around the band. Then he stands back and watches them finish setting up.

“Tyler,” I say. “You need to play with them.”

“Huh? No way. We may only have one chance at this.”

“But you need to play or else Holly won’t know it’s us. Remember?”

He remembers, his face growing pale as wax paper in the lamplight. He starts twisting the plastic bag in his hands nervously. “Jane, what if I mess up like last time?”

“You won’t.”

“What if I do? Holly might not come. Or she might end up hurting somebody else.”

I look at him, choosing my words very carefully. “I never liked you much,” I say.

Tyler snorts. “Gee, thanks.”

“Well, I didn’t. I thought you were a loud-mouth and a goof-off. And I figured Holly just hung out with you because you were a good musician, like, you could talk about music and guitars and stuff that I didn’t really know anything about.” It’s hard to admit. I usually think I have most people figured out, and lately, it seems like I’m wrong a lot of the time. “But she loved you because of your heart, because she knew you’d never let her down.”

He turns away, squeezing her eyes shut. “Except I did. I let her die, Jane.”

“No. That was an accident. You’re not responsible for that, only what you’ve done since. And since then you’ve stuck by her, stuck by me. I couldn’t have done any of this without you.”

He wipes his eyes with his palm. “I still don’t know how that’s going to keep me from messing up now.”

“She loved you because of your heart.
That’s
what called her to you in the first place. Go and play with the band. Make a mistake or two, but as long as that heart comes through in the music, Holly will come. I know it.”

He nods and hugs me. No half-hug either. Tyler squeezes me tight, almost lifting me off my feet.

Ultimate yells, “Come on, guys. We’re ready.”

Turning, Tyler steps into the circle. LeighAnn hands him his guitar, and Stratofortress is ready for a very strange gig. Except beyond the lights, there’s just the choppy water. The audience hasn’t shown up yet.

I look over my shoulder at Tyler. “How about ‘Down by the Riverside’? That seems right.”

Tyler nods and starts to play, skipping staccato notes across the water like stones. Stratofortress comes in, backing Tyler up with a wall of rhythm and bass. I stand there holding the Dreadnought.

The Dread Not.

I sing along with the band. “
I’m gonna lay down my heavy load, down by the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the riverside …
”

Fish start breaking the surface of the water, flashing silver. One lands on the bank, flops and gasps, stranded among the Queen Anne’s lace blooming between the stones. Shadows of birds jerk through the headlight beams.

The waves grow rough, a hundred foamy lips smacking against the rocks. The stink grows too. It’s death, but it’s not cold and not silent. It’s fertile black death as warm as flesh, hungry to feed new green shoots. It’s the last truth, isn’t it, Holly? As absolute as life ending in death, every death brings new life.

“
I’m gonna put on my long white robe, down by the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the riverside. I’m gonna put on my …
Holly … hey … ”

“Jane?”

The music scatters to silence behind us. “It’s me, Holly. And Tyler. He’s here too.”

“Why do you keep leaving? I need help.”

“I’m sorry. I’m here now. I won’t leave this time.” But before you cross the circle, I yell, “Wait! Holly, look. I brought your pa-paw’s Dreadnought. Remember? Dread Not? Don’t you remember?”

“It’s broken. I tried to play … it’s broken, broken.”

“No, my friend just had to re-string it. Listen.” I play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” through steady, certain fingers.

The gash of your mouth bends into something like a smile. “When’d you learn that?”

“This week. I’ve learned a lot of … a lot.”

Twisting your fingers around each other, you stare around. “I got lost. We were at the bluff, but I got lost in the forest. I need to go home.”

“It’ll be okay. Here, you remember how to play, don’t you?” Stepping across the white line, I meet you on the border between water and land, between life and death. I push Johnny Cash’s guitar into your hands.

Fingers travel across the frets. They trace the faded logo on the headstock, just like I know they did that first time you played, years ago. You strum a loose, buzzing chord, and hope swells in my chest. Another chord. Then, “I need to go home. Let’s go home, Jane.”

“You have to remember how to play, Holly. Just remember.”

“No!”

The swallows cry out as you throw the guitar away. The clay bank crumbles underneath us, and we both tumble to the water. My knee smashes against algae-slick rocks. A wave crashes down on my back, then washes back out. Sputtering, I feel the river thirsty to slurp us down.

I scuttle back toward land, dragging my leg. My knee bleeds freely, hot blood spilling across goose-pimpled flesh. You grab my arm with fingers worn down to driftwood spurs, keeping me from reaching the dry bank. We kneel together in the shallow water, on the tip of the river’s tongue. The waves have washed your face smooth.

“I have to get home, please,” you say. “Pa-paw’s going to be worried.”

“You can’t.” The black water swirls around our ankles. Pale flowers push up from my scratches, but I ignore the feeling of their roots probing beneath my skin. “Holly, you can’t go home anymore. I’m sorry, but you got lost in the drowned forest, and nobody can get back from there.”

“Stop! I have to go home!” Another waist-high wave smashes into us as you scream.

“You can’t, Holly. But you can go
through
. You have to go through the drowned forest to the other side.”

“But you have to go alone.” Tyler is beside us, and he has the Dreadnought. “You have to let go of Jane, sweetheart. Please, please.”

“No … not alone. Please, I can’t go alone.”

“Sure you can.” Tyler offers her the guitar. “Dread not, remember? Fear not.”

“Tyler … ”

“Your pa-paw’s waiting for you. Your mom and dad, your me-maw, they’re all waiting for you on the other side. Just let go of Jane, okay? Please?”

You take the guitar. Tyler takes my arm. The rest of Stratofortress all grab ahold and haul me onto the grass. We watch and listen as you pluck out “Down by the Riverside” on the lonely guitar.

Then the swallows begin singing in harmony. Crickets chirp out a distortion-thick rhythm, following your lead in perfect cut time. The rough waves strike the rocks in a slap-crash bass line. The song fills the darkness. The strings rust and snap under your fingers. You strum like they’re still there, playing all of deafening creation.

I’m gonna lay down my heavy load, down by the riverside,

down by the riverside, down by the riverside.

I’m gonna lay down my heavy load, down by the riverside.

I’m gonna study war no more.

Then you look up, at something just over our heads, speaking to somebody we can’t see. Your smile on that rough face—I’d almost forgotten how beautiful it was. When you slump sideways, folding down to the rocks, I gasp and try to stand. Tyler holds me. “It’s okay, Jane. Let her go.”

The birds and crickets keep singing. The waves crash down, snatching you—no, just the lump of clay you left behind—back down to the drowned forest.

“The guitar!” Ultimate splashes after the Dreadnought as it tumbles, black against black, toward the center of the lake.

Nature’s song goes on a little longer, and then the swallows start flying off—one, three, then the great rustling storm of them all at once. The cricket-rhythm tumbles back to the ordinary drone of insects again.

When I fell, a rock tore open the skin below my knee. As I try to stand, icy bolts shoot up into my stomach and make me want to puke. Flopping back to the ground, I start plucking the flowers from the scratches in my arm, sucking my breath as I pull out the roots. Now that you’re finally gone, the pain and panic I kept squashed down in my chest overtakes me all at once. I have to keep wiping tears away to see the flowers. My hands shake so bad, I can’t pull them out anyway.

“It’s okay, don’t cry.” Crouching beside me, Tyler helps pluck the flowers. “We’ll get them all out. Don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying for that. It’s because—ow!” I grit my teeth as he yanks the last flower. “It’s because Holly’s gone to Heaven. She’s not lost anymore.”

He grins and nods. “We did it.”

And suddenly I’m laughing. As the pain and panic rush out, the only thing left in my chest is a trilling joy. While Tyler and a sopping wet Ultimate—Dreadnought in one hand—help me to the van, I’m crying and laughing and wincing with every step. I’m a bloody, muddy mess, and I can’t stop singing.

“
I’m gonna put on my long white robe, down by the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the riverside …
” I sit on the floor of the van, emptying water out of the Dreadnought’s sound hole. While Stratofortress tosses equipment and cables in all around me, they sing along.

“
… I’m gonna put on my long white robe, down by the riverside. I’m gonna study war no more …
”