You Believers (49 page)

Lawrence raised his glass. “Here’s to leaping off mountains and living to keep doing it again.”

Livy stood and clinked her glass with his. “Here’s to leaping off mountains.” She set her glass on the railing and leaned into him, breathed the scent of the starch in his shirt, his cologne, his sweat, every bit of him. He put his glass down and wrapped his arms around her tightly, pulled her in. She hoped he wouldn’t speak. It was perfect, just leaning into him, hearing his heart, feeling the strength she’d forgotten he carried. She remembered the first time she’d leaned into him and caught that comfort and hoped that somehow, in spite of her distrust of things like love, she’d marry him. She remembered she’d thought this when he’d taken her dancing. He could move with her while moving her into a grace she didn’t know she had. She thought,
Remember when you used to take me dancing
? But she didn’t need to say it. They were already swaying to some unheard rhythm. She closed her eyes, happy to give in, to follow his movement as they stood there swaying, gently, firmly, steadily swaying in the dark.

Some Mornings When You Rise

There are some mornings when you wake at dawn to the sound of birds twittering high notes to the violet sky turning toward daylight. And all you know is you want to be out, walking under the trees, feet dampening in a dew-drenched meadow, or standing slightly chilled but awake on the cool mud shore of a lake. Too often you tell yourself you need your sleep, that it doesn’t make sense to get up and out early unless there is an obligation. But it is precisely at that moment that you need to shake loose your covers and rise.

And there are early evenings when you’re out at a park, or a beach, or by a river, or on that warm mud shore of a lake, and you watch the yellow sky fade, curl to gray, and you stare at the violet burning red at the western horizon. Strangers pack blankets, radios, suntan oil, paper sacks, and floats and fishing gear, and you know it is time for leaving. But you keep staring out at the water. In your peripheral vision you see the cars drive away, red taillights winking as they bounce down the gravel road toward home, and you think perhaps you should leave since you don’t have your flashlight or firewood. So yes, it is time to go home, peel those waxy yellow potatoes, fry your burgers, drain the
grease, and eat, do the dishes, and then, dozing in the gray-blue light of your television screen, settle toward sleep.

It is at that moment, when weighing the logic of leaving against the impulse to stay, that it is precisely the time to sit still. When you hear that thin whisper of a child’s sorrow at having to go in from the dark, stay. Listen to the other hunger inside, the nameless one so easy to forget, the one so soft and yet so dangerous when you forget to feed its need.

Since finding Katy’s bones that day, I had decided to learn to listen to my own hungers and not everyone else’s needs. I thank Roy for that, and Roy’s house out in the woods near Lake Waccamaw. It’s a house you like waking to, a house that gives a comfort when you sleep. Since finding Katy’s bones that day, I’ve felt the world’s slow and steady wasting in a way I only thought I knew. There’s something in lifting the bones of a girl from the ground that makes you feel your own bones, your own breath, your heartbeats, measured things that will all vanish in time.

With every lost one found, I always learn a little something I only thought I knew before. And it’s Katy’s love for the land that took me back to loving the wildness out there way back in the woods, far up streams where a tourist would never go. When I look at the trees, I think Katy, when I watch the lake go silver with fall of night, I think Katy, and this morning with the birdsong in the predawn darkness, I felt Katy’s love for this world. I lay there listening to the soft sounds of Roy’s breath while he slept that still, deep sleep you’d think only innocents could sleep. He says he sleeps better with me in the house. And I’ll admit, even though it’s hard for me to admit a need, I do sleep better with him beside me in his house by the river so far back in the woods you can hardly see the sky for the thick cover of trees. It’s cooler there. Calm. And it seems just right that I can find a bit of peace there by a river that feeds into Lake Waccamaw. Katy would like that.

I just popped wide awake that morning. I knew it was too early to stir around the house with Roy sleeping so soundly and with Livy in the guest room that’s really a back porch, but a nice one with a varnished floor and good screens. Roy put in good shades to keep the light out and mounted a ceiling fan so there’s always a little breeze. He did it for me because there are nights I wander. Sometimes I can’t stay in my bed. I have to move from room to room, trying to find someplace that will give me a sense of ease on the outside that will calm me on the inside. When my mind yanks me from sleep all jangling and awake, I can’t stay in the bed, not even with the sleeping sweetness of Roy beside me. I have to bolt up, move, find something to eat in the kitchen, just some little thing that will remind me that I’m not in my dreams but in the waking, living world where a little piece of cheese or toast with jam can provide just about all the comfort a woman could need.

I lay there a while listening to the sounds of birds. I didn’t want to wake Roy or Livy with my wandering through the house. I knew Livy would need to sleep as long as the night would allow. I knew she would need to be as rested as she could be that day, a year from the day that Jesse Hollowfield had snatched her daughter, broken her, and left her dead on the ground.

I slipped out of bed, walked softly across the floor. I told myself I would wait to make the coffee, but going down the hall, I could smell it in the air. I hadn’t heard a sound, not the kettle, not the grinder for the beans. And I still wonder what it is about a mother’s gift that she can work so silently, so unnoticed when she does those little things to please. I didn’t have to call to know where she was. I went to the living room and saw her on the front porch, with two mugs and the French-press pot, the coffee steeping, waiting for me. I walked outside, and we didn’t need to speak. She just smiled and pressed the coffee, poured. I had planned to say something like
Are you ready for
this
? It would be a hard day, probably harder than she could guess to go to the site where her daughter had died, a little clearing that the farmer said would always be reserved for Katy. We had put a cross there, planted a lily, but Livy said she wanted to go back and make it something beautiful, something Katy would like. She had a little notebook in her lap, a list made. She waved it at me, set it on the table, and said, “Things I’ll want to buy for Katy’s memorial. I want specific things, not just anything, but things that would be right for Katy.”

“Absolutely,” I said as she handed me my coffee. She was ready, rested and ready. My job was to simply be there, the way it always is. I’d be there to hold her steady when she trembled. This is what I do. I sipped my coffee, spotted the biscotti and strawberries on a plate. “I could get used to this,” I said, “walking down the hall to find the coffee made and cookies on a plate.”

“I’ll put in a word to Roy,” she said. “I’ve got Lawrence bringing me coffee in bed on Sunday mornings now. If he can be trained, just think of the possibilities for Roy.”

“I don’t want him to change one bit,” I said. “We have an agreement. We leave each other to be the person we met, the one we fell for. If it works, don’t mess with it.” And I thought about that phrase,
the one we fell for
, like love is some kind of accident. It’s no accident at all. I wouldn’t say Roy and I fell into anything. I’d say it’s more like we grew the way a honeysuckle vine reaches over a fence, covers it so thick that the boundaries don’t really matter because the air is so sweet. I’d say that’s the way to love each other: Show up, give a little water and light, and leave room for the other one to grow.

Livy offered me biscotti. “You changed. He got you out of sleeping in that REV center every night.”

“It gets a little crowded in there sometimes.” I thought of those faces of the missing still tacked to the walls. It wasn’t healthy to live night and day, every day, in a place where lost souls are always looking
out to you, calling to be found. “It’s a big world,” I said. “That’s what Roy keeps telling me: It’s a bigger world than you think.” He’d told me I’d never be able to make those faces of the missing go away. There would always be the sorrow. “That room of sorrow,” he said, “it’s in your heart, Shelby, but you can build a bigger house around it.” That was when I knew I wanted to be in his house. It was the moment he said those words to me. Then he said, “You can go to sleep and wake up, not to a room of sorrow but to the good things in this world.”

“Like you?” I said, teasing.

He blushed a little at that. Then he grinned and said, “Yeah, like me.”

Livy reached and stroked the back of my arm that way mothers do when they just have to reach to feel that the child they love is there. “It’s going to be a good day,” she said. “We’ll make it a good day. It’s what Katy would want. We’ll make it good. You and me.” Then she rose and said, “Let’s get this day started, Shelby. You and me. Let’s show the world what two women and some gardening tools can do to make some little patch of ground a better place.”

So there I was, driving back over this road of Katy’s final journey, and Livy sipped a Slurpee beside me and watched the land go by. She had said she needed something cold and sweet to drink so she wouldn’t cry when we were at K-Mart buying the plants and the tools and the mulch. Like I said, she wanted to make the site pretty somehow, and I couldn’t believe a mother would think to change a place of such hard dying to a place where she could stand to dig, make something grow from the very ground where her daughter had died.

I drove and smelled the topsoil, the sharp scent of mulch and the fertile smell of the plants in the backseat: lantana and creeping
myrtle and blooming thyme. And a butterfly bush. Its branches bent against the roof of the truck, tangled at my hair, tickled my shoulder if I didn’t sit just right. Livy had to get that butterfly bush because Katy loved butterflies. And we had to get an angel, of course, a little stone angel with long, curling hair, a coy little smile, and her hands pressed in a prayer. She just looked wishful and kind of naive to me, but I said she was perfect.

We turned off the paved road to a dirt lane shaded by trees. My truck struggled against the ruts, lurched side to side. We took another turn to what the locals called the eight road. It had been cleared for some farm kids who liked to take their four-wheelers back in there and ride, and now it was kept clear for no good reason but because it was there. I could see how it would be easy to get lost back in the kind of land that looks the same all around with nothing but blue sky above. Back home in Tennessee, you always had a good idea of where you were by the shape of Lookout Mountain rising above the river. And for the first time since I’d left Suck Creek, I missed those mountains. I had the thought of taking Roy back there. It wouldn’t be such a sad place with Roy beside me. I knew he’d make me see the old beauty there.

Mud splattered the trees and shrubs that suddenly grew so thick, it seemed nature had a mind to reach, to try to hide the site where Katy died. I slowed down and looked out my mud-splattered window, saw two butterflies dart by.

“That’s a sign,” Livy said. “Katy knows we’re here.”

Livy has a need to believe in things, so I nodded. Then I thought,
What the hell do I know? Maybe it’s true
.

I saw the little clearing in the trees that showed the way off the eight road, and I took the turn down that rutted little lane. And I thought of Katy, how she must have been crying inside, knowing this was the end. Livy’s face was tight but not crying, just seemed to
be watching the trees go by through Katy’s eyes. Then up ahead, I saw the field. We got out of the truck, and I looked at the sky to watch the weather. The air was hot and thick, and I could feel it. Before the day was out, a storm would come rolling in.

We walked down the rutted road, and I saw the place where she’d died. Overgrown in patches, bare in others, just a patch of earth like anything else around here. I was thankful to see that the farmer had cleared the trash, the underbrush, and most of the weeds. There was a little white wire fence that marked the spot to be preserved. The farmer had done that. He’d bought the land cheap, he’d said. And now just beyond the place where Katy had died, the corn stood green and shimmering, acres and acres of lush corn, the wind rustling the leaves. I can only say it was beautiful to stand there on the edge of so much green.

The old lady who’d owned the land couldn’t get away quick enough once she’d learned a woman had rotted on the very ground where she and her husband had planted their first stand of corn. The new farmer had said that there would always be room for Katy to be remembered there. Sometimes it can be hard for me to love much of anything in this world. But that farmer, he had a kindness you don’t often expect of a stranger. It seemed people all over town had become just a little more soft, more thoughtful of each other when they realized how Katy Connor had been snatched in broad daylight while they drove by, not minding the car swerving on the Cape Fear River bridge. We got over a hundred calls from people who claimed to have seen her blue truck that day. I suppose there was a trembling all across town with the news of the Flynn girl in Land Fall, and then a flat-out sickness at the thought of what Jesse Hollowfield had done in broad daylight, miles of traffic all around.

I stayed back from the site, knew it was best to let Livy lead the way. She paused, seemed to say a little prayer, then stepped over the
low fence, crouched, and moved her palm over the ground as if she could somehow feel the life there.

Me, I still saw the brush, the trash and leaves and the jawbone torn loose. The mud-caked jeans.

“We’re here for you, Katy,” Livy said. She sat, palms flat on the ground. I told her to be careful; there could still be glass and rusty cans left in the dirt. She just stood, looked at me, said, “Let’s get to work.”