“And Isaiah said, take a lump of figs. And they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered.” She recalled reading the passage when she had planted Nancy’s Tree, reading every mention in the Bible of figs. She found that figs were there from the beginning, in the book of Genesis, when Adam and Eve knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And so she planted a fig tree for Nancy that had indeed flourished. Now she would call on those fruits that grew from the pain of losing Nancy to heal Blake’s pain.

She laid the Bible on the nightstand, stood, and looked in the mirror, turning sideways to see the profile of her maternal form and the life that grew within. Always she had laughed in embarrassment when locals said she reminded them of Angelina Jolie. Blake had even insisted it was true when they were first married. As she stroked her belly and looked in the mirror, she smiled and admitted that she did resemble the actress she had seen pregnant on television.

Angelica didn’t like this game, this puzzle that she was somehow a part of, but she believed it to be another of God’s tests for her. She went to the medicine cabinet in her bathroom and retrieved gauze and tape. Then, she walked to the kitchen, opened the freezer and took out a bag of figs that she had picked from Nancy’s Tree a few months earlier. She put three in the microwave to thaw. Blake sat at the sofa with a newly opened bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey already a quarter gone. When Angelica had left the room he was lost in the glass of the television. Now she returned to find him lost in the glass held between his two hands. He stared at it as if he were a lost soul. He lifted it to his lips, tilted the glass and slowly drained it, taking no pleasure in doing so. Without looking, his right arm reached for the bottle as he refilled the glass.

Angelica opened the cupboard door over the sink where she kept many of the medicines and tinctures she made. She retrieved the jar labeled “Four Thieves Vinegar” and reached for a soft cloth. She had grown each of the ingredients herself for the vinegar. The lavender, rosemary, sage, rue, wormwood and peppermint all came from her secret garden, as did the garlic. She even made the cider vinegar herself from her own crabapples and let it all infuse for two weeks before straining into the jar. She removed the softened figs from the microwave. Making sure they were comfortably warm, she walked to Blake, dipped the cloth in the Four Thieves Vinegar and washed the boil on Blake’s neck. He became vaguely aware of what Angelica was doing, but couldn’t concentrate on its meaning, so overcome was he with fear that he felt cerebrally paralyzed. Angelica washed, hoping the antibiotic properties would work their magic. She placed the cloth down and reached for the figs, gently placing them on the blister.

Blake felt their warmth, feeling for an instant that Angelica had found a warm blanket to cloak and protect him. He clung to that feeling of hope, the maternal reassurance that she infused him with as she secured the figs to his neck with gauze and tape. She took the cloth and patted Blake’s neck dry and returned everything to the kitchen, dutifully putting everything in its rightful place. Then, Angelica walked back into the living room and stood in front of Blake. She reached over the coffee table and placed her right hand under Blake’s chin, lifting it so that she could see the tears hidden behind his eyes. With her left hand on her belly she looked into his eyes as she said, “We love you.”

And then, Angelica smiled and walked to bed.

With the talking heads saying the same things over and over, Blake sat and drank. And drank. As the whiskey swirled inside him and the footage of the hurricane raged on the screen, Blake slumped on the sofa, lying down to feel his back adrift on a raft in a wild sea from which there was no hope of rescue. He raked his mind for ideas of salvation, brilliant ideas that appeared as momentary islands of refuge, only to see the islands turn sour and become swallowed by the storm as quickly as they appeared, leaving nothing in their wake other than Blake, utterly alone. His head crashed on the armrest with the glass still in his hand as it lay on the floor. The very real visions from the television became horrific nightmares in his sleep. He dreamed not of being in the sea. Rather, he dreamed of being on a mountain. Of being handed a shovel from a demon on the mountain and being commanded in a twisted tongue to dig deep into the soil, to bury all the wrongdoings that he had done and to return to the soil what rightfully belonged there. To return all the poison that he had unleashed from the soil.

In the dream, Blake took the shovel and dug. He dug a hole deeper than himself, deep enough to bury the mountain of lies, greed and destruction that had poisoned his heart and his soul. The deeper he dug the freer he felt, the more joyous he felt. He dug to the haunting song of the mountain as a screeching raven perched high above. As he climbed from the hole he pushed everything into it that had caused him such suffering. The sheds, the fences, his truck, the lies, money, his football trophies—even Nick was shoved into the hole as Blake waved goodbye. He pushed and shoveled dirt back over the hole, filling it until he could stomp and dance on it.

When the music stopped in the dream Blake stood and smiled, surrounded not by what didn’t matter, but only by what did. There was only himself, Angelica and his son.

Chapter 27

Lonnie arrived at his desk in the sheriff’s office at 9:30 a.m. As he got out of his car, the humidity in the warm October air reminded him of a mission to New Orleans he had taken with members of his church immediately after hurricane Katrina. The moist air was tropical and smothered the mountains like a giant, wet towel.

“Mornin’, Lucy,” Lonnie said as he walked through the door.

“Mornin’, Lonnie,” she said. “Feels like we’re on a tropical island don’t it?”

“Yep. Don’t go breaking out your bathing suit though, we got work to do,” Lonnie said with a smile to his executive assistant. As he walked into his office and sat his Starbucks coffee cup on his desk, Lucy walked in to brief the sheriff on the day’s schedule.

The D.A.R.E. poster hung prominently behind the sheriff’s desk, taking fully half of the available wall space. Behind the desk in one corner was the Georgia state flag. In the other was the American flag. The desk itself was tidy, as usual. Pens in their holder, an empty inbox, a full outbox that Lucy would now empty. Other than that, lots of empty space for Lonnie to spread out whatever project he might work on.

“What do we got today, Lucy?”

“Nuttin’ you can’t handle, Sheriff. This package came in via FedEx a few minutes ago from Facebook out in California. And you got that luncheon at noon with the senior class at Rabun County High. Gonna tell ’em not to drink and drive, Lonnie? Or are you just gonna tell ’em to mind what ma says?”

Lonnie looked up to see Lucy’s sarcastic grin. She emptied the outbox, turned, and walked away without giving him a chance to respond, even if he wanted to. She knew he didn’t.

With precision, Lonnie sliced through the end of the 9 x 12 envelope with his letter opener, being as mindful as he would in examining evidence at a crime scene. He pulled out a thick stack of white paper that was stapled in the upper left corner. He estimated that there were probably sixty to eighty pages in the stack as he stared at the cover page.

CONFIDENTIAL

The information in this file is confidential material provided by Facebook solely in response to an officially sanctioned subpoena, court order, search warrant or other legal information request. The intended recipient is requested to handle the provided material in accordance with their organization’s protocol for handling sensitive or confidential information.