Annie Clyde left the window and went out of the bedroom, descended the stairs with her head still swimming and her bad foot lifted, the sheeting bandage already stained through. On her way down, the shine through the crevices of the front door hurt her eyes. The rain was over. The lake would stop rising. She could find Gracie if the power company left her alone. All she needed was time. She stopped to breathe, leaning against the banister, before hobbling on to the kitchen. Crossing the linoleum was enough to sap what remained of Annie Clyde’s strength, but she was determined. She didn’t bother looking for her shoes. The damage was done. Her foot was too swollen. It throbbed with her pulse as she concentrated on moving forward. The closer she got to the door, the more convinced she became that the dog’s barking hadn’t been a dream. Finally she pushed the door open, shielding her eyes from the glaring sun, and hopped down the stoop.
If Annie Clyde had gone out the front door she would have seen paw prints around the porch steps. She would have discovered the horse bone where her husband dropped it. But in the side yard, where it seemed the barking came from, there was no evidence of Rusty. She turned her head toward the barn her father had repainted red not long before he died, now a dulled maroon, and took some uncertain steps out into the grass. She wanted to whistle but didn’t have the breath. The farm was silent besides the cicadas and bullfrogs, farther off the running water. Then she heard a bang from behind her. A car door slamming. She pivoted around, wincing at the pain shooting through her foot. The Dodge coupe she had come to recognize was parked at the end of the track. It must have been there all along. She waited as Washburn came through the sweet clover to reach her. From a distance he looked more composed than the last time she saw him, in a clean suit and tie with his dark blond hair combed neat again, a feather in the band of his fedora. When he got close she saw the cut under his chin. She remembered blood running down his neck into his collar. She felt none of her former anger, seeing the government man back again. She was almost too distracted to acknowledge him at all. “I thought nobody was home,” Washburn said. Then he paused to scrutinize her face. “You’re unwell, Mrs. Dodson.”
“My husband went after the doctor.”
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“I heard barking out here.”
Washburn glanced around the yard, then over her head toward the hayfield. “I got ahold of a man in Clinchfield with bloodhounds. I wasn’t expecting him until this afternoon, though.”
“Shh,” she said. “Listen.”
“How long has your husband been gone?”
“Do you hear that? That’s Rusty’s bark.”
“I believe you need to sit down, Mrs. Dodson.”
“Silver told me last night. I thought I was dreaming.”
Washburn looked to the kitchen door and the cement steps Annie Clyde’s father had poured when she was a child, the neglected geraniums of her mother’s flower beds growing up against them. His arm came around her waist but she wouldn’t let him lead her to the stoop. She’d heard again what she had been listening for since she made it outside. It was the sound from her dream. A high yelping that echoed across the emptiness of Yuneetah. It was how Rusty sounded when he saw a snake or cornered a muskrat at the spring. When he found a drifter in the cornfield. The way he warned her that something was wrong. “I know you heard it that time,” she said to Washburn. He opened his mouth to answer but she raised a hand to hush him again. When another string of barks drifted across the field she grabbed his arm for leverage to turn around, both of them staring in that direction. Then Annie Clyde took off, bad foot forgotten.
As she dodged past the barn and thrashed into the hayfield, Washburn hurried to match her stride, his arm around her waist again. “Rusty!” She had made it as far as the apple tree when she saw the dog emerging from the pines. From fifty yards away Annie Clyde still recognized him. He rushed toward her through the long grasses, tongue flopping. If not for the press of Washburn’s fingers holding her up by the ribs she might have believed she was dreaming again.
Washburn’s voice broke her stupor, sharp as a slap. “Who is that?” he asked. She followed his eyes, staring across the weed tips. Her throat clenched shut, cutting off her breath.
Even as she watched him coming behind the dog, his auburn hair a blaze against the pines, she thought she might be seeing things. It was her husband. It was James. Then he was saying her name. “Annie Clyde!” His voice was as real as Rusty’s barking had been. He was carrying their daughter, bringing Gracie out of the woods. She lolled in his arms as he tried to run with her. Legs dangling like when he used to scoop her sleeping from a nest of hay at the end of a summer evening spent working in the barn. Annie Clyde was paralyzed at first. Washburn had to yank her forward, wading out to James and Gracie with her foot bandage unraveling.
When the four of them came together in the middle of the field Annie Clyde reached for her child. “Give her to me!” she demanded, but James kept on running like she wasn’t there.
“Where was she?” Washburn asked. “Is she breathing?”
“Why isn’t she moving?” Annie Clyde shouted. “James!”
“I ain’t got the truck,” James panted as they ran.
“We can take my car,” Washburn flung back over his shoulder, racing on ahead, trampling a path through the sedge. Annie Clyde stumbled, trying to keep up. She didn’t want to hinder them, but she didn’t know how she’d survive if they drove off without her.
She caught up as Washburn was opening a back door for James and Gracie. Washburn waited for her with his arm outstretched. She climbed in after James, bumping her head without feeling it. Washburn slammed the door behind her, catching her dress tail. She tore it loose and moved to take her child, cold and painted with orange mud. For the first time since Gracie was born, Annie Clyde didn’t want to look at her. The fear was too much. But she made herself study Gracie under the clay and blood as if it had been two years and not two days. She lifted her daughter, careful of her wounded head, and pressed an ear to her frail chest. She gathered up Gracie’s limp arms, buried her face in Gracie’s curls. Washburn swiveled to pass his suit coat across the seat, warm from his skin, and she used it to swaddle Gracie tight. She promised as Washburn reversed down the track to make Gracie an apple pie, to build her a rabbit hutch, to let her hold the baby chicks. Promising anything if she would only wake up. “Please, hurry,” Annie Clyde begged Washburn. She could feel Gracie’s spirit leaving her body faster than the car was moving.
Annie Clyde didn’t look back as Yuneetah receded. At the steep rising mountains or the ponded cow pastures or the river glinting between the shade trees. At Joe Dixon’s store or Hardin Bluff School or the tumbled-down foundation stones of the churches. The thought of this day had once broken her heart. Now the death of the town seemed like nothing compared to the waning life she held in her arms. Let the lake have it. She had all that counted. She closed her eyes and inhaled the farmland smell of Whitehall County blowing through the car, replacing the graveyard stench of dirt, limestone and moss. Buffeting her hair and flapping the sleeves of Washburn’s suit coat. She clutched the bundle of Gracie to her chest and pretended they were somewhere else to keep from losing her mind. They were riding to the market in the bed of Dale Hankins’s pickup. She was leaning against the cab holding Gracie between her knees, loose straw flying all around them. Or they were on a hayride tucked in a musky horse blanket, the wagon bumping down the road under the harvest moon, passing the frosted fields with James’s arms around her and Gracie both, the scent of autumn crisp and smoky on their skins. She remembered her husband then. She cracked her fevered lids to see him slumped beside her on the seat. His hair tousled, his shirt torn ragged. Mud and bark caking his fingernails. Soaked to the hip from the tall weeds he’d parted to bring Gracie home. “James,” Annie Clyde rasped, and his eyes rolled toward her. She was overcome with love for him, even in the midst of all this. The one who gave her daughter back to her. At last she understood what he’d meant when he said he had worshipped her from the moment he saw her standing on the riverbank. “She won’t wake up,” Annie Clyde whispered, shaking Gracie a little, tears leaking down her face. James forced himself to smile. For her sake, like so much of what he had done. “She will,” he said, and Annie Clyde tried to believe him.