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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

“We won’t trouble you,” Jimmy said in his even way.

“We don’t go where we’re not wanted,” Stephen added.

They were all frozen there with silence between them: Jimmy’s hand on the doorknob, Stephen in the shadows, Lydia tucked behind Asher as if he were a shield, Asher in the middle of the room, feeling like a fool.

“We appreciate the clothes,” Jimmy said.

Stephen moved toward the door. “We’ll get them back to you.”

Asher wanted to beg them to stay but he didn’t want to shame them any further.

“At least let me get you something to eat,” Asher offered.

“I can make you up a plate,” Lydia said, then, too late.

They slipped out the door and Asher followed but they were down the steps and enveloped in darkness before he even got to the porch steps. He hollered and told them to follow the ridgeline north on up to their neighbor Kathi’s; she’d be good to them. He didn’t know then that the Cumberland had risen so high it had taken her home, too.

“I’m sorry!” Asher called out above the roar of the flood.

Asher looked up at all those stars again. It wasn’t right for such a sky to be shining above them when so many people had lost so much. But the sky doesn’t pay a bit of attention to the things that happen to us, the joys or sorrows either one.

5

5

When the water receded later that week, Asher took Caleb and Rosalee to Caleb’s sister in Nash­ville. Then he drove Zelda to her house, which had miraculously survived with nothing more than the front porch washed away. He made his way back in silence, weaving through Cumberland Valley to check on the members of his congregation and his neighbors. Most of the bridges had washed out, replaced with piles of brush and twisted guardrails, stoves, recliners, chunks of Sheetrock that had once been the walls of homes. The county roads had buckled under the weight of the water, and were now undulating strips of blacktop that occasionally broke away, as if the sides of the road had been bitten off. The bottomland along the river had morphed into ponds pocked with johnboats carrying people trying to find their belongings. Down near Greene’s Branch two men in a wobbly rowboat nearly tipped over as they pulled a body onboard. They were out in the middle of a cornfield and did not seem real until Asher caught sight of the corpse, a man whose clothes had been ripped away by the water, his side gashed open.

He tried to pray but could not find it in himself to do so.