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LOCATION: Seaside City, Delaware, USA
POPULATION: 2,402
My brother Terence and I stand in front of the Wonderworld arcade counter, our eyes as big as Skee-Balls.
“Two hundred and eighty tickets,” the teenage girl says. “What would you like?”
I stare through the glass at Chinese finger handcuffs and an orange slime ball, either of which I could get, and sigh. “The s’mores Squishmallow keychain is three hundred tickets, but it’s time to go and I’m outta quarters.”
“Sorry, Jules,” Terence says, squeezing my arm. “I didn’t know, or I woulda saved some tickets for you.” Terence’s horse derby racing skills just slay.
“It’s okay,” I say. I stand up on my tippy-toes and look up at the clerk. “I’ll have the slime ball.”
The girl looks at me and smiles. “What’s your name?” She wears her hair in one long dirty blonde braid that curves around her neck. On the top corner of her bright orange Wonderworld shirt is a black nametag that reads GERTRUDE. I think of that as an old-people name, but my friend Ellie’s baby sister just got named Mildred, so maybe not.
“I’m Julie Chen,” I say.
Gertrude leans down and whispers, “I can give you the s’mores keychain, Julie Chen, but you have to give me something of yours.” She smells like Raspberry Bath and Body Works glitter bath gel and I admire her Totoro earrings.
A thrill rises in me. People tell me all the time I’m cute because I’m ten. Maybe I remind her of a kid she babysat once.
“I don’t have anything,” I say, turning out my pockets and finding a gum wrapper and dirty tissues. I pull my thick black hair out of my ponytail. “Do you want this? I just got it last week.” I hold out my pink and purple striped scrunchie.
“Nah. Just give me an eyelash,” Gertrude says, unblinking.
I flinch and don’t know whether to laugh at the joke or pluck one out. Is she crazy?
“I don’t know how to give you an eyelash,” I say. I look to my side. Terence has drifted towards the Connect 4 Hoops game to watch some teenagers shoot basketballs.
“I can pluck one and you won’t even notice, I promise,” Gertrude says.
“Okay,” I say, and before I can ask what to do next, she pockets an eyelash in her black fanny pack and hands me a s’mores Squishmallow keychain. She’s right: I don’t feel a thing. The keychain has a small card attached to the product tag. In old-timey font, it reads:
ONE BRIGHT FUTURE
“Hey, Jules,” Terence appears, glancing down at my new prize. “Oh, you got one.
Cool!” He looks up at Gertrude and smiles.
I clutch the s’mores keychain in my hand. Pride surges through me and I stand up straighter. Gertrude zips to the end of the counter to help another girl, and we walk out to the Delaware boardwalk.
My family goes to Seaside City every summer, and Terence and I hit the arcade at Wonderworld again.
The girl at the counter is wearing unicorn earrings and a FRIENDS button on her lanyard.
It’s Gertrude, and when I see her, I remember last summer’s trade. I blink, wondering if she’s eyeing my lashes.
In my head, I calculate what to buy with my bounty, tallying points.
“I could get one purple plastic Slinky,” I say. “Or a cupcake lip gloss and one Fortune Teller Fish.”
Terence shrugs. “Whatever you want, dude.” His voice is deeper and he’s on the wrestling team now.
“Hello, Julie,” she says. “You must be good at math to do that in your head.” She clacks on her calculator and nods. “It was all correct.”
“I’m in fast math at school,” I tell her, clenching my jaw. “But I’m the only girl and Mr. Abraham didn’t pick me for the fifth-grade math team.” If I were a cartoon, steam would be coming out of my ears. “I did least common multiples faster than Kevin Martinelli!”
I love math because it’s logical and pure, and picking Kevin was sheer fallacy.
Gertrude hesitates and pulls out a case from behind the counter. It glimmers gold and black. She sets it on top of the glass counter with a gentle clink.
“Choose one,” she says. “Special for return customers,” she winks.
Inside the red velvet-lined case are thin cards like playing cards but instead of jokers and queens of hearts, there are cards in weird font that read:
DATE OBJECT OF YOUR AFFECTION (TWO MONTH GUARANTEE)
JOIN TEAM (SPORT OR ACADEMIC)
PAY OFF YOUR FAMILY’S BILLS
I have no interest in the first, and not sure if we need the third. How would I know? I point to the second one, and Gertrude nods. I
swallow. “How do I get that?”
“Your tickets almost cover the cost,” she says. “But I will take your fingernails.”
I feel like I’m going to puke. “You’re going to rip them off?”
She shakes her head. “You just can’t grow them out super long anymore. But you can wear fake ones.”
“Like for forever?” I say. It’s weird, for sure, and anyway she doesn’t know my piano teacher doesn’t let me grow out my nails as it is. It messes with me using curved fingers on the keys, and good technique in general. I don’t mind, really, because they get dirty as it is when they grow past a few millimeters, and Mom is always on my case about it.
“What is forever, anyway?” Gertrude says.
“Let’s do it,” I say. I look down at my nails, which feel the same.
Gertrude smiles. “You can look forward to your next academic year.”
***
Over the years, I paid with my body to get the slight edge Gertrude provided.
When I was thirteen, I traded four hundred and fifty tickets and blemish-free skin for admission to jazz ensemble camp in Philadelphia.
For five hundred and fifteen tickets and heavy menstrual bleeding, I got Freshman of the Year when I was fourteen.
At sixteen, I traded five hundred and seventy-five tickets and full dark eyebrows for being a National Merit Scholarship Finalist.
My mom took me to the doctor a few times during all of this. Moms have a sixth sense about things being off, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“I can’t find anything wrong with her,” the pediatrician says. “She’s still tracking on her growth curve.”
“Her eyebrows are thin,” Mom says.
The pediatrician narrows her eyes. “We women are subject to criticism enough as it is.” She glances at me. “But she doesn’t show signs of alopecia or any worrisome underlying disorder. All her bloodwork is normal.”
Nothing about this feels normal, but what do I know? I don’t know where Gertrude’s powers come from, but I’m afraid to ask, in case she was to stop trading with me. So, I keep going back to Wonderworld, playing Skee-Ball, Down the Clown, Quik Drop, and Zombie Snatcher, and stockpiling tickets.
When I am eighteen, I trade six hundred tickets and C cup breasts for being wait-listed at Dartmouth. My mom takes my homecoming dress to the tailor to be taken in and I buy a push-up bra at Victoria’s Secret.
Stop being so vain. It’ll be worth it in the end.
“I can’t give you full admission to college,” Gertrude says, eyeing the sky. “Even I am not that powerful.”
My B cups force me to get new V-necks, but my wallet survives.
Terence loses interest in Wonderworld. He doesn’t do as well in school as I do, but he gets into the state law school. Everybody needs lawyers.
The summer after high school graduation, Gertrude gives me her phone number. “Call me,” she says, “if you ever need a trade.”
***
I don’t go to Gertrude every time I suffer a disappointment. Lovers break my heart. A thief steals my catalytic converter. My roommate moves back in with her parents and leaves me with twice the rent.
But when I am passed up for a promotion after three years at my advertising firm, I drive to Wonderworld in October.
My co-worker Brian’s words echo in my head: “You might work hard now, but when your life goes the way you want it to, you might not want to travel four days a week.”
I bite my tongue and taste blood.
Wonderworld is closed for the season, only open from Memorial Day through Labor Day, but I’ve saved thousands of tickets by now and keep them in a fireproof box in my apartment. To me, they are worth more than gold.
At a white bench on the boardwalk facing the shore, I meet Gertrude. She has her case of cards and purses her lips at my duffel bag full of tickets.
“I have five cards for you tonight,” she says. Her blonde hair is loose in long ringlets and she sports a nose piercing and zodiac jewelry. I swear she is aging in reverse.
I look through the cards, hungry for the career card.
“None of these talk about a job promotion,” I say. My jaw clenches. “Jesse makes fifty grand more than me and he didn’t even do the fieldwork for the Dior perfume gig. And my supervisor got fired for harassing an intern. What do I have to do to get some recognition?”
Gertrude looks at me sadly. In the glint of the sodium lights on the nighttime boardwalk, the salt spray from the ocean flutters like snowflakes.
“Your left ovary,” she says, “and two thousand tickets.”
Part of me feels relief. It can be done after all?
“But—how?” I ask.
“There are cards we can borrow from,” she says. “There’s always something that can be done.”
The next week, my left ovary torses, and I go into the ER in excruciating pain.
“Teratoma,” the ER doctor says. “It’s technically a type of cancer, an overgrowth, but it doesn’t kill you. The surgeon will be here shortly to assess you and take it out. You’ll have one ovary left though, so you’ll still get periods and preserve your fertility.”
I suppose it could be worse. What’s a few hours of suffering and a surgery? I lie in agony, wondering if my illicit visit to Gertrude precipitated the teratoma growing or just tipped it over the edge. Perhaps Gertrude is a witch, or the servant of a cosmic overlord.
A week after the surgery, I return to work and my boss promotes me.
I scrabble up the corporate food chain, gathering income and titles. I earn everything I get because I pay for it through hard work, long hours, and quarters and tickets and fingernails.
Then I fall in love and get pregnant. I don’t need to visit Gertrude for some time. Some DEI initiatives push through at my company and although I know that I deserved my promotions, I am sure people think of me as a two-birds-with-one-stone, the Chinese and female DEI case.
I go on maternity leave and my company begins “restructuring.”
I panic, although
nothing has happened yet. I pay a visit to Gertrude with my baby, Gabe, in the stroller. Opaque fog mists the boardwalk. We meet in front of the saltwater taffy store like mafioso in a film noir movie, next to a trash can and a statue of a pelican holding a box of taffy.
“What can I do?” I ask. Before she can say anything, I put my hand over Gabe protectively.
“Oh, please, Julie,” Gertrude says. “I’m not a monster. Jesus.”
Today she’s wearing a Nirvana T-shirt with no irony and a silver hoop through her right eyebrow. Her hair is cut short and dyed black, her skin as smooth as my infant son’s. I found two gray hairs the other day and my forehead creases are sealed in from years of perfectionism and months of sleep torture with a newborn.
“I don’t know how I’m going to do it,” I say, my chest burning with acid and ambition and worry and guilt. My parents gush about what a good dad Jeremy is, but no one praises me for being a good working mom. “Jeremy and I are interviewing nannies, but I’m already in hot water for taking the full three months maternity leave. They didn’t say that explicitly, but I can feel it.”
“Yes,” Gertrude nods. “I had a feeling you have more than one trade in mind.”
I remove my list of worries and wishes from the diaper bag and hand it to her. Last-minute panic ripples through me. I should have asked for better cooking skills too. My babao fan came out dry at Chinese New Year this year.
“Understandable,” Gertrude says, reading the list. “Let me see what I can do.”
I hand over my entire duffel bag full of my ticket stash and wonder what other body parts I have left to hawk. I muse over whether she can remove my stomach flab and call it a fair exchange. How about a pile of shedding hair from a post-partum nursing mom?
“Your power will increase,” Gertrude says. “Are you prepared for that?”
“I’m not power hungry,” I say. “I just want to be successful. Does that make me a bad person?”
Gertrude tosses her hair and I can’t tell if she agrees with me or disapproves.
She removes cards out of a folio in her Fjallraven backpack and lays them out on top of the covered trash can on the boardwalk. Seagulls circle overhead, scouting for french fries.
RAISE SUCCESSFUL CHILDREN IN A MIDDLE-CLASS HOME
SUSTAIN YOUR CAREER WITHOUT HIRING DOMESTIC HELP
EXPOSE YOUR KIDS TO SPORTS AND EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
KEEP YOUR CHILDREN FED AND CLOTHED
BE PART OF THE COMMUNITY OF PARENTS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD
I have to agree to the price, I know.
“The costs will be diversified,” Gertrude says. “You will relinquish fifteen percent of your circulating red blood cell mass and its oxygenating supply, your brain will atrophy from social isolation as a working mother with no time for meaningful relationships, and the remaining cognitive function will be spent on seven-day meal planning, executive preparation of menial tasks such as birthday parties, playdates, holiday feasts, gift-giving, coordinating soccer, basketball, and dance carpools, and reorganizing summer and winter closets for the children, plus chronic itchiness and skin thinning from housemaid’s hands or dyshidrotic eczema as you cook, clean, and Magic-Eraser, Oxi-Clean, and Scrubbing-Bubble your home to passable daily function.”
I’m a little relieved I’m walking out with my major organs, but I feel instantly fatigued.
I’ve never asked Gertrude for different payment plans. I should be grateful for what she’s given me already. But I’m beginning to wonder if it's worth it.
***
Time passes. For Christmas this year, I visit Terence with my son Gabe, age six, and toddler daughter, Sasha. Terence’s house is huge. He has an in-ground pool with an outdoor kitchen and a fire pit with heated seats. Turns out, everyone really needs a lawyer.
“So good to have you here, Jules,” Terence says. “Can I get you a drink?”
“No, thanks.” I shake my head. “I’m trying to cut down.” Four years ago, I traded Gertrude my caudate liver lobe in exchange for depression-free winters once Daylight Savings Time ends in November.
“I get it,” Terence says. “Middle age is rough. My trainer says I gotta cut back to just drinking on the weekends if I want to run a half-marathon this spring.” Terence pokes at his belly and his biceps. “Muscle loss starts in your thirties. I found a good protein powder, though. Want me to make you a protein shake?”
Terence is two years older than me but doesn’t look it at all. My stomach churns as I neglected to drink my breakfast smoothie this morning after Sasha threw up all over her high chair.
“How do you have time to go to the gym?” I ask.
“It’s not easy,” he says, “but Victoria feeds the kids breakfast while I hit the gym at six in the morning. She works out at night when I’m home from work. And I got promoted to senior manager so I can show up later without getting in trouble.”
He pours a gin and tonic at the gray and black marble bar.
“You remember Wonderworld?” he says to me. “I was thinking of taking Connor there this summer again. Do you wanna all go together?”
My trades with Gertrude have tainted me, and I associate my trips to the boardwalk with increased disposable income and lighter body mass index.
“That could be fun,” I say. “But aren’t your kids outgrowing it?”
“They should be,” Terence says. “But the staff loves Connor. Last year they gave him a year of free Dippin’ Dots because he won a raffle prize.”
I love my brother, but I fume inside.
The next time I see Gertrude, I don’t hold back. Seeing Terence in his bougie house and hearing about Connor’s win destroys my filter.
“What kind of sick game are you running?” I ask. “Who are you working for?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” Gertrude says. “Follow me.” We walk to the Wonderworld building and she lifts up a metal garage door and we go inside. The bumper cars, claw machine, and swings look abandoned and sad with their lights off. Piled high on the ground are unpacked stuffed animals with huge eyes, staring at us in their suffocating plastic bags. I shiver, rubbing goosebumps down my forearms.
“You’re mad about your nephew, Connor,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “You gave him a year of free ice cream. Did you make him give up a kidney or an index finger?”
“Of course not,” Gertrude says. “He’s just a kid.”
“Are you targeting little girls for body parts?” I ask, aching for my lost organs, my sacrificial meat.
She leads me to the carousel, walks past the horses in various states of galloping and trotting, to the center of the ride, festooned with mirrors surrounded by bordering globe lights. She inserts a key into the mouth of a mermaid draping her arms over a player piano, and a door opens, revealing a pulsating, bloody heart the size of a cow. Sinewy vessels protrude from the aorta, the left anterior descending artery, blue capillaries in a web, all stretching out and sticking to the cogs and levers inside the carousel like living, oxygenated spiderwebs.
I gag, repulsed at the grotesque lifeform.
“Are you feeding this thing little girls?” I ask.
“No, of course not. I told you, I’m not a monster,” Gertrude says. “Really, Julie. I’m just doing what always has been done.”
She feeds a piano roll into the mermaid’s tail, and instead of chipper music, the piano plays spoken words, snippets of conversation, nonchalant sentences of women:
“I gotta get back to Richard and serve him dinner. He’s so helpless without me, you know.”
“If I went back to work, I wouldn’t make enough money to make it worth it. Daycare is so expensive.”
“I should really save for retirement but I’m not smart enough to learn how to invest.”
“Have you ever been in Charlene’s house? It’s a mess. What
does she do all day at home? She doesn’t even work.”
The throbbing heart bulges with every word, growing redder.
The piano plays the words of boys:
“Mom! God! I told you I hate this kind of granola bar. Why don’t you ever listen?”
The piano plays the words of men:
“Did you see that CNN headline? Nine-year-old gets abortion. I don’t know what’s wrong with kids today.”
The heart grows engorged, so large that I don’t see how it will ever fit back into the center of the carousel.
I take a closer look and acid rises in my throat. The heart is decorated with tiny body parts: thumb joints, fallopian tubes, nipples, teeth.
“This is just wrong,” I say, paling. “So, what happens if the heart dies?”
“Wonderworld will die,” Gertrude says. “And along with it, the cards.”
“Why do we need cards in the first place? My brother and his son get everything, and they keep their body parts intact!”
“I don’t make the rules,” Gertrude says, blowing a pink gum bubble. She smells of Double Bubble and Eos lip gloss.
I pull my car keys out of my pocket and prepare to lunge at the gargantuan heart but stop short. I’m afraid of what happens if I shut the whole thing down and I have nothing left to trade. How will I survive? I grip my keys in the palm of my hand and my breath grows ragged and sharp. My fingers squeeze the keys until I am numb, and I scream.
“I need the cards,” I shout. “I’m nothing without them. I can’t do anything by myself.”
Gertrude stands over me, capturing my words on a paper piano roll scroll in her hand, tiny perforations appearing like pockmarks on a blood-splattered mirror. The paper gleams with a metallic sheen under the lights of the carousel.
“I told you,” Gertrude says. “I’m not the monster, Julie Chen.”
LOCATION: Arkabutla Lake in Coldwater, Mississippi, USA
POPULATION: 1,359
Oscar Meritt hated Arkabutla Lake more than ever. He stood on the shore, damp sand underfoot, reliving the humiliation that sent him fleeing Coldwater, Mississippi twenty years ago. In his mind, Cousin Lacey was still laughing—the shame, sharp and brutal, stabbing him in the back.
That’s right, city boy! Run home to Memphis, waterhead bastard.
Two decades had passed. He was back now, wiser, stronger. He had the upper hand. Climbing the corporate ladder had heightened his survival skills. He wasn’t a fish in a barrel anymore. He was a shark, and tomorrow there would be blood in the water. His employer, Victory Solutions, would open a sustainable jet fuel refinery right by the lake shore. The plant’s waste would likely contaminate the water beyond hope in less than a year. Oh well, Oscar thought. Killing Lacey’s precious lake was the best revenge he could imagine.
As he watched the glistening pool, his wife Justine stood behind him, slipping her arms around his waist.
“Tomorrow’s your big day. You ready?” she asked, her voice soft and hopeful.
“I’ve been ready since I was twelve. We got rid of the protestors. We have the blessing of the state officials including the governor. It’s time to celebrate.”
He turned to Justine, delighted to see her wearing the giant straw hat he’d bought her at the hotel gift shop. A few strands of hair wisped around her ears.
“You aren’t worried about the reception?” she asked. “Remember. You don’t have to do that part.”
“I’m not worried about any boats or this backwater mudhole.”
“You hit the game-winning shot. If you change your mind, your team doesn’t need you to celebrate.”
“Believe it or not, I used to love this place,” Oscar said wistfully. “My granddaddy would bring all the kids out here every summer and spin these tall tales about an entire town buried beneath the water, like Atlantis. He made it sound mythical, almost noble. Granddaddy had a way of taking darkness and giving it light. Listening to his stories was the only thing I liked about family reunions down here, and I was his favorite.”
“Were you now?” Justine asked, teasing.
“I was until my stupid cousin ran me off because she was jealous.”
“Focus on the long game.” She kissed his forehead, the brim flopping around her smiling face. “Your cousin is yesterday’s news. If she hadn’t
you away, you would have stayed down south, and I might never have met you. And Victory Solutions wouldn’t be making millions because of your brilliant idea. You’re on the fast track now. What else could you want?”
“One more thing,” Oscar said, pulling himself from Justine’s embrace. With his wife behind him, he slipped off his loafers and socks, trodding toward the lake.
“Um, Ozzie,” Justine called out, reaching for him, her voice betraying a hint of nervousness. She followed Oscar as he marched to the shore. “You sure about this?”
“The last time I was here, my cousin pushed me in,” he said. “I could’ve died that night. Today I walk under my own steam. I have to conquer my fear.”
“But you never go in the water,” she said, hurrying after him. Worry darkened her face as the Mississippi sun shone down on the couple.
Oscar shuffled through the hot sand, clenching his fists, gritting his teeth. In the breeze, the sweat on his back was cold as he made his way to the shore. He froze when he felt the lake’s edge lapping at his bare feet. Fear he had suppressed for decades climbed from his legs and into his belly.
A low humming, guttural and painful, rose from Arkabutla. He searched the sky for solace, but suddenly found himself submerged in water. Shock struck him as darkness spread below, light shining above the surface. He struggled to hold his breath as black waves closed around him, sweeping him into a cold current. The humming rose louder now, even beneath the waves. A hum that became a song, haunting and shrill, a lamentation drawn from ominous scripture. Oscar flailed and kicked, fighting as the humming dragged him deeper into the murky waters.
He was twelve years old again, drowning while his cousin laughed. His lungs burned, his throat raw, his long, lanky limbs felt like rubber, his voice a silent scream. He was reaching for Lacey, for Justine, for anyone, when a gnarled hand wrapped around his ankle and yanked him down. He screamed, silent bubbles floating through the muddy waters. Algae blooms brushed his cheeks and spun around his wrists, holding him deep below the lake’s surface. He looked down in horror at a pair of lurid yellow eyes staring from the depths below. He recoiled and kicked as the black hand covered in bulging veins pulled him down to the city buried beneath the water. As the world went dark, Oscar thought of Justine.
I should’ve listened, he cried into the soundless murk.
He screamed wordlessly as he woke up coughing on the lake shore, Justine crying beside him. Both were soaked from head to toe.
“What happened?” he asked, panting, his throat burning with pain.
“You asshole, don’t ever scare me like that again.” Justine pounded his shoulder with her fist, tears springing from her puffy, anger-filled eyes. Breathing hard, she could barely speak. “You walked into the water and fell face forward. I thought you were going to drown.” She covered her eyes and rolled onto her back.
“Juss, somebody was down there pulling me.” He remembered the yellow eyes, the black hand, an icy fetter wrapped around his ankle.
“Listen to yourself. All this plotting and planning is driving you crazy. You’ve done the PR work. Everybody knows Victory Solutions is reviving Coldwater’s economic landscape. Can we go home now?” Justine lay on top of Oscar, resting her head on his chest.
Feeling defeated, he stared at the lake until he noticed the surface swell a few feet away from the shore. That horrible humming filled the air again. Oscar covered his ears, wet sand, weeds, and debris clung to his body. To his astonishment, the rising water gave way to a leather-bound book held inside a black veiny grip.
He shivered. Fear shot through his temples as the familiar hand lifted the tome from the frightening waters.
“Something’s out there,” Oscar panted, his voice barely a whisper. He pointed with one hand and clutched Justine’s sleeve with the other. The mysterious object lay in the sand, half submerged with water washing over its surface.
“Stop,” Justine said. “You’re hurting me.” She peeled his fingers from her arm and stared curiously at the water. She stood and trudged into the lake as if walking in a trance, Oscar begging her not to go.
“Leave it,” he said. “Leave that thing where it is!”
After kneeling in the shallow water, she returned holding the same, portentous book Oscar saw rising from the lake’s surface.
Instinctively, he cringed from the sight but the concern in her eyes brought him back to reality. He had tried to put on a brave face, but he had confronted his fear and failed. Oscar reached for the book, his hands trembling. To his surprise the volume wasn’t nearly as wet as it should have been. Water rolled off the ragged cover instead of soaking
through.
Like Coldwater, he thought, and he remembered his granddaddy’s tale about the fabled town that once stood in this very spot from 1856 until 1948 when the floodwaters arrived, destroying the original site of Coldwater, Mississippi and forming Arkabutla Lake in its stead.
Granddaddy’s eyes would light up when he spoke about old Coldwater. How poor families, white and black, tilled the fertile soil side by side. He would wave his hands and tell Oscar and his cousins that Arkabutla Lake was originally a beautiful woodland where the Chickasaw buried their loved ones. Once the Chickasaw were forced from their native lands, the settlers attempted to eke a living from the sacred burial ground, but their efforts were unsuccessful, so they moved on to more hospitable plots further south. Then only freedmen and poor whites called Coldwater their home. Incredibly, over time, they made the land fertile, fueling tall tales—and envy.
Landowners from the surrounding counties tried to remove the residents from the fertile valley for years. Most of the town’s inhabitants finally gave up their homes, exhausted from the constant fights with their racist neighbors and the government. They migrated south to another plot of land that would become the site of the new Coldwater, Mississippi.
But Pastor Josiah Graves and the congregation of First Valley Baptist Church refused to surrender their property, despite the offers and aggressive demands from local officials. After their bids to purchase the town were rejected, state politicians conspired with the Army Core of Engineers to flood the valley. Spite proved to be a powerful force.
The last service before the day of reckoning, Pastor Graves barricaded himself and what remained of his congregation inside the sanctuary. Enraged and hopeless, he ordered his loyal followers to stay in the church even as the deluge threatened to drown them all. As Coldwater’s enemies flooded the valley, the rest of the displaced townspeople were miles away, building their new homes, but they heard the pastor preaching from the Scripture while the congregation raised their voices in songful pandemonium. Ten miles south of the newly formed lake, the townspeople heard the voices in the wind.
Lord, Thou rulest
the raging of the sea. When the waves thereof rise, thou stillest them.
Oscar opened the book and found the inside completely dry.
“That’s weird,” Justine said, rubbing the paper with her fingertip. “These pages should be ruined.”
“The Holy Bible, translated from the original tongues,” Oscar read slowly. At the bottom of the page, he found a scratched signature that sent his mind reeling. He wanted to toss the book back in the water and run as fast as he could, but he was done running from his past and this lake.
“If found, return to Pastor Josiah Graves.” Oscar trembled as he read. He stared at Justine, shocked recognition distorting his face. “Pastor Graves was the preacher from Granddaddy’s stories.” His tone was distant and fearful, like someone sleepwalking through a nightmare.
“We need to get out of here.” Justine crouched beside Oscar and grabbed his hand. “Forget the refinery, the opening reception. Something weird is happening, and we do not need to participate.”
Shame and fear pulsed through his heart. Even after all his accomplishments, all these years, the lake had the ability to make him feel powerless and small.
“We’ll be all right,” Oscar said. He pulled himself to his feet with Justine’s help. “Victory needs me. Besides, I refuse to let this damn lake win.”
Oscar and Justine turned their backs on Arkabutla. Before them the new refinery shone in the afternoon sun, a latticework of crisscrossing pipes and towering silos, like a white castle symbolizing Oscar’s triumphant return. ...
