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Southernmost

Silas House
Chapters (77)
  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Also by Silas House
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Contents
  7. Part One
  8. 1
  9. 2
  10. 3
  11. 4
  12. 5
  13. 6
  14. 7
  15. 8
  16. 9
  17. 10
  18. 11
  19. 12
  20. 13
  21. 14
  22. 15
  23. 16
  24. 17
  25. 18
  26. Part Two
  27. 1
  28. 2
  29. 3
  30. 4
  31. 5
  32. 6
  33. 7
  34. 8
  35. 9
  36. 10
  37. Part Three
  38. 1
  39. 2
  40. 3
  41. 4
  42. 5
  43. 6
  44. 7
  45. 8
  46. 9
  47. 10
  48. 11
  49. 12
  50. 13
  51. 14
  52. 15
  53. 16
  54. 17
  55. 18
  56. 19
  57. 20
  58. 21
  59. 22
  60. 23
  61. 24
  62. 25
  63. 26
  64. 27
  65. 28
  66. 29
  67. 30
  68. 31
  69. Part Four
  70. 1
  71. 2
  72. 3
  73. Epilogue: The Everything
  74. Acknowledgments
  75. About the Author
  76. About Algonquin
  77. Copyright

Cover

Title

Southernmost

a novel

Silas House

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill 2018

Also by Silas House

Also by Silas House

Clay’s Quilt

A Parchment of Leaves

The Coal Tattoo

The Hurting Part

Eli the Good

Something’s Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal, with Jason Howard

Same Sun Here, with Neela Vaswani

Dedication

For

Jason Kyle Howard

Epigraph

Try to walk this earth an honest man

but evil waves at me its ugly hand.

The radar watches me from above, shoutin’ down:

“I hope you make it on this earth.”

Sometimes this world will leave you, Lord,

kickin’ and a-screamin’, wonderin’ if

you’ll see the next day through.

But as for me I do believe

that good luck comes from tryin’,

so until I get mine

I’ll work the whole day through.

—Jim James, “Honest Man”

The river is within us, the sea is all about us.

— T. S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages

Contents

Contents

Part One

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

Part Two

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Part Three

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

Part Four

1

2

3

Epilogue: The Everything

Acknowledgments

Part One

Part One

This Is to Mother You

1

1

The rain had been falling with a pounding meanness, without ceasing for two days, and then the water rose all at once in the middle of the night, a brutal rush so fast Asher thought at first a dam might have broken somewhere upstream. The ground had simply become so saturated it could not hold any more water. All the creeks were conspiring down the ridges until they washed out into the Cumberland. There was no use in anyone going to bed because they all knew what was going to happen. They only had to wait.

The day dawned without any sign of sun—a sky that groaned open from a black night to a dull, purpling gray of morning—and Asher went out to walk the ridge and get a full eye on the situation. The news wasn’t telling them anything worthwhile. He could hear the flood before he reached the top of the ridge. There he saw the massively swollen river supping at the edges of the lower fields, ten feet above its own banks, a foamy broth climbing so steadily he could actually see its ascent, and then he knew he had to go get Zelda.

They had all thought the last flood was as bad as things could get but the water hadn’t risen half this quickly. He maneuvered his Jeep across two bridges whose undersides were being caressed by the river and by the time he got to her house the water was nipping at her porch. He had to park on the rise at the top of her driveway and wade into waist-deep water that took his breath with its iciness. Zelda stood on the porch like a statue of an old woman, clutching a stack of picture albums. That was all she had grabbed.