In the Wild Light: Chapters 1–8

The human eye can discern more shades of green than of any other color.

She'll go to that place where the world makes sense to her. Where she sees fractals in the growth of honeysuckle bushes and elegant patterns in the seemingly aimless drift of clouds and the meandering fall of snowflakes.

“Please tell me apocryphal means ‘completely and entirely false.’”

Underneath each eye is a crude teardrop tattoo the color of wash-faded denim.

Cloud sees me approach and gives me a curt backward nod.

I return the terse nod.

Her voice finally reaches through my maelstrom of thoughts.

I scrutinize her face for some hint of a joke.

In the weeks since Delaney's discovery was announced, Sawyer's been crawling with rented vans full of men and women laden with caving gear.

We sit for a second, listening to the drone of the insect menagerie surrounding the house in the tall weeds.

He's taking in the falling light on the porch, in one of the ramshackle hundred-year-old rocking chairs he restored.

Papaw's buddies' hatred of Governor Gardner went beyond amiable differences into an uglier place.

Papaw considered him a snake oil salesman, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, who hadn't worked an honest day in his life, full of hot air, braggadocio, vain promises, and venom for everyone different from him.

With his huge frame and bushy white beard, he was perfect to play Santa Claus at the annual Christmas potluck, a role he performed with gusto, telling kids he was going to bring them a hickory switch or a lump of coal instead of a “video-game doodad."

This put him at odds with his fellow churchgoers, but not irreconcilably so.

I could feel his sides pumping like a bellows as he breathed harder and harder.

He smells medicinal, like salves rubbed on aching muscles, with the sharp menthol whine of Vicks VapoRub to open constricted breathing passages.

He'd be the stalwart, sane balance to the erratic, staccato electricity of Delaney's thinking, which causes her to do something as bewildering as what she did.

He'd be the stalwart, sane balance to the erratic, staccato electricity of Delaney's thinking, which causes her to do something as bewildering as what she did.

He gazes off, his eyes clouding and forlorn.

With that, our conversation dwindles.

Above us is an immaculate chaos of white stars and drifting moonlit-silver clouds.

After I found my mama, the next memory I have is the police bringing me here, nearly catatonic.

Then I envision Delaney, dressed in a plaid skirt and a white blouse, walking timidly up to the imposing wrought-iron gates of an ivy-covered school.

I swung on Jaydon reflexively, as someone flinches from a flame.

She shakes the bottle of Dollar General brand sunscreen and blats out the last few dregs into her palm, then slops it on her face, neck, and arms.

And I would definitely rather be wrestling over this than the topic we could be debating but haven't broached yet today.

But in this reverie, there's space for the Unwanted Conversation to slip in.

"Because it's heretical. That's how science advances and takes humanity with it. People have to be brave enough to look stupid in a field where looking stupid is the worst thing you can do.”

She smells like river and dust, clean sweat and the ersatz coconut of Dollar General sunscreen on sun-touched skin.

Her eyes brim with beseeching.

It's one thing for me to forgo such an opportunity. It's another thing to be what prevents her from going.

“Stop interrupting with your irrelevant questions. With Mr. Chauncey T. Ikea, scion to the Ikea fortune and graduate of the Wellington Academy of the Lawn-Mowing Arts and Sciences.”

She feints and breaks for the water, reaching down, grabbing some in both hands, and throwing it at me, cackling.

I look down at the swirling eddies of my river and then back at her.