The Evening Hour (22 page)

They held each other and he could feel her heart pounding against his own chest.

“I was at work, all this time,” she said. “I was at work and Sara Jean was here and we're okay.” They drew apart, looked at each other shyly.

“Come in,” she said. “Sit down, tell us what happened.”

Her parents and her sister and her sister's husband were sitting around watching the news. Sara Jean stood in front of him. “Is our house gone?”

He was the bearer of bad news. He felt their eyes on him and he nodded. Sara Jean's face darkened, Lacy covered her mouth. The sister said, “Ours too. We barely got out of there. We barely did.”

“I'm sorry,” Cole said.

“What about Snowball?” Sara Jean asked.

“What?”

“Her cat.” Lacy looked at her daughter. “I'm sure he's all right, baby. He's a tough cat,” she said, but Sara Jean's eyes narrowed with disbelief.

They wanted to know everything. He sat stiffly next to Lacy on the sofa and told them what he'd seen without really describing it, and they told him what they'd heard on the news. The dam above the processing plant had broke and what it was holding back had flooded Dove Creek and all of its little tributaries, but nobody knew how much had spilled or how many people died or how many homes were lost. For a long time nobody said anything else, just stared at the TV. The news ended, and a show about a bunch of rich people living in New York City came on. Cole felt Lacy's hand on his own, and this brought him some comfort. But even sitting there, he felt apart from her and from the others. Maybe he would always be apart.

An hour or so later, she walked him out. She said she was afraid of finding out the names of the dead, but needed to know. She asked him about her neighbors and friends, but he did not have answers. “What about Blue Tiller?”

He just stared.

“You know, the old woman activist. Sara Jean keeps asking me about her, I don't know what to say.”

“I don't know either,” he said.

She held on to his belt loops and he pressed his mouth against her head, tasted smoke in her hair. “What am I going to do?” she asked. “Where am I going to go?”

“It's going to be all right,” he told her. “We'll figure something out.”

Then she drew back and lit a cigarette and the toughness that came off of her was too much for him to peel away. He said he'd call her tomorrow. She nodded. It was too much.

He returned to the gym, walking past the smokers. He was surprised to see that Reese was still there. He was still talking with Luke Cutter.

“Hey, Cole, where you staying tonight?”

“Here, I guess.”

“Why don't y'all stay at my place?”

“I don't know.”

“Come on. I got plenty of room.”

“I'll check with my grandma.”

“Okay, wait up.” Reese turned back to Luke. “Hey, good talking to you, preach.” Luke called after him, “I'm here if you need me.”

“I don't know what the fuck's come over me,” Reese told Cole. “That preacher said some things that made sense. I never listened to a preacher that made sense before.”

“Well. None of it makes sense to me.”

His grandmother and mother looked at him with dread. His grandmother's face was pinched and pale, and Ruby chewed her bottom lip.

“She's all right,” he told them. “They're both all right.”

“Thank God,” his grandmother said. “Thank God.”

He told them the new plans, and they were thankful that they didn't have to spend the night in the crowded gym. On their way out, Cole went over to Michael and Trip. Trip was taking pictures, and Michael had out a notebook and a recorder. He started to defend himself, but Cole said he wasn't here about that.

“It's Lacy.”

Relief washed over Michael's face when he told him.

“I was scared,” he admitted.

“I told you,” Trip said. “I told you she'd be okay.”

Under the gym lights, Michael's face was still grimy, and he had blisters on his hands from the digging. Trip didn't look any better. Cole never would have expected them to help the way they did.

Then a heavyset girl, maybe eighteen or nineteen, came over. She wore pink sweats that were splattered with sludge. “You ready for me now?” she asked Michael.

Michael hooked a tiny microphone to her collar. He did not interview her the way they did on the news. He just sat next to her and occasionally jotted down notes and didn't say much, while she described what she'd seen. Cole remembered seeing her up there; he'd watched her wipe blood off a little kid. Now she talked slowly and never once broke down. Her face was steely with anger, like the faces of his mother and grandmother, like the face of Lacy. The women were stronger. His knees had buckled. Michael had had tears in his eyes.

Cole asked Michael if they wanted to go to Reese's, but he and Trip wanted to stay. “The media isn't going to cover this the way they should, you just wait.”

“We gotta get up there,” Trip said.

Michael looked at Cole. “Could I borrow your truck?”

“I'll take you up there myself. I'll come by in the morning.”

“What time?”

“Early,” he said, walking away. “Real early.”

He pulled in front of Reese's. His mother and grandmother followed Reese inside, and Cole said he'd be in in a minute. Finally alone, he closed his eyes, breathed deeply.

He was exhausted. His eyelids fluttered, but he snapped them open. Wake up, he said. He made himself get out of the truck, and he got the trash bag out of the toolbox. The jewelry and money was all there. Some of the bills were moist, but they could be dried out. He opened the Christmas tin and took out some of the rings and coins that he'd stashed there, and poured out the remaining black water onto the driveway. Disintegrated postcards dribbled out with the mess. He looked up at the starry sky and wondered if he'd be able to forget about the bodies that were lined up on the hillside, and Arie Webb, who'd felt so light in his arms.

He was surprised by how brightly lit and warm Reese's house was. Everything was cleaned up. No blood, no broken glass. Reese was telling a story. His mother was laughing, his grandmother grinned sheepishly. Cole thought Reese was acting awfully queeny, but they didn't seem to mind.

“Man, you look beat. You can sleep in my room,” Reese said. “I'll make up the extra bed for the ladies.”

“What about you?” his grandmother asked. “We don't want to put you out.”

“Don't worry about me, I like the sofa,” Reese said. “I sleep there most of the time.”

“Thanks,” Cole said, meaning it.

He went upstairs and took a hot shower and wished the water would wash everything away. He scrubbed his face and rinsed and spit and looked at the red splotches on his legs and wondered if the rash was something toxic. He went into Reese's room, which was still a mess. The sheets weren't clean, but he was too tired to care. He lay down and his heart thudded. It was dark. The explosions echoed in his head. He could see the sludge caking the dead's eyes, filling their mouths. He felt like he couldn't get his breath and he sat up and switched on the light and the words from one of his granddaddy's favorite verses, old Isaiah 10:3, was loud in his head:
What will you do on that day of reckoning? To whom will you run for help?

Part Three

Chapter 16

Ten days later he drove his mother and grandmother to Rockcamp to see what was left. On the way, they passed by yards where sofas and mattresses and toys and knickknacks were laid out, drying in the sun. As they got farther away from Stillwell they saw heaps of trees, the remains of houses. Blackened craters were cut out of the land, like burnings. Nothing looked like it could be saved. The National Guard and the U.S. Army Corps had just opened up this part of Route 16, but most of the mountain was still closed off to the public and media; only government or Heritage employees had access. In the immediate days after, Cole had tried to volunteer for a recovery team, but the National Guard would not let anyone help who was not called to duty. That hadn't stopped Cole from driving Michael and Trip around, taking back roads and avoiding barricades, and getting out to walk whenever the water was too high or a bridge was washed out, Trip taking pictures or shooting videos, Michael writing notes. Each time they went, Cole was stunned: houses buried, dead horses and cows, mangled cars and appliances flung across the creeks and fields like the shredded pieces of a nightmare, and in the background the incessant noise of bulldozers, backhoes, helicopters. Whatever the world had looked like on the day that the black water came down, it looked even worse the day after, the wreckage naked and visible under the bright sun, laid out like a demolished city that had been spit up by a black sea.

By now everyone knew what had happened: the dam had begun to leak early in the morning, and at nine twenty-five a.m., the middle part of it collapsed, sending 200 million gallons of toxic sludge down over the ridges and into Dove Creek. Thorny Creek was the hardest hit; more or less wiped out—the wave had been over twenty feet high when it came down on the hollow, zigzagging over the land like a tornado. If it had gone three hundred yards in either direction, it would have killed hundreds more. It flooded streams and creeks all the way to Stillwell, running for eighteen miles, then began to slow, spilling into the Cherokee River. Since the lower part of the dam had not collapsed, they'd been able to head it off so that all two billion gallons had not let loose. Nobody living downstream had been informed, except by word of mouth, neighbor to neighbor. The final count of the dead was sixty-four, but some were still missing, including Lacy's friend Blue Tiller.

The governor talked about the dead being heroes and commemorated them on TV. The president of the United States sent federal aid and talked about passing bills. Heritage had been holding press conferences and meetings, offering condolences and hauling in clean water and promising a thorough cleanup. A man on TV said, “We're investing millions of dollars into this.” Cole didn't see how it could ever be the same. The streams and creeks were thick walls of sludge. The wells ruined. The National Guard was delivering bottled drinking water, but people still bathed in what came out of the faucets, those who still had running water. What else could they do? The red splotches on Cole's skin had disappeared, but he heard about others having them too. He did not go to the doctor, did not want to know.

The newspaper and TV people from the state capital and New York and D.C. descended on Dove Creek. Cameras were everywhere. But they couldn't get access to the site and did not seem to grasp the immensity of the destruction. They talked about the dead and the failure of the rescue, but they didn't understand the layout of the land or what the mountaintop removal sites looked like. They were pushy and nosy, demanding stories. Cole watched one of the segments on the national nightly news, but it seemed like all that the newsman talked about was how poor everybody was. His grandmother said, “See how they do us? Anytime we get attention, it's to show how backward we are. Just like in the days of LBJ.” Cole had snapped off the TV in disgust.

Though some people had been able to move back into their homes, two thousand were left homeless, including the Freemans. The high school served as a temporary shelter, and people had no choice but to move into the trailer parks that the government had set up on the edges of Stillwell and Zion. His grandmother said she would never move to one of those. For now, she stayed at Rebecca's and his mother was at Naomi's—since the flood, she hadn't said anything else about leaving, and she'd gotten her job back at the Pizza Shack. Cole felt too confined at his aunts', like he was always being watched, so he stayed with Reese, which had its own drawbacks: Reese high on speed and paranoid and drilling Cole with questions about God, swearing again and again that he was going to quit using and start his life over. Luke Cutter's phone number was taped to the refrigerator, and Reese said one day he would call on him, that the preacher would turn him right. But the only person he ever called was Terry Rose, even after he'd sent that crew over to beat the hell out of him. Terry never came to the house when Cole was there, but Cole knew he was around.

He turned onto Rockcamp Road and after about a half mile came to a barricade.

“Now what?” his grandmother asked.

He stopped the truck; up ahead a part of the road was washed out, and uprooted sycamores lay across the land like giant caskets. The creek water was gray and still. “We'll have to walk.” He looked at his grandmother. “You sure you want to do this?”

“I need to see it. I need to know what I got left.”

They'd brought along a disposable camera, rubber gloves, and flashlights; they were not sure what to expect. Cole had heard how the National Guard was condemning houses, knocking them down with bulldozers and burning them up, sometimes without telling the owners.

He helped his grandmother along, while Ruby, in jeans and leather jacket and hiking boots she'd borrowed from Naomi, raced ahead. They heard the churning of bulldozers and backhoes in the distance. Cole guided his grandmother around the enormous ruts, the broken boards and scraps of furniture.

“You reckon any of this is ours?” she asked.

“I don't know.”

Floyd Mitchell's shack had been knocked off its foundation. There was a giant white X spray-painted on the door. The old man had been brought into the nursing home, crying about his dead dog. He'd looked at Cole and did not know he was.

There was also an X on Cole's trailer. When he forced open the door, black greasy water poured out. Gagging from the stench, he stepped inside. He shone his flashlight around, snapped a few pictures. The stench was unbearable, a mix of rot and chemicals, and he covered his mouth and nose with the sleeve of his jacket. The cupboards bulged with sludge, and in the living room the stereo speakers floated like buoys. The water in his bedroom reached halfway up his knee-high rubber boots. He opened drawers and looked at the damp, moldy underwear and T-shirts. The photographs on the wall were also dotted with mildew, and he carefully removed them and slid them in his jacket pocket.

“Ain't much that can be saved,” he said.

His grandmother shook her head, lips pursed.

And then, the house. Standing but broken, a giant X scrawled across the door. The footbridge had been washed away, and the lawn was a scar of ripped-up earth. His mother's Camry was sinking, along with the trailer that had smashed into it. Cole sloshed across the waterlogged yard. The front porch was caved in. He tried the back door, but it was jammed. The side door was the only way.

He went back over to his grandmother, who had found a mound of dirt to stand on. “You can't go in there without boots.”

“You go in first, then let me borrey yours when you come back out,” she said.

While she waited outside, Cole and Ruby went in together, the beams of their flashlights revealing black pockets of water, submerged furniture. They covered their noses and mouths. They walked across the family room, their boots sinking into the wet carpet, and snapped pictures and went upstairs and here everything looked untouched, though still the sickening stench oozed from the walls and floorboards. Cole picked up a photograph of his grandfather and it fell apart in his hands.

They stood in his grandparents' room and golden light shone through the window and Ruby went over to the small oak desk his grandfather had built many years ago and she touched the surface and remembered him and Cole could still see the old man as well, sitting there with a lamp at his side, scribbling, then he recalled how they'd been sorting through his things. Probably all of his writings were gone.

“We better go tell her,” he said.

They walked quietly through the house, taking what they could. Cole found his grandfather's King James, damp but intact.

His grandmother stood shivering. “Anything left?” she asked, but didn't wait for their answer. “Give me your boots.”

“Be careful,” he told her.

Ruby offered to go with her, but she wanted to do it alone. Cole stood in his sock feet on a dry rock while his grandmother stepped into the boots, wobbling at first.

“It's gone,” Ruby said to Cole.

“I know it.”

Even if the house could be fixed up, the debris cleared away and walls scrubbed clean, the oily black mud would still be there, buried underneath, seeping.

After about fifteen minutes, his grandmother came out and sat down on a rock and pulled off the boots and put her shoes back on without saying a word. He expected her to be crying. It was like that now. Sometimes he'd walk into his aunt's house and find her staring at the TV, crying. It wasn't just her. He'd see people crying at the grocery store or the gas station, or they would just stand there, looking lost. This time, though, his grandmother's eyes were dry.

“You okay?”

She stood up on her own, refusing his hand.

“You and your cousins and uncles are gonna have to haul everything out that's still good,” she told him. “It ain't all ruined, but it will be if it sets in this dampness anymore.”

“What about the house?” Ruby asked.

She shook her head. “This ain't our home anymore.”

“What about the cemetery?”

“I don't want to see that,” she said sharply. Then she sucked in her breath and looked at them with a hardness in her eyes. “We're all going to that meeting next week. You understand?”

Cole nodded.

“Ruby?”

“Okay, whatever.”

“Good. Now take me out of here. I can't stand it no more.”

It did not look like Cole was getting off work anytime soon, but he didn't mind. It was easier to be here than to be around Reese or his grandmother. Within these walls very little had changed. Though a few of the old people talked about the disaster, many of them did not know about it, or they'd already forgotten. He did not tell the patients or other aides that he'd been up there, that he'd carried the dead.

Linda told him about the newest patient, an old mountain woman who'd been found up in that mess and had just been transferred from the county hospital. “She might seem a little nutso, but don't let her fool you. She's a spitfire.”

He glanced at the name on the chart, Beatrice Anne Tiller. The woman was gray and wrinkled, and so thin that her bones jutted out, stretching the skin. “Hey there,” he said, but she only stared at him with glassy eyes. He took her blood pressure, temperature, and heart rate before he looked closer and realized who she was. “There are some people that are going to be real happy to see you,” he said.

He told Linda he was taking his break. “I'm going over to the Wigwam. You want anything?”

“How about a slice of pecan pie?”

Cole walked quickly up the street, happy that he could finally deliver good news. He'd seen very little of Lacy over the past two weeks, and the few times he had, she was withdrawn, distant. She'd lost friends and neighbors, her home. He did not know what to say to her.

When he walked in, she was behind the counter pouring coffee, her face a mask. It was busy and she did not see him. Cole was not surprised to see Michael there. He was always around now, scribbling in his notebook, talking to people. He'd published another article, and his was the only one that got it right. Michael had friends here now. Stories. He no longer needed Cole's.

When Lacy saw Cole, she asked how he was doing. Her voice was flat; the light had gone out of her eyes.

“Blue Tiller's at the nursing home,” he said.

She stared at him like she didn't hear, then, “Oh, thank God.” She bit her bottom lip. “I thought for sure she was dead.”

“She's pretty weak, but stable. You should come over and see her.”

“I will. I'll bring Sara Jean.”

“That's great,” Michael said. “That's really great.”

Lacy smiled. “Best thing I've heard in a while.”

She was looking at Michael with a steadiness in her eyes, a twitch of her lips. Cole knew that look. He felt confused. Then he noticed that Michael was smiling at Lacy as if they were the only two in the room.

“I got to get back to work,” Cole said.

She glanced at him. “Okay. Thanks again.”

“See you later,” Michael called out, but Cole didn't answer.

He crossed the street to the nursing home and smashed out his cigarette before he went through the automatic doors. He'd forgotten Linda's pie.

“They were out,” he told her.

“Well, that's a first.”

He felt too numb to be angry. He worked as if he were in a trance, changing diapers and bedpans. After he spent the hour cleaning up shit and talking with the old people, the numbness began to shake itself off. Lacy and Michael.
Christ.

When he returned to Blue Tiller's room, she was awake and thirsty. He filled a plastic cup with water and adjusted her so that she was propped up. She breathed heavily. The water dribbled down her chin.

“You need anything else?”

A shadow crossed her face. “My house, my land,” she said. “What happened to my dog?”

“You just rest.”