the reverend’s daughter.”
Both Cole and Hemmingway looked up to see Doll leaning girlishly over the banister, her bare breast swinging like church bells.
So here is the evidence, Hemmingway thought to herself as her eyes moved from Doll to Cole and then back to Doll. “You roach!” she screamed, and took flight.
Upriver the levees gave way, and the Mississippi and all of her arteries breached their shores. The surge moved like a beast downriver, smashing through the wall of the church and toppling all but two homes on Nigger Row.
On Candle Street, Cole fought to separate mother and daughter as they clawed one another, and so none heard the growl of the approaching heave of water until it plowed through the front door. They scrambled up the stairs to safety, and stood mesmerized with horror as the water magically transformed the foyer into a pool.
Not one amongst them could swim.
“We need to go up to the attic, now!” Cole yelled.
Within seconds the lower half of the staircase was completely submerged.
Feeling scared and powerless, Hemmingway did what any child would have done in that situation: “Mommy,” she said, and reached for Doll’s hand.
Doll Hilson looked down at her daughter’s hand and began to laugh. If Hemmingway had any bit of hope that she could ever love her mother, Doll’s refusal to take her hand dashed it all away.
The house lurched; Doll swayed and shrieked with terror as she grappled to clamp hold of the very hand she’d just rejected.
Hemmingway swiftly pulled her hand from Doll’s reach.
“Help me!”
The house pitched again, the staircase buckled, and Doll went reeling down into water.
Cole was stunned mute and rendered immobile. Only his eyes continued to work, swinging unbelievingly between the placid indifference on Hemmingway’s face and the thrashing Doll who was struggling for her life.
“Hemmingway!” Doll gurgled as the swirling water pulled her under. “Hemm—”
Hemmingway didn’t move. Cole couldn’t move.
Doll’s head disappeared beneath the water, resurfaced, and then disappeared again. Soon after, Esther’s spirit floated up toward the ceiling and perched on the chandelier.
The next day, the sky spread itself across Mississippi in a serene blanket of baby blue. And after months of obscurity, the sun returned, white bright and hot.
The Manning brothers were blue-eyed, blondhaired young men who enjoyed fishing. They spent most Saturdays out in their rowboat drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and reeling in bass.
When the rains stopped, they used their boat to rescue the living and the floating dead. They were the ones who found Cole and Doll.
Inside the Payne house on Candle Street, furniture, dishes, and silver picture frames holding sepia-colored photos bobbed lazily in the dark water. Overhead, the chandelier swayed, as if guided by an invisible hand.
Vance, the larger of the twins, sat at the helm of the boat slowly ranging his eyes over the water. His twin, Preston, rowed the oars.
“Hello! Hello, anybody here!” They called over and over in their baritone voices.
“Up here!” Cole shouted back.
Preston guided the boat to the staircase and Vance climbed out. The swell of water hit his six-foot frame at the chest. He grabbed hold of the banister and pulled himself up onto the remaining steps. On the landing, he sloshed down the corridor and entered the first room he came upon.
“Hello?”
“Up here! In the attic!”
Vance turned around and started back the way he’d come. Spotting a closed door catty-corner to the room he had just walked out of, Vance grabbed the doorknob and turned. He was startled to see a wide-eyed, shivering Cole standing at the top of the short staircase.
“Hey, good to see ya,” Vance said.
“And you!”
Cole extended a trembling hand. Vance took it and the two men shook.
“You alone?”
Cole shook his head. “Me and a young girl.”
Hemmingway peeked out from behind Cole’s back.
Vance considered her before declaring, “Well, we got enough room for both of you.”
In the boat, Cole surveyed his surroundings in quiet horror. Hemmingway folded her knees to her chest and nervously chewed on her bottom lip.
“I see something,” Vance said, pointing toward the drawing room. Cole strained to see and was sorry that he did. There was Doll, floating on her back, eyes wide and staring, breasts bobbing in the water like buoys.
“Don’t look,” Cole whispered to Hemmingway.
“We’ll have to come back for the body later,” Preston said as he navigated the boat through the opening where a beautiful oak door had once hung.
As they floated out of the house, Esther swooped down from the chandelier and settled on Hemmingway’s shoulder.
Outside, it seemed to Cole that all of the waters of the world had converged in Mississippi.
They headed upriver to Greenwood, where there was dry land. On their journey, the group passed dozens of somber-faced men piloting rowboats crammed with people wearing stricken expressions. Some boats hauled dead bodies stacked one atop the other like sacks of potatoes. One boat carried a pair of bleating goats and a grim-faced old woman.
Every so often, someone would cry out, “Over here!” and the boats would make their way across the water and encircle the corpse like sharks.
Along the way, Vance reached into the bib of his overalls and pulled out a bag of tobacco and rolling paper. He shoved it in Cole’s direction.
“No, thanks,” Cole murmured.
Whistling a chipper tune, Vance sifted the tobacco onto the paper, rolled it into a line, and slipped it into the corner of his mouth.
With her eyes closed against the sun and the horror, Hemmingway allowed her body to lean and rock in tempo with the sway of the boat.
“Hemmingway?” Cole called.
“Yes?” she responded without opening her eyes.
“You okay?”
When her eyelids slowly parted, the steely gaze she fixed on Cole spoke volumes: My mama’s dead, the rest of
