“I’ll risk it.”
“Huh. You wouldn’t risk your own hide for nothing.”
“Things change,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Nothing wrong with change.”
“But there’s something wrong with those that have taking away from those that don’t.”
“Well. There’s the right way to stand against something and the wrong way.”
“Who gets to decide what the right way is, Beulah?”
Her mouth folded over her gums. “I never could tell you nothing.”
He turned the machete over, inspecting the blade. “You believe in gods.”
“I believe in one God.”
“All right. What if God took that child they’re looking for as a punishment?”
Beulah’s brow creased. “Who, Gracie? That innocent little girl?”
“For messing with Him.”
“It don’t work that way. The Lord won’t take a child away from her mama over a dam.”
Amos looked up. “Yeah, well. Maybe He’ll give her back if the dam goes away.”
Beulah shook her head. They studied each other.
“If I make it out of here I won’t be back,” he said.
“Why in the world not?” she asked. “This place is your home.”
“If the government has their way, this place is about to be gone.”
“Even if it’s covered up, it’ll still be here.”
He gestured with the machete. “Look around. Nothing left here but hard times.”
“Amos,” Beulah said. “It don’t matter what’s built or tore down by a man’s hands. The Lord’s in charge. Sure as the river keeps on running, good times will come back around.”
Amos grinned. “Maybe you ought to ask your bones if you’ve got it right or not.”
She smiled back a little. “You better watch that smart lip.”
“I better get out of sight,” he said. “Fog’s burning off.”
She held out the burlap sack, bloodied by the rabbits, coons and groundhogs she had snared and carried home to the cabin. “Here,” she said. “See if there’s some meat for your breakfast.” He tucked the bolt cropper under his arm and took the sack. Their fingers touched and he felt a pang of sorrow or love for this old woman he might never lay his one eye on again. He didn’t know why she had always been kind to him. They never spoke of it. She stepped aside and let him pass through the door on his way to the clearing at the foot of the viny bluff.
At a quarter to eight, Sheriff Ellard Moody sat parked at the curb in front of the former Customs House on the corner of Clinch and Market, across from the Tennessee Theatre. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited for the caseworker assigned to Yuneetah, Sam Washburn. In the other hand he pinched a cigarette, smoke curling out the window. He peered up through the windshield at the light poles, the power lines crossing over the rooftops. Much had changed since the first time Ellard came into the city with his father, gawping at the tall buildings and the motorcars lining the brick-paved streets, watching the fashionable ladies pass with their hair cut short and marcelled into waves. The Customs House still had the same facade as it did back then, gray marble with cast-iron columns, but it had changed in other ways since the power company took it over for their headquarters. Until 1933 the old building had housed the federal court, the excise offices and the post office. Now it held only the TVA offices. Ellard had made this trip too often in the last couple of years. When the townspeople complained of how they were treated he came here and demanded to see somebody in charge, determined not to let the big government machine forget they were dealing with individuals in Yuneetah. Most of the time he was put off or sent away dissatisfied. This morning at least he was seeing an official, the chief of the Reservoir Family Removal Section.
In Knoxville the morning was fair and bright, the car already heating up. The city had always seemed like a different world to Ellard. Now it had its own weather, not thirty miles north of his drowning town. Earlier when it was still darkish he had come through the fog that blanketed Yuneetah, watching as the clouds massed over the wooded hills receded in his rearview mirror, his tires slinging orange clay as they turned off the dirt byways onto blacktop. The sun had risen higher as Ellard passed under the arched girders of the steel bridge on the way into the city, crossing over a different river than what he knew, this one floating barges and steamboats on to Chattanooga. Leaving behind the pickup trucks and mule-drawn carts of the countryside and joining the faster traffic of the highway, the smells through his open window changing from wet farmland and rich manure to factory smoke and gasoline. Part of Ellard was relieved to be escaping, but he was ill with worry over what was happening in his absence.
As Ellard sat waiting for Washburn his head swam with all that had passed the night before. He and James had gone first across the road into the Hankins pasture, down to the uneven shoreline of the reservoir. They had split up, James heading left with a group of Whitehall County men toward where the field was bordered by a stand of loblolly pines. Ellard had gone to the opposite end where a dense thicket crowded against the barbwire. Before climbing over the fence he’d held his lantern across and seen light reflected on water. It was hard to say how deep it would be in some places. If Gracie had ventured in too far, the ground might have dropped from beneath her. But he would rather the lake have taken the child than Amos. Ellard had crossed the fence and spent close to an hour crashing through the overgrowth in the dark, burrs catching in his cuffs and shale wedging in his boot treads. He had pushed into the hemlocks as far as the water reached, shining his light into spidery tree holes and beating at drifts of forage with a branch, plunging his fingers into root tangles groping for the touch of hair or flesh or bone. Looking for Amos and Gracie Dodson both, his hand going to his revolver each time the brush crackled.
When the search in the pasture yielded nothing James had gone with the men from Whitehall County to round up as many as they could from the coves and hollows above the taking line while Ellard stayed at the courthouse on the shortwave, calling for assistance. So far only a handful had showed up from surrounding counties and the state police were dragging their feet. He couldn’t help thinking a missing child from somewhere else might warrant more attention. Yuneetah had never been of much concern to outsiders, even before it was evacuated. Most anything Ellard asked of the higher-ups was years in coming, if it came at all. He had learned to make do with his piddling salary, his rooms at the courthouse and the use of this car, a humped-trunk Ford sedan with a black top and gold stars painted on the doors. But now Ellard cursed his lack of resources. He guessed he should be thankful anybody had come at all. He’d feared the townspeople wouldn’t return if they believed Gracie Dodson was dead, having watched enough of what they loved disappear. He had been relieved to see at least a few of his old neighbors among the other searchers gathered at the courthouse around midnight, standing in the lamplit entrance hall as Ellard gave them instructions. James Dodson had been there looking addled with his eyes roving over the pressed-tin ceiling, the fly-specked plaster walls, the high windows darted and dashed with raindrops. Ellard had told the searchers to sweep in lines through meadows and woods, to enter each vacant building and house. He’d advised them to spread out, to be slow and deliberate.
Around dawn there had still been no trace of Gracie or Amos found, but there was a commotion on the riverbank. Ellard was organizing a group of fishermen with musseling boats to drag the lake when he heard the shouting. By the time he reached the other men upriver the ruckus had settled down. He came upon them bent over something at the edge of the lapping water, a hilly form lying on its side and drifted around with debris. At first sight he thought of Gracie’s coonhound. It was about the size of a large dog and resembled Rusty from a distance. James had told Ellard last night as they searched along the reservoir that his daughter would have followed that dog anywhere. If this was the hound that had gone missing with the child, she wouldn’t be far behind. But moving closer he saw that it had golden fur and a long tail, outstretched forelegs ending in big paws. It was a panther, with one marble eye shut and one open, its tongue hanging between ivoried teeth. Even in death, it had a sinuous beauty. Ellard toed its haunches. He knelt to look for buckshot, musk rising from its soggy hide into his nose, but the panther was unmarked. He had come across all manner of drowned animal. Moles, possums, groundhogs. But nothing like this. It troubled his mind.