Beautiful Chaos
Page 35

Amma walked over to the window, rubbing the gold charm she wore around her neck. “They’re not gone and we’re not lucky. Only a fool would think either.”
The lubbers buzzed underneath the window, the broken symphony of destruction that had become the sound track of our lives. Amma’s expression was just as broken, a mix of fear and sorrow and something I’d never seen before.
Unreadable, inscrutable Amma. Staring out at the night.
“The hole in the sky. It’s gettin’ bigger.”
There was no way we could go back to sleep, and there was no way Amma was letting us out of her sight, so the three of us sat around the scarred pine table in the kitchen listening to the clock tick. Luckily, my dad was in Charleston, like he was most weeknights now that he was teaching at the university. Tonight would’ve sent him back to Blue Horizons for sure.
I could tell Amma was distracted because she cut Link a slice of chocolate pecan pie when she cut one for me. He made a face and slid it onto the china plate next to Lucille’s water dish. Lucille sniffed it and walked away, curling up quietly under Amma’s wooden chair. Not even Lucille had an appetite tonight.
By the time Amma got up to put on the water for tea, Link was so restless he was banging out a tune on the place mat with his fork. He looked at me. “Remember the day they served that nasty chocolate pecan pie in the cafeteria, and Dee Dee Guinness told everyone that you were the one who gave Emily the Valentine’s Day card no one signed?”
“Yeah.” I picked at the dried glue on the table from when I was a kid. My pie sat untouched. “Wait, what?” I hadn’t been listening.
“Dee Dee Guinness was pretty cute.” Link was smiling to himself.
“Who?” I had no idea who he was talking about.
“Hello? You got so mad you stepped on a fork and crushed it? And they didn’t let you back in the cafeteria for a whole six months?” Link examined his fork.
“I remember the fork, I think. But I don’t remember anyone named Dee Dee.” It was a lie. I couldn’t even remember the fork. Come to think of it, I couldn’t remember the valentine either.
Link shook his head. “We’ve known her our whole lives, and she totally ratted you out in third grade. How could you forget her?” I didn’t answer, and he went back to tapping his fork.
Good question.
Amma brought her teacup to the table, and we sat in silence. It was like we were waiting for a tidal wave to crash down over us, and it was too late to pack or panic or run. When the phone rang, even Amma jumped.
“Who’d be calling this late?” I said late, but I meant early. It was almost six in the morning. We all were thinking the same thing: Whatever was happening, whatever Abraham had let loose on the world—this would be it.
Link shrugged, and Amma picked up the black rotary phone that had been on the wall since my dad was a kid. “Hello?”
I watched as she listened to the caller on the other end of the line. Link rapped on the table in front of me. “It’s a lady, but I can’t tell who it is. She’s talkin’ too fast.”
I heard Amma’s breath catch, and she hung up the phone. For a second, she stood there holding the receiver.
“Amma, what’s wrong?”
She turned around, her eyes watering. “Wesley Lincoln, do you have that car a yours?” My dad had taken the Volvo to the university.
Link nodded. “Yes, ma’am. It’s a little dirty, but—”
Amma was already halfway to the front door. “Hurry up. We’ve got to go.”
Link pulled away from the curb a little slower than usual, for Amma’s sake. I’m not sure she would’ve noticed or cared if he’d skidded down the street on two wheels. She sat in the front seat, staring straight ahead, clutching the handles of her pocketbook.
“Amma, what’s wrong? Where are we going?” I was leaning forward from the backseat, and she didn’t even yell at me about not wearing my seat belt. Something was definitely wrong.
When Link turned onto Blackwell Street, I saw just how wrong.
“What the he—” He looked at Amma and coughed. “Heck?”
There were trees all over the road, torn from the ground, roots and all. It looked like a scene from one of the natural disaster shows Link watched on the Discovery Channel. Man vs. Nature. But this wasn’t natural. It was the result of a supernatural disaster—Vexes.
I could feel them, the destruction they carried with them, bearing down on me. They had been here, on this street. They had done this, and they’d done it because of me.
Because of John Breed.
Amma wanted Link to turn down Cypress Grove, but the road was blocked, so he had to turn down Main. All the streetlights were out, and daylight was just beginning to cut through the darkness, turning the sky from black to shades of blue. For a minute, I thought Main Street might have made it through Abraham’s tornado of Vexes, until I saw the green. Because that’s all it was now—a green. Forget about the stolen tire swing across the street. Now the ancient oak itself was gone. And the statue of General Jubal A. Early wasn’t standing proudly in the center, sword drawn for battle.
The General had fallen, the hilt of his sword broken.
The black sheath of lubbers that had covered the statue for weeks was gone. Even they had abandoned him.
I couldn’t remember a time when the General wasn’t there, guarding his green and our town. He was more than a statue. He was part of Gatlin, woven into our untraditional traditions. On the Fourth of July, the General wore an American flag across his back. On Halloween, he wore a witch’s hat, and a plastic pumpkin full of candy hung from his arm. For the Reenactment of the Battle of Honey Hill, someone always put a real Confederate frock coat over his permanent bronze one. The General was one of us, watching over Gatlin from his post, generation after generation.