But the rain.
I looked out the window and it was still coming down as determined as ever.
It made me think of Christ in his ratty clothes and taped-together shoes, sloshing knee-deep up into the undersides and standing there, in the low, cement-domed rooms with Ann Alice’s mortal remains floating and stinking.
I knew better than to wonder if Christ had called the police. Of course he hadn’t. I readied my thumb to dial 911, and thought better of it. What would I say? And would anyone believe me?
If it was flooded down there like I imagined it must be, would they even send anyone looking for her—even if they believed me?
Another possibility made me close the phone and slip it back into my pocket. It was entirely possible that Christ had moved her himself. I wondered what he’d do with her if he did. I wondered where he would put her.
Although fully twelve hours had passed since I dropped the Malachi bomb, Lu and Dave were eating breakfast on the back porch, still discussing the finer points of my idiocy and working out their future reactions to Malachi. I didn’t want to bother them. I left them a note on the fridge saying I was going downtown and to call my cell if they needed me.
Once I got into the car I called my old friend Jamie, who hadn’t seen Christ in several days and didn’t know what he was doing.
“What’s going on?” he asked, and I tried to give him the fifty-cent version.
“You’ve heard him fussing about missing friends, right?”
“Monsters down by the river? I’ve heard about it. But he went running off after the last poetry slam and no one’s seen him since. I just assumed he was being a drama queen.”
I was concentrating on getting down the mountain without killing myself in the storm or I might have rolled my eyes. “You’d know it when you saw it, wouldn’t you, darling?”
“But of course. We know our kind. Look, he does this once in a while. You know him. I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Frankly, I’m not sure why you’re bothering to call around about it. Since when does Christ have any cred with you?”
“Since I think he might be telling the truth.”
“Really?”
“Just this once,” I said. “Try to contain your astonishment.”
“My heart is doing poundy things in my chest. Could this be the seventh seal? Is Armageddon upon us?”
“You never know. Listen, where are you right now?”
“Now? I’m at home with Becca. Why?”
“I’m on my way downtown. I think Christ is in some kind of trouble—or, if he isn’t yet, he’s gonna be. So I’m headed down to Greyfriar’s. It’s always a good spot to start looking for people. I’ll be down there soon.”
“No you won’t,” he said with his own special kind of nonchalance.
“Yes I will. I’m sliding down the mountain right now. Would you believe this rain?”
“Sure I’d believe it—but you’re not going to get far. You’ll never make it over the river. They’ve started shutting the bridges down. The river’s rising, cutie. TVA sucks ass, in case you didn’t know.”
“What?”
“Look out of your windshield. It’s raining, not just diddling around anymore. It’s been going on for days, and there’s some problem up at the dam. They’re trying to keep people off the bridges.”
“Then Christ is definitely in trouble. I think he’s down at the undersides.” I lost traction then and had to drop the phone into the passenger’s seat while I regained control of the Death Nugget. “Hang on a second,” I said, and I hoped he heard me.
With the squeal and squeak of four angry tires, I pulled the car back into its correct lane.
I picked the phone back up. Jamie was mid-way through saying something, but since I’d missed the first part I cut him off. “Wait. Call the cops. Christ won’t like it, but if the river’s really coming up, I think he might be in real trouble.”
“If he’s down at the undersides then, well, yeah. What’s he doing there? And how do you know he’s there?”
“He left me a voicemail. He went there looking for one of his missing friends, and he said—” I stopped myself. “He said he was down there, but the signal was all shitty and I could hardly understand him.”
“Shit.” Somewhere behind him, his girlfriend asked what was going on. He shooed her away with a promise to fill her in later. “He’ll kick my ass if I call the cops on him.”
“Then call the cops for him. At least see if someone will go down there and look for him, you know?”
“What are the odds?”
“Probably not good. But try it, please? I’m going to try to get downtown now, and if I do, I’m going to start at Greyfriar’s. If he made it out of the tunnels, he might go dry off there. Or the library. I don’t know.”
The white noise of the rain around my car made it hard to hear, but I think Jamie was getting up and moving around. “Eden, stay on the mountain. Just stay up there and I’ll look into it. I’m not doing anything right now anyway; I got sent home from work. The restaurant closed up when they started talking about shutting the bridges. That goofy little car of yours isn’t made for wading.”
“Don’t insult the wheels, man.”
“The Nugget isn’t exactly an SUV. Half of Red Bank is already under water,” he said, but that didn’t tell me anything. Every time it rains too bad, big chunks of the main drag lose their sidewalks and storefronts.
“You’re going to get stuck down there. Don’t do it. Stay put, and I’ll see if I can get a lead on Christ.”
“Oh, I will get across the river. You just watch me. And be at the ‘Friar in half an hour. But first—call the cops.”
“And tell them what, exactly?”
“Tell them—tell them you heard someone calling out for help down at the undersides entrance, the one beside the amphitheater under the pedestrian bridge. Tell them you think someone’s trapped down there, by the river. Tell them anything, except don’t tell them it’s Christ. And I mean it: thirty minutes. Be there.”
I hung up on him and threw the phone back onto the seat. I was almost down off the mountain, and 27 was beginning to straighten out. But it unnerved me, the way the unrelenting rain gave everything such a weird sense of urgency—between the pounding noise and the zero visibility, it was enough to make you crazy.
The very thought that they’d shut down the bridges was ridiculous. They never shut down the bridges except for road work. The bridges were plenty high off the ground, and plenty high away from the river.
But Jamie was right. The road began backing up and the loud blue and red lights of cop cars beamed wetly through the storm. Flashing lights with arrows indicated detours and recommended shelters.
“I need to watch more TV,” I said to myself, pulling up next to a raincoat-bedecked officer waving a flashlight.
I rolled down the window. “Excuse me? What’s the situation? I’m trying to get downtown.”
“Emergency,” he told me, blinking through the droplets that ran down his nose and dripped off his mustache. “Trouble with the locks at the dam. We’re trying to keep everyone up away from the river until the situation is resolved.”
“But—”
“I realize it’s an inconvenience, ma’am. If you’re trying to get to work—”
“I’m not trying to get to work. I’m trying to get home,” I lied.
“Sorry, ma’am. Give us a few hours to sort things out. Right now, we’ve got a couple of businesses that look like they’re headed underwater, and we’re shutting down the Veterans Bridge.”
“No way! Has this ever happened before?”
“Not so far as I know. Ma’am, please move along.”
“What about the hospitals? What about the interstates?” I shouted over the rain.
“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you—”
“To move along. Yeah, I got it.”
My phone rang, and I rolled up my window. I wiped rain off my face and checked the phone’s display; the call was coming from home. Lu and Dave watched more TV than I did, and probably were calling to warn me about the closings.
I ignored the phone. Now I had a challenge.
I was probably a couple of miles from the river, but I knew a whole lot of back roads, and I’d told Jamie I’d meet him in half an hour.
My first thought was to try the long way around, via the Chickamauga Dam—but if the dam was having issues, I could safely bet they’d shut down driving over that spot, too. The cop said they’d closed the Veterans Bridge. That left the Olgiati and Market Street bridges, but since those were within a mile of the closed one, they’d be jam-packed or shut down as well.
I felt stupid, but beyond those three arteries I had no earthly idea how to get across the water. I’d never needed another route before. How far around the city would I have to drive? Chattanooga doesn’t have a ferry or anything, so it wasn’t like I could chase down a boat.
Well, there was always the chance I could chase down a private craft; but I’d have to get next to the water for that.
I tried to imagine all the boats I could think of, and they all docked in approximately the same place on the north bank—down by the pedestrian bridge. But if I could make it down to the pedestrian bridge, then I could walk across the river myself. It’s less than a mile.
The more I pondered the plan, the better I liked it. The cops would be busy chasing cars, and the bike cops would have better sense than to patrol the bridge in that weather. Who on earth would be trying to walk it, anyway? Only a damn fool.
But I happened to know that at the end of that bridge, on the other side, there was a set of cement runoff tunnels down at the river’s edge. And down there, under the city and up beneath the banks, there might be proof of something horrible. And there might be a dumb punk drowning.
