Woods and I separate quickly, patting the space between us. Janie Lee vaults over Woods and lies down. She folds her hands over her stomach and there we are. Three peas in a pod, watching a television made of books.
“There’s a variety show on,” I suggest. “A cappella group.”
They take the cue. The three of us are singing a mash-up of Adele and David Guetta when Woods’s mom opens the door. “Morning, Billie. Janie Lee.”
“Morning, Mrs. Carrington,” Janie Lee and I say together.
She never seems surprised or fazed at two girls lying in the bed with her son, but today she’s wearing an untraceable expression. Euphoria? No. Anticipation? Maybe. Hesitation? Yes.
From behind her back, she produces a newspaper. After popping her son in the forehead, she says, “I believe this is what you’ve been waiting for.”
We sit up. I polish a little smudge on my boots—try to play this moment of anticipation cool. I hope to see Mrs. Clare McCaffrey in Times New Roman letters. Woods snatches the newspaper and reads the headline aloud: “Corn Dolly Results Announced.”
He follows with three names:
Mrs. Tawny Jacobs
Mrs. Caroline Cheatham
Miss Elizabeth McCaffrey
If Janie Lee’s mouth could catch a thousand flies, mine could catch a million.
Woods tugs his hat toward the bridge of his nose. “Hot damn, Elizabeth McCaffrey, you’re on the ballot.”
15
A man from Cambridge, of learned intelligence, published something called Littlewood’s Law before I was born. The professor claimed mathematical proof that miracles occur once a month. Per person. Give or take. I don’t know if this is science’s doing or God’s, but I am positive Billie McCaffrey on the Corn Dolly ballot is nothing short of miraculous. Last I checked, in the court of public opinion, I’d burned down a church.
With the unexpected news, my house has been downright festive. Mom fixes ribs, which is a banner that screams Special Occasion. Dad drinks a glass of champagne—an actual glass of alcohol—and invites the Hexagon and Grandy over to picnic. He’s so stinking proud he’ll have to pray for forgiveness all the way through the Harvest Festival.
I’m too stunned to be proud. Too concerned I might screw this up to enjoy anything more than their company.
Elizabeth McCaffrey, born 1999—d. ? R.I.P.: Corn Dolly Nominee.
By four thirty, paper plates are loaded with ribs and carbs. Napkins dance away from the picnic table at the wind’s insistence. Mom plugs in festive white lights over the pergola even though the sun still hangs high above the tree line. When everyone sits, Dad lifts his glass. Aluminum beverages rise to shoulder height all around me. I duck my head and stare at my fork tines.
“To Billie,” Dad says.
“To Billie,” everyone repeats.
I am not the sort to cry, but I am nearly persuaded. Janie Lee, who is sitting directly across the table from me, puts an UGG on my boot, taps. Tears plop from her chin to her tank top and a quiet little “I’m proud of you” passes across the table like a scoop of mashed potatoes. At the other end, Woods winks and licks his lips. Possibly over the spicy rib seasonings. Possibly because he’s spinning ideas into gold. How do I turn a nomination into an award? he’s thinking.
Davey occupies the seat to my right; Mom, the one to my left. They have both wordlessly side-squeezed me. My dad seems taller than Molly the Corn Dolly. He stays tall through the whole meal, lavishing praise on everyone.
“You’ve all worked so hard,” and “People were bound to notice,” and “I’m proud of you.” He doesn’t hand these things to me alone; he speaks them to the whole Hexagon, and that makes me even happier.
When Mom says, “You’re the first teenager ever to be nominated,” I know she is trying to remind me that it might be a group accomplishment, but I need to own some of the excitement for myself.
I don’t care if I win a Corn Dolly, but this, this full feeling in my soul, I’d like to keep it. Otters Holt is my home, and these people are my family.
One by one, they all tromp off to Saturday night plans. Grandy first: beauty sleep. Woods next: he’s playing the piano for services tomorrow and hasn’t practiced. Mash and Fifty follow, citing some Fantasy Football thing. Davey sticks around, making sure the trash is out, the lights are unplugged, and the propane tank is reattached to the grill.
“You working at the elementary school after church tomorrow?” he asks.
“If I don’t die of shock in my sleep.”
He leans in close. The stubble on his cheek grazes against my face. “You deserve this,” he whispers, and then he is off and away; the Camaro has left the drive.
“You’re very red,” Janie Lee comments.
I’ve been red-faced since I saw the newspaper.
“Let’s go somewhere,” she says.
We tumbleweed to our bikes and pedal furiously down the drive without so much as an explanation to Mom and Dad. River Run Road is short and pockmarked. We weave back and forth, avoiding as many potholes as we can. Sometimes our hands are on the bars, sometimes high in the air; we take back road to back road, which eventually spits us out near Molly the Corn Dolly and the dam overlook. I am windblown and spectacularly happy. The light bends golden and glowing over the horizon and trees. Perhaps I’ve been alive seventeen years. Perhaps three hundred. On a day like today, age is irrelevant: existence is infinite.
The leaves aren’t afire yet, but the orange and red and yellow of autumn are on preorder. One more rain and Otters Holt will start to explode with colors. Molly the Corn Dolly greets us. A family, using a tripod, snaps a quick photo before piling back into a Suburban.
Janie Lee points toward the overlook. “The dam?”
I pedal in that direction, and once we arrive I toss my bike in the grass, walking directly up to the concrete barrier. I bend over to see the water. The deep blue and frothing lake is a mirror for the sky, but it is not transparent. Visibility stops within inches of the surface. Beautiful things are often muddy.
Janie Lee is beside me. “There,” she says of a barge carrying coal or maybe limestone.
I nod, hoping the light will hold long enough for us to watch it go through the lock.
A towboat chugs forward, pushes the barge to the left, nearly to the shore. Even from this height, the cacophony of water and machinery keeps us from speaking. When the barge is in place, the towboat backs downriver and the massive lock doors inch closed. Turbines grind and water slips out of tiny holes, starting the laborious process of changing the water level inside the lock. All because someone effing brilliant imagined a seventy-five-foot elevator for boats.
Concrete and steel.
Water sucking, snorting, draining, or filling.
Magical engineering at its very best.
I feel a strange kinship with this incredible but very normal feat. Isn’t it as unlikely as I am? Isn’t it magic the same way me being nominated is magic? I say as much to Janie Lee.
“Billie,” Janie Lee protests.
“Shhhhh.” The water levels are almost flush with the other side of the Tennessee, the enchantment almost at an end.