The Drowned Forest (7 page)

Eleven

The door bursts open, and where am I? I yell, groping
through unfamiliar shadows.

The light comes on, making me wince. “Jane? Hey.” Ultimate Steve stands under the hard glare.

“Hey.” I’m at Stratofortress’s house, I remember now. I remember everything.

Steve is wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday morning. Sipping an energy drink, he says, “So … what? You crashing here?”

I nod. “Holly’s a ghost. Her soul’s trapped in the river, and I have to stay here until we can free her.”

“Wow, that sucks. It won’t keep you up if I play Xbox, will it?” He’s already down on the floor in front of the TV. I shut my eyes, but machine-gun fire from the game washes over me, keeps making me flinch. I open one eye.

“Didn’t you just drive to South Carolina and back?”

“Yeah.” His face flickers in blue light, then in the bright orange of a tossed grenade.

“So aren’t you going to get some sleep?”

“Nah, had, like, twelve of these things.” He takes another gulp of his energy drink.

I pull the lip of the sleeping bag over my head. My skin is damp and itchy from my wet clothes. Plus I don’t have my Tenex. I’ll never get back to sleep.

Lying hidden, I drift back to the time the youth group planted flowers in the church flower beds. Two springs ago? We were supposed to do it on a Wednesday evening, but bad weather pushed it to Saturday. Mom and me were both scrambling to make sure enough people came, and I couldn’t figure out why you were so mad.

“You were gonna come over here on Saturday.” Your anger crackled over the phone.

“Well, stuff got turned around because of the rain. Sorry.”

“We were gonna make monkey bread.”

“We’ll make it some other time.”

“I wanted to do it Saturday. Please, we haven’t hung out in forever.”

“Well, we’ve got five pallets of impatiens that need to be planted. Why can’t you come and help?”

“I can’t deal with Jonathan. All the youth group guys are just … ”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“They’re just what?” I snapped, getting mad.

“They’re goof-offs, Jane. They’ll work for, like, fifteen minutes, then start goofing off and make you do the rest.” Several seconds of staticky silence passed, then you muttered, “Why do you have to be in charge of every single youth group project, anyway? You’re such a goody-goody.”

“I am not.” My lame response just made me madder at you. “I have to go. Have fun sitting in your house judging everybody.”

“Yeah, whatever.” You hung up, the buzz of the dead line stinging like a wasp. You were angry because I couldn’t bake monkey bread with you. Angry because under the surface, beneath all your sweetness, there was always something desperate, something half-convinced that everybody had already abandoned you.

That’s what came out of the water last night … that frightened, always-hungry shadow of yourself. That can’t be all that’s left of you, Holly. It just can’t.

That morning, we filled the flowerbeds with fresh potting soil before planting. Then we gently teased each impatiens’s root ball loose before setting it into the rain-dampened ground. I love the smell of humus—that old vegetable matter decayed into rich, dark dirt. Planting things, sinking my hands into the cool earth, may be the most calming feeling in the world, the most
right
feeling in the world.

But that day, I was mad because you were acting like a jerk. I got even madder when the boys started goofing off fifteen minutes in, chasing each other around the community hall.

But I prayed for you, Holly, right there on the sidewalk, clasped hands black with dirt. And when I prayed, I stopped feeling mad, and when I stopped feeling mad, I remembered it was the anniversary of your parents’ death.

“Oh no.” I stood up. “Jonathan! Come here! I need you guys to plant the rest of this row. And that row over there.”

“
Okay,” he chuckled. “But Dylan took my—”

“I don’t care! I have to do something, and all these have to get in the ground today.”

“Okay, okay. But how do we—”

“Figure it out.” Stuffing my straw hat on his head, I left. Just turned my back and walked away. That felt good, Holly, I have to admit.

I jogged the two miles to your house. By the time I knocked on the door, I was panting hard. But when you opened it, I managed enough breath to snap, “Why didn’t you tell me what today was?”

“I don’t—did your mom drop you off or something?”

“I was at church and ran.”

“You ran?”

“Yes, of course,” I said, stepping into the delicious air conditioning of your living room. “Where’s your pa-paw?”

“At the studio,” you grumbled. “He always finds something to work on this time of year. He’ll probably put in a hundred hours this week.”

I sighed and asked again, “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Because it’s stupid.”

“No, it’s not.” I pulled you into a hug. “
You’re
stupid for not telling me. But this is not stupid.”

Burying your face in my neck, you began to sob. “Part of me just can’t ever remember that they’re dead. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and think they’re in the next room. And then I remember, and it’s almost like losing them all over.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I miss Mom and Dad. I miss Me-maw.”

“I know, I know. But I’m always here for you, Holly. All you ever have to do is ask. Okay?”

You sniffled and nodded, then said, “Can’t believe you ran all the way here.”

“Yeah. Oh, I also yelled at Jonathan.”

“Really? Awesome.”

Twelve

The shower turns on. Is it morning already? I lie in my sleeping bag thinking about you, thinking about my promise. Max and Steve talk in the kitchen. I smell black coffee and pick out my name in their conversation. Tyler’s name too.

“See you tonight, Lee-Lee,” Max says.

“Bye, guys. Be careful.”

They walk out. A motor starts and pulls away. Then LeighAnn nudges me. “Hey. Hey, wake up.”

Pulling down the lip of the sleeping bag, I squint at her. She’s wearing a white blouse and maroon skirt. The airplane tattoo on her forearm shows through the thin material of her blouse, but she pulls on a maroon suit jacket that covers it completely. She looks normal now, except for a pair of bangles on her wrist made from old guitar strings.

Flipping her hair out of her collar, LeighAnn asks, “You okay? No … ?” She mimes a flower blooming.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” Kicking out of the sleeping bag, I scratch at my bandages.

“I got some clothes for you. If you want to wash what you’ve got on.”

“Thanks.” The denim shorts and well-worn tee smell like cigarettes, but at least they’re dry. The old sneakers are at least a size too big. “How come you’re dressed like that?”

“Going to work.”

“Oh. I thought you were in a band.”

She snorts. “Yeah, well, rock ’n’ roll’s just the money gig. My passion is being a bank teller. Want some coffee?”

“No thanks.”

“Well, it’s there if you change your mind. Not much else food-wise. Some sandwich stuff, I think. Ravioli and some canned stuff in the laundry room.”

For a table, Stratofortress has a giant cable spool in the middle of the dining room,
Florence Utilities
stenciled across the top. Dishes lie stacked in the kitchen sink, a fly buzzing round them. I really don’t want to eat anything from here, but I make myself say, “Thanks. And thanks for letting me stay here.”

“Mmhmm.” Her eyes widen suddenly and she says, “Hey, we’re going to go see a band later tonight. Want to come with us?”

“Oh, no. Thanks, but I—”

“Band called the Herpes Sponges. Sure you don’t want to come?”

“Uh, yeah.” That’s what I called LeighAnn yesterday. My face burns from the memory. My throat tightens. But she says it calmly, a rushed, half-remembered thing. Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe God is just reminding—

“Kinda ticks me off, actually. I was going to start a band called the Herpes Sponges. Or, you know, name my first child Herpes Sponge. Herpes Sponge Cassell. It’s more of a girl’s name, but it could work for a boy, don’t you think?”

I stare hard at the floor.

“Well? What do you think?”

“I … I don’t know.”

Is she going to kick me out? Holly, where do I go now?

“You think I’m trashy, fine. I’ll still take care of your runaway butt. But don’t
ever
treat me like I’m stupid.”

I nod, trying to cough up some chalk-dry apology. Then LeighAnn’s expression suddenly brightens again. “And if you can walk the dogs sometime today, that’d be a major help. Leashes are above the dryer. See you.” She turns and walks off. The front door opens and bangs shut.

My hands tremble with relief. Or guilt. Or both. LeighAnn could have kicked me out—she had a right to—but some spark of grace kept her from dumping me out on the street. Holly, I have to remember that. I hug the clothes LeighAnn loaned me. No matter what else I think about her, about these people, I have to remember that.

Outside, dawn hangs over the backyards like blue chiffon. The air remains night-cool and damp, but it’ll heat up soon. I go change into the clothes LeighAnn lent me. It feels good pulling on clean things. Right away, I’m sorry for acting stupid and stubborn last night and not asking to borrow something.

I unwrap the bandages from my arm. Scabs and bruises mark where you scratched me, Holly. One sickly pale flower has grown under the bandage, curled flat against my skin. I prod at the silk thread of a stem. Part of my soul stretches into the flower. I can sense the delicious cool against the leaves. I taste the drop of musky sweetness hidden at the center of squashed petals. I pinch the flower’s base and yank. The blood on the roots is bright red. Smearing on more antibiotic ointment, re-wrapping my arm, I toss the little flower in the trash.

I want to go home. My parents have probably been up all night worrying about me, praying, waiting for me to call. I wish I could at least text them so they’d know I’m okay. Stratofortress has a landline phone hanging on the kitchen wall. I could call Mom and Dad, just tell them I love them. But the police might trace the call. They’d come get me, and Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me out of their sight afterward.

I can’t go home. It doesn’t matter how lonely I feel. It doesn’t matter how much it hurts Mom and Dad. I can’t go home until I know you’re safe. I force the idea away, deciding to distract myself by nosing around Stratofortress’s house.

The flyers lining the hallway are from lots of different bands and venues—Calamity Jane in Birmingham, the Suicide Kings and Tom Waits in Nashville, a ton of shows at the UNA student center. There’s only a few flyers from Stratofortress’s own gigs. They’re all for local shows at the Brick or the Bandito Burrito. Stratofortress is usually an opening act, and on one flyer, they’re listed as Stradivarius.

I look around the rest of the house. In LeighAnn and Max’s bedroom, a thick layer of clothes and sound equipment covers the floor. A marijuana pipe sits on the dresser, ribbons of purple running through its clear glass body. Ultimate Steve doesn’t have a bed, just a mattress on the floor. A Jolly Roger hangs across the window for a curtain. A hole in the ceiling exposes the roof joists like two-by-four ribs, and a pot on the floor catches dripping water.

I want to go home, Holly.

No, no, it doesn’t matter. I have to push the idea out of my head.

Back in the kitchen, I pour myself some coffee. The bitter black crud scalds my tongue, but at least it’ll keep me awake. I check out the fridge. Almost no food, but there is half a case of beer.

Seriously, LeighAnn? You seriously want to be this particular rock ’n’ roll clich
é
? I’m a home-schooled Jesus dork, and even I know how lame this is.

I shut the refrigerator door. They’re letting me stay here. Remember that, remember that.

I heat up some ravioli for breakfast. Rinsing my bowl, I balance it on the stack of dishes already in the sink and start to walk away. But I can help out some while I’m here. Filling the sink with hot water, I wash the dishes. I need a butter knife to scrape away the crusty food and dead mosquito-eaters.

Tyler should be up by now. I wonder if Bo told his parents everything. I pace and worry, but I’ll just have to wait until Tyler gets in touch with me. A sliding glass door leads from the kitchen to the back patio. I step out to see what kind of dogs LeighAnn has.

She has happy dogs! They scramble out of their doghouse and come greet me, nails clicking on the bare concrete patio. I let them sniff my hand and check their tags to see their names. Hobbit has some golden retriever in him. Cookie is black and white and looks like a furry pig. I find the leashes, and we head up the street of dingy houses.

We pass two blocks from church, but I can’t go there. Somebody would see me and tell. But I can’t wait anymore, either. As soon as we return to Stratofortress’s house, I call Tyler.

He answers halfway through the second ring. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, pretty much. What about you?”

“Pretty much. So, did Bo tell your parents anything?”

“Yeah.”

“Well? What happened?”

T
yler’s voice drops to a whisper. “I’m not in trouble, but I can’t really talk about it on the phone.”

“Then come over here so we can talk.”

“I can’t right now. I have to get to school. And my folks are still suspicious.”

“Well, make up some excuse or something. We have to figure out what to do, Tyler.”

“I’ll come over later today.”

“Whatever.” I slam the phone back onto the hook. Scowling and too anxious to sit still, I decide to clean some more. I wash my dirty clothes from last night, sweep the floors, and empty the ashtrays on the porch. It burns off excess energy, which makes me feel in control, and I start thinking about stuff I can do without Tyler, like maybe checking the library for any stories about ghosts around Wilson Lake. By lunchtime, I have a choice between tackling the bathroom or going to the library.

Grabbing my twenty-dollar bill, I step outside and start walking.

Twenty dollars, Holly. That’s all I’ve got. At the Shop-Rite, I walk in and buy the number one thing: a toothbrush. With that stuffed in my front pocket, I head to the library.
The sun’s rays scrape at the back of my neck. I pick at my chapped bottom lip until I taste blood. One change of borrowed clothes. No phone. Seventeen dollars and twenty-one cents. How long can I live on this? A couple days? A week?

But hey, I’m at least one toothbrush better off than I was last night, right?

The public library doesn’t have anything about local ghosts except that kids’ book
13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffery
. Remember scaring ourselves silly reading that, Holly?

With nothing much else to do, I walk to the University of North Alabama campus and check out their library. Students are typing at the computers and sifting through shelves of old journals. They camp out in their study carrels with notebooks, drinks, and fast-food bags. Half of them have their shoes kicked off.

I can’t find anything useful in the computer database, so I ask at the reference desk. It takes the librarian twenty minutes of scrounging in the back, but he returns with two bulging manila envelopes.

From 1986 to 1989, a professor named Harry Frazier did interviews about magic and witchcraft with country people all around the Tennessee Valley. The envelopes are labeled
2 (of 6)
and
3 (of 6)
, and one has
Folklore Book KEEP!!!
scrawled across it in blue ink. Maybe Frazier was planning on writing a history of the valley or something. Inside, there’s one audio cassette marked
Witherspoon #3
and a bunch of paper transcripts.

HF:
Tell me about hot foot powder.

DW:
Hot foot powder is what you sprinkle into a footprint if you don’t want somebody coming around anymore. See, as they’re leaving, you sprinkle their footprint in the dirt with the powder and mix it up real good, and then they’ll never come back. It turns people restless if they try, can’t get settled or feel comfortable.

HF:
How is it made?

DW:
A root-worker will get some river mud they dry out and grind up fine. The river, that’s where the power comes from. Other ingredients get the person bothered real bad, like poison sumac or hot pepper.

HF:
Do you know of anybody using hot foot powder?

DW:
Sure, more than I could name. It’s real common if, like, a girl has a boy who keeps hanging around and won’t leave her alone. She’ll get some hot foot powder to get rid of him. And I know two women who used it to drive off their husbands. One because he beat her real bad. The other, she just had another man.

The transcripts were typed on a typewriter, and sometimes there’s just the pink carbon copy. Hunching over until my shoulders ache, ignoring my growling hunger,
I read about weather signs, recipes for medicines and
charms, and how to know if a witch has cursed your cow. Then one interview turns toward bogeymen and ghosts.

HF:
Have you heard of Tommy Mud-and-Sticks?

MP:
Yes sir, he was a spirit trapped in the river. Everybody down in the holler knew about Tommy Mud-and-Sticks, knew to run if they heard him crying.

HF:
So he’s a ghost? A dead spirit?

MP:
Yes sir, he was drowned by his brother.

HF:
Can you tell me the story?

MP:
As best as I know, Tommy was married to a girl named Sharon, but she had an eye for his brother too. So one day, Tommy and his brother went hunting, and the brother knocked Tommy in the head and drowned him in the river. He told everybody it was an accident, and everybody believed him at first. But then Tommy came back. He cried out how his brother attacked him and that he had to find his wife. As soon as they got wind of that, Tommy’s brother and Sharon ran off. Nobody knows where. But Tommy still came out of the river some nights, crying for Sharon. Especially if any blonde woman went down to the riverbank. Tommy might think she’s his Sharon and drag her into the river with him. He didn’t understand it’d been years since his Sharon ran off.

HF:
How did he get the name “Mud-and-Sticks”?

MP:
Well, sir, he was dead and rotting on the river bottom. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to put it any nicer than that. So he made a new body out of mud, twigs, weeds all tangled together, stuff like that. Like his spirit, inside a body made of clay. There might have been a tooth in there that was still his, maybe some bones or some hair, maybe not even that.

As I read, my heart starts thumping. He dragged them into the river? Or maybe he made them rot away, and when they couldn’t find a body, people figured he’d dragged them off. Or maybe the details just got confused in the retelling. But the rest is too close to be an accident.

That’s all there is, though. Dr. Frazier doesn’t ask how to get rid of Tommy Mud-and-Sticks or how to protect yourself from him. Instead he starts asking about a creature named Rawhead. It doesn’t seem like he takes any of it seriously, thinking they’re just spooky stories. I flip back to the beginning of the interview, where Dr. Frazier wrote a few paragraphs about the person he was talking to.

Mattie Peake’s family had a small farm in Lauderdale County, Alabama. This farm lay within the impoundment of Wilson Dam. The subject was eight years old in 1924, when work on the dam was completed and the area was flooded. Her family was removed to a farm in Belle Mina, in Morgan County, Alabama, an action for which the subject still harbors resentment to this day. The Belle Mina community saw the resettlement of multiple families from the Wilson Dam impoundment, which led to the preservation of old superstitions and beliefs. For a time, Belle Mina was known as the place to go for root-worker “medicines” or hexes. The subject states she learned root-work chiefly from her grandfather, who lived with the family and often enlisted her help gathering plants and mixing medicines.