Starling House(95)

Arthur’s truck is waiting right where I left it, except now it’s obscured by a pair of black vans and half a dozen people. I’m braced for questions and accusations, scrambling for a lie that will explain why I’m barefoot and bloody-handed—but I receive nothing but glazed stares. One of them is making violent gestures to her companion, saying, “Fire me, fucking do it. I’m not going back in.” One of them is slumped on the back bumper, crying quietly into his hands.

I slide into the driver’s seat and try the key twice, three times before the engine turns over. I try not to think about where I’m going, or how high the river is, or whether I can find the old mines with the mist up.

The bridge looms out of the fog like a black rib cage, the struts silhouetted by the glow of the power plant across the river. My knuckles are sharp and bloodless on the wheel. I hear the road change under the tires, going hollow and rattly, and I keep my eyes firmly on the other end of the bridge.

But the end is blocked. There are vehicles parked at bad angles across the road, shards of glass tossed like glitter over everything. A light is flashing, infusing the mist with red and blue. Through the strobe I can make out the boxy shape of an old Pontiac, and the silhouette of a cowboy hat. It looks like Constable Mayhew got his stupid lights back from the real cops, somehow.

I hit the brakes hard enough to make the rubber squeal. The cowboy hat lifts, tilting in my direction, and I know with sudden certainty that I won’t make it past him. Mayhew’s never needed much of an excuse to handcuff me, and now I’m covered in blood at the scene of a bad wreck, having somehow slithered off the hook for the motel fire a few hours earlier. Even someone without a personal grudge would probably have a few questions for me.

But the mines are on Mayhew’s side of the river, on Gravely land. I can picture the rotten boards, the endless green hearts of the kudzu vines. Just around the bend, a short scramble down from the road.

Or up from the river.

The door handle is slick under my sweating palms. The old railroad ties are rough under my feet. A flashlight shines in my direction, blunted by the fog, followed by a shout. “Who’s there? Is that you, girl?”

My legs feel very far away from my torso, and poorly connected, like the trailing limbs of a neglected puppet. They carry me to the very edge of the bridge. The mist is so thick and viscous tonight I can’t even see the river, just the curl of my toes over the edge and then nothing at all. I can hear it, though: the same sweet siren’s song I’ve heard in my head since the crash, the endless rush of the river calling me back down.

I tell myself it won’t be that cold, this time of year. I tell myself I used to jump all the time, before my body knew how to be afraid, back when I thought Mom and Jasper and me were untouchable, inviolate, not lucky so much as too quick for the bad luck to catch up with us. I count slowly backward from ten, the way Mr. Cole taught me.

It doesn’t work. My legs remain stiff and motionless. My heart thrashes in my throat. I can feel the shudder of Mayhew’s boots coming closer, see the sickly blue shine of the flashlight on my skin.

I just can’t do it. Won’t. I’ve had too many nightmares about going under, fought too hard to stay on dry land.

Except: Arthur went down, and I know him too well to imagine he’s coming back up unless I drag him behind me, a sullen Eurydice. I know the hard set of his jaw and the soft slide of his lips, I know the terrible guilt that drives him and the scars it left behind. I know he is the thing I have been chasing and craving, searching and waiting and hoping for my entire life: home.

I step into the mist and let it carry me down soft and slow. I slip into the river easily, almost gently, as if the water was waiting for me, open-armed.





TWENTY-NINE


I was never a strong swimmer, and it’s been eleven years since I was in deep water.

Bev said there used to be a public pool down in Bowling Green, but they filled it with cement rather than desegregate in ’64, so most kids only know enough dog paddle to keep their chins above water.

I don’t even do that much, tonight. I let the current sweep me south, my toes dragging sometimes against weeds and stones, my mouth full of the metal taste of the water. My face bobs to the surface three times before I see the stretch of riverbank beneath the mines. I’m not sure how I recognize it in the dark, but I do, just from the particular tilt of a willow oak, the bend of the bank. Apparently the maps you make in childhood never fade, but are merely folded away until you need them again.



I flail for the shore and crawl out on hands and knees. The silt under my nails sends bile up my throat, and I waste five heaving breaths reminding myself that I’m not fifteen and there isn’t a red Corvette sinking behind me. I stand, and my legs are a pair of matchsticks, jointless and fragile.

Voices fall down from the bridge above, hitting the water and echoing downriver. I hear the words where and Jesus. A beam of light tunnels through the mist, pointed at the place where my body went under the water. I can almost picture Constable Mayhew shaking his head, doleful and sanctimonious. Just like her mother.

Maybe he’s right. My mom scrabbled and fought and hoped right up to the very end, and so will I.

I scramble up the bank, the clay slicking under my feet. I can’t see the shaft entrance beneath the dark mass of undergrowth, so I thump my fist against the bank until it rings hollow. I rip at the vines like an animal digging a den, breaking long strings of kudzu, uprooting ivy in uneven bursts, until the air smells weepy and green and my palms are tacky with sap. In the red-blue flash of the light I see old wood, the rusted remnants of a sign that now reads, ominously, ANGER. The boards have gone ripe with rot, and mist slips through the gaps and trickles down to the river. I’m almost relieved to see it, because it means I was right, and there’s another way down to Underland.