The Tennessee Valley River Authority

I hadn’t been to Tennessee since the spring of 08, and even that was only to pass through the state. That was back at the end of high school when I was still kayaking. The school ran trips to the south, around where North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina met. We’d leave on a Friday and get deep into Virginia by the time we stopped, only to pick up the next day and keep driving south. We’d hit the Smokey Mountains just as we all had to pee, so we’d take a break at a rest stop in a place that seemed like the highest point in Tennessee to me. We’d look around as the mist rolled in, check the boats tied to the tops of the vans we took, and then pile back into the vans, laying across the leather bench seats, fighting over who got to sit on the end with the extra space and arm rest.

This time, I was visiting for a friend’s wedding. I didn’t think he’d met someone new, we hadn’t talked in almost two years when I got the invite, but as soon as I saw I gave him a call. We were great friends in college and we kept talking often after we graduated, only to fall off when life took us to opposite coasts. But he didn’t change much, nor did his taste in women. Thankfully, she was more lovely than he deserved, and they loved each other a lot, more than I had ever seen him capable of.

The ceremony took place inside a church. They were both good Baptists – his family converted after fleeing Lebanon’s civil war, her family after our own. But the celebration was held in a barn on his parents’ property somewhere outside of Chattanooga. It was January, and the brown dead woods were dusted with snow. They hung lights in the bare trees around the property, and in the quickly falling night the whole area was wreathed in a halo of warm yellow light. The warmth of the event spread, and even though the ground was frozen the guests arrived and took their jackets off in the buzzing air.

The bar was open and the band was good, so dancing started immediately. I ordered a drink and sat by a back corner to watch as guests slowly made their way inside and took up their positions for dinner. I’m not much of a dancer. I wasn’t expecting to dance. I didn’t come wearing the right shoes to cut a rug, so I watched and wished to go unnoticed

through the night. Though it was my friend’s wedding, his guest list featured as much of my history as his own, littered with ex partners of mine, women I knew at an immature age. Even though there was only a single ex with whom things ended poorly, I still dreaded their appearance like Marley’s ghosts; all of them reflections of a past I desperately hoped they wanted to avoid similarly.

It just so happened my luck was at its peak that night. I came alone to this affair because my partner had her own event to attend. Her absence, and my desire to fade into the soft cosmic latte of the night’s activities afforded me some camouflage. The angel of death passed me over and let me drink my drink in peace; all of my exes kept their distance. And so, when it came time to pee after my fifth drink of the evening, I stepped away from the barn with the cavalier assurance I hadn’t been noticed. I felt safe, in my hazy head, that I had cleverly and inconspicuously exited without letting anyone know of my intention to sneak a cigarette in the cold behind the barn. But I was wrong to an extent.

She was quiet in her approach. If I hadn’t turned around to shield my lighter from a gust of wind, she would have snuck up on me. And when I did so, it was almost as if I had caught her off guard as well, like she had intended to hide her presence from me. But that was only on her face for a moment, and before I could jump backwards in surprise, she had her own cigarettes out and asked me for a light. It was clear she took her lip and eyebrow piercing out recently, and the clothes she was wearing were nicer than I had last seen her in, but her blond hair was still cut poorly, she still spoke like the green hills of Kentucky, and she couldn’t fool me. I handed her my lighter.

“Long time no see, Paige.”
“You too, buddy. Where’s Becky?”
“Work. Where’s...”
“Clint?” I nodded.
“Work. I wasn’t even invited till they knew I was in town to settle my ma.” “You’re from around here? I thought you were from Nashville.”

“My daddy is. But ma never left and it’s where I spent my summers after they split.”

“Has it been tough moving your mom out of her place? I had to go through with that a couple years ago, it depressed the hell out of me”

“Not so much, the house is falling apart and it makes it easier to say ‘fuck it, let’s sell it all’. I never loved the house. I have no real love for that place at all. But I’ll miss the area, and being able to escape it all so easily. Before my daddy moved to Nashville, we all lived here and they’d fight constantly. But the house had so many holes and the woods were everywhere. So whenever they’d get yelling I’d duck out back and explore.”

“Find anything good?”

I met Paige at her mother’s house the next day. The closest neighbors were miles away, but it wasn’t hard to get to, just off a main road. But it was a strange parcel of land that sat between the road and some land cordoned off by the TVRA. Their fences ran high through the woods seemingly forever. Sure enough, the house was falling apart. The roof was in bad shape, and one of the windows was covered with plastic

I pulled up and approached the house. Despite its poor condition, there was still a realtor’s sign out front that listed the property as SOLD. Paige walked out of the front door and down the path towards the driveway. She was bundled against the cold. We were going for a walk. After I had parked, we lit cigarettes and started on our way out.

“Who bought this place?”

“The Tennessee Valley River Authority. They’ve been buying property since they were established in the 30s to control the flow to the hydroelectric damns in the area. Ma’s family were old holdouts who refused to budge. The TVRA were real happy to buy from us finally and paid more than the property was worth. Ma always said there had been a whole town here, and the feds kicked all the people out only to flood the place.”

“But that was ages ago. Why do they still want your place?”

“Apparently, this is the last house in that old district. When they get our land, they’ll have officially gotten this whole area and it’ll make things easier. Who knows what they’re gonna do with it. I hope they flood it, too. It’s not like it’ll stay flooded.”

I looked at her confused. It was maybe around noon, but you could never tell from the flat gray sky. Around us, a light snow began to fall. Brown leaves poked through thin layers of ice.

“Things don’t stay flooded around here. The rivers and creeks dry up in the wintertime. That’s why we’re out here.”

Paige took a long drag from her cigarette, and then put it out on the bottom of her boot. We had come to the TVRA fence in the middle of the forest. In either direction it ran, possibly bisecting the world in two. But in front of us, Paige pulled back a section of the fence, a hole we could slip through. I crushed my own cigarette and breathed deep.

I made to duck through the hole, but before I took even a single step she pushed the fence back into place before my face. “We could get arrested. Trespassing on federal land is a major offense. I’ve been to jail, trust me you do not want to go.” Her voice was stern; I knew she wasn’t joking.

“We’ll be fine. There’s no one around for miles.”

She held the hole in the fence and I climbed through. She followed after and then took the lead once more. She walked ahead of me for a while, and I could only hear her words when she made an effort to turn her head. The fur-lined hood she wore muffled her words. But through coaxing, I got a straight answer eventually.

“Where are we going?” I asked, again.
She turned her head finally, a little annoyed. “Like I said, the riverbed.” 3.

The riverbed was hard cracked at first. Global warming and human tampering had caused the extents of its waters to recede, and it was clear that the mighty tributary wasn’t what it

used to be. Nevertheless, as we began to follow the banks, the cracked earth gave way to clay and rocks, holding the river’s shape even under the blanket of snow. It was here, at the bend in the river, that another figure came into view. I slowed down and opened my mouth to ask Paige, but she was ahead of me already, waving to whomever stood on the other shore. Luckily, they waved back. On the far shore, I couldn’t make out a face, only a black puffy parka and thick blue jeans. It could have been a man or a woman, I didn’t know, but before I could make out more details I noticed the rifle they carried on their back.

I made my way to Paige and I grabbed her arm. “We should probably get out of here that guy has a gun-“

She turned to face me, mouth pulled tight to the side in a quizzical sneer. “That’s Nick. Didn’t you hear me telling you he’d meet us out here?”

“No, you were pretty far ahead-“

She wasn’t listening, so I stopped explaining. Nick came closer. I didn’t take my eyes off the rifle. I don’t like guns, but it didn’t stop him from coming close. Either way, Paige was excited by his presence, and the moment he stepped in range she launched herself into his chest, arms around his neck in an instant and a wet kiss on his cheek.

“This is Nick! He’s my brother.”

“Half-brother” said Nick. They didn’t really look related, but they both had bad haircuts in charming ways. Nick was quieter, stocky, and much taller than I was. His blond beard and shaggy hair couldn’t hide how bright his brown eyes were. I held out my hand, but Nick kept his in his parka’s pockets. I took my hand back.

If he wasn’t going to be friendly, I wouldn’t either. I already had a bad feeling about today despite insisting to go on this trek. “Why the gun?”

“You never quite know what you’re going to find down there.”

“Down where?” I felt like a fool to be asking again. I’m sure Paige had explained or I wasn’t listening. But she knew this and didn’t mind repeating herself. She turned and looked at me with a smile.

“In town, silly. Didn’t you hear anything?”

And before I could say much of anything, she skipped away leading Nick by the arm. I followed after them as best I could, picking my way between the river stones and clay, keeping mind to not step onto any ice.

“Watch out for holes!” Paige yelled back to me as the snow fell harder. She and Nick slowed down to let me catch up. The snow fell loudly around us, wind driving the ice to the ground with enough force to be audible. Flakes thrown against our hoods made soft tinkling sounds that threatened to drown out conversations. The visibility wasn’t too bad, but it still took us a while to make our way down river. On our way, you’d see remnants of the TVRA’s dogged pursuit of the land we walked on.

The longer we walked on the river, the more remnants I saw. Old fences with rotten posts and drowned notices telling us to keep out or watch where we were going, stone walls that seemed to rise up out of no where in the river, or even the ends of old streets overtaken by the forest. We even passed a stop sign, still standing, covered in kudzu vines. It was here that Paige and Nick told me to stop.

Under our feet lay the remnants of an old road. Ahead of us, there was a manhole cover set deep into the mud and asphalt of the riverbed. Further, we could see the footprints of buildings, now filled with river reeds and cracked mud. Trees loomed over everything and only a sliver of silver sky was visible. I checked my phone compulsively. There was no service and it was still early afternoon. But the sun would set quickly, so we had to move fast.

“Why did they do all this?” I half shouted over the din of the snow.

Paige came close to me so that she didn’t have to shout. The ends of her hair were dusted in snow and I figured that I was probably looked abominable as well. “When we were in school and learning about all this, they said it was to generate electricity. This area lagged

behind the rest of the country in terms of development, so the government took it on themselves to raise it up during the great depression – change it for the better. But my mama said that it was cause the people around here weren’t too keen on the government anyways, and this was just a way for the to relocate and negate a possible insurrection.”

“You’re kidding me. In Tennessee? 70 years after the Civil War and these people were still holding onto that grudge? I mean I know the people down here were racist, but I didn’t think they were that racist. You’re not South Carolina, but-”

Paige hit me. It wasn’t hard, but it was enough to tell me to stop. She looked at me, angry but understanding.

“It wasn’t about race...” she trailed off.

“It was about this place,” said Nick, filling in for Paige. “The government wanted to take control of this land, and the people who lived on it didn’t want to let them. Didn’t want to give up their rights to live in the same place their parents and parent’s parents lived. This land is old and it runs through people’s veins. You’ll see when we get there what I mean.”

“This isn’t there?” I stumbled.

“Not quite” he said, not looking back. Instead, he raised an arm and pointed at the manhole. “We gotta go down there, first.”

It took both Nick and myself to get the manhole cover off. It was tough to separate it from the mud, but we cracked the ground and eventually got it to budge. It was incredibly heavy, and much larger than a manhole ought to be - easily twice as big. And the top and bottom had some writing on it that I could only feel, but couldn’t read from being so worn. The second we got it to budge we could both feel the heat coming from below. Crouched near this portal, we could feel some hot air emanating from inside. It was weak, but we could feel the heat and smell the dank walls. The portal went down farther than we could see. Nick pulled out a glow stick, cracked it, and dropped it. It fell onto a dirty floor and cast green light on the walls from above, we could tell there was writing down there.

“We have to go down there?” I gasped. Nick and Paige didn’t seem to keen on it either, but they both were positive. This was the only way to go, even though the river continued on through the town. “What about the rest of it?” I made a gesture towards the ruined buildings that we still hadn’t touched.

“What about it?” Nick said, a little sterner than I was expecting. “You wanted to see what was here, so we’re showing you. If there was something over there to be seen, we woulda taken you there, but that’s not what you want.”

“We’ve been all over these places since we were kids. Just trust us. You wanted to know what we found around here. Well, this is it. It’s proof of the cover-up.”

“What cover up? You mean that’s true? But what would the government be hiding down here?”

Nick looked at me straight faced and walked to the manhole, backwards. He stopped right at the lip of the portal.

“The Tennessee Valley River Authority.” He stepped backwards, right down the manhole. We were both silent for a moment. Before I could open my mouth, Nick called up saying he was all right. Before he’d even finished saying the word, Paige was already at the mouth. She beckoned me to follow.

At this point, we’d already gone into the dark of the sewer. It was significantly warmer, and quiet now that the snow was out of our way. The green light of the glow stick firmly behind me, I had to rely on whatever leftover illumination I could catch from the flashlights Paige and Nick held in front of me. I put a hand to a wall once, but found the sides to be more damp than dry, covered with patches of moss and something slimier. Nick and Paige didn’t say anything either. It kept me off guard.

The tunnel came to a T and they stopped to let me catch up.

“You know, these parts have been inhabited for as long as people can remember. This was a Fertile Crescent sort of thing between the curving banks of the river. The Native

Americans lived here for generations.” She said this because it was clear I was confused, though, I didn’t quite know what context this was for. “This is old land and it has strong roots in the people that live here. It’s part of the reason why the government was so hell- bent about taking control of it all. This was clearly powerful land.”

“So is that why the government created the TVRA? To legitimize their actions for seizing this area under false pretenses? What’s down here, Paige? It’s clear this place is a graveyard for the communities that were once here, but it sounds like you’re taking me to an actual graveyard. With people.”

“The graveyards got washed away in the floods. Years after the dams were built, old bodies used to come flowing out into the woods, risen right out of their graves. But that’s just natural. Nah, there’s no bodies left down here. But look, you can start to see some evidence of what once was.”

She thrust the flashlight into my hand and took control of my arm. We pointed it at the wall, and could see some writing. It wasn’t in English.

“That’s an old tongue - an original language. Something that’s meant to be here.”

She released, and strode forward down the right tunnel. Nick pushed past me to keep up. I followed, taking care to light my way and look at the walls. But somehow, in my effort to look at my surroundings, I let Nick and Paige get too far away from me. I saw them turn once, right, and then again, left, but at the third intersection, they had gone on too far. Their footsteps couldn’t help me, and I was left at a crossroads again. I spun in a circle, with my flashlight to look around for some marking. I realized I didn’t know which way I had to go to get out. I wasn’t wearing the right shoes for this.

“Are you coming?” I heard Paige say out of the right side, and so I went to follow her. She must have been speaking loudly because I could hear her echo so clearly.

“Look on the walls you can see more of that old script.” I did, she was right. “Do you know where you are, yet?” I didn’t, but I didn’t say anything. I kept following the dark tunnel. Her echoes trailed off. “Paige?” I yelled. “Nick?” but I was only greeted by

silence. I came to another T and I paused. I looked left, then right, but saw nothing in either direction. I looked left again.

“Boo” she said. I jumped; it was predictable. She laughed loud in my face, Nick besides her grinning with the flashlight turned towards his face. I felt the hot rush of embarrassment. I walked right into it.

“Jesus”, I heaved. But the word didn’t echo like her laugh. “You know for a practical joke you two took this pretty far. Nick still grinned. Paige stopped cackling. “Come on”, she said. “We’re here”.

We walked right through the tunnel. Paige and Nick took the lead again, and I followed behind. I felt better now that the scare had happened. I breathed a little easier.

“That was a great jump. I mean, I must have looked right at you and yet I didn’t seen anything. Did you have that one planned out ahead of time?”

Nick turned around, still smiling. His eyes glinted yellow off my own flashlight. “It’s a favorite scare of ours. Used to use that one on her mom all the time, or any of the other old folks in the area.”

“Old people would come down here? Why the hell would an old person come down to a sewer?”

“You still think this is a sewer?”

The rough concrete walls above our heads gave way and the floor sloped out from under us suddenly, into an ornate set of steps carved from bedrock, layered with moss. It was much warmer, and the top of the chamber was almost vaulted. Condensation fell from the ceiling; there were stone benches along the walls. Everything sloped down to the center, the stairs continued like an amphitheater, but I couldn’t quite see what was down there, nor, when I stopped finally, could I see Paige and Nick. It appeared to be a warm well fed by a hot spring, with stone steps leading downward, but, the thing was, I couldn’t quite see where the amphitheater bent. I stood at the lip of the wide well, but in all honesty, it

felt more like I was on the edge of a great underground beach. The drop in front of me was about four feet; I couldn’t see the edge on either side.

Paige’s voice rang out. “Maybe you could see it better if you turned off your light.” But when I turned back, I couldn’t tell where her voice came from. The cavern was much larger, deeper, broader, than I had originally thought. It was vast, and deep, the water that lapped against the stairs was black and unfathomably deep. I would never see its bottom. I didn’t want to turn off my light, but I did it any way.

In the darkness, I could just make out its silhouette, somehow blacker against the vast nothingness that lay in front of me. As my eyes adjusted, I realized how tall it was, like a great mottled dome of a stadium in the distance. I could better make out a smell, like the bottom of a river at the end of fall, like the back of our vans after a kayaking trip. It was a familiar and warm and it crawled over and into my pores and I could feel it’s loose grip on my senses. It clung to my hair. I didn’t want to wash it off. All of a sudden, I wanted to run away from there. But, I wasn’t afraid. I wanted to run wind over my body and have it dry between my fingers and deep within my scalp. Whatever it was, it was alive down there. It had always been alive down there.

I blinked. I staggered away, backwards, up the slick stone stairs back towards the entrance and Paige and Nick, back away from that. Whatever it was, I knew I had to move away; it was too comforting to know how large it loomed above me, that it would be around after me, that I could give myself to it, that maybe I would always give myself to it, no matter how hard I resisted. I stood up and ran away from the edge, till I stood panting at the top, groping for a way back. There was nothing but a wall, a blank stone wall without crack, without carving, just blank stone, worn away over time, as far as I could see, I tripped as I felt my way along, I didn’t know which way I had come from, which way I had to go, I could have walked forever in either direction, I would never know until I hit something, some open air, I would be here, stuck with it. But, I found my flashlight. I pulled it out with shaking hands. I pulled myself up onto a stone bench. My chest heaved, and my mind raced but I was fine.

Paige sat down next to me and I jumped. I turned and found Nick at my side.

“Jesus how did you find me?”

“Followed you, silly. You were makin an awful lot of noise just then, made keeping track of you a lot easier. Little spooked, huh?”

She was so calm. I couldn’t believe it.

“What is it?”

“Don’t know” said Nick. “That’s why I brought this here rifle with me.”

I jumped to my feet. I couldn’t help myself. “You’re going to shoot it?” I yelled before I could even stop to think. “It hasn’t done anything to you.”

“It’s done something to all of us. Because of whatever this is, the government found it right to push us all out. And not just us, I mean the people who originally owned this place. This here used to be sacred land, old land, but now not even the natives can touch it. This place is important, to all of us, but they covered it up and erased our lives. All of our lives. And I deserve to know what it is for that trouble.”

He walked away from us, back towards the entrance I guessed. We both followed after him, and sure enough we found the mouth of the tunnel back to the surface. We stood just inside the entranceway, and Nick stood a couple stairs down. He turned his flashlight off, pulled the rifle off his back and checked it. It was loaded and he turned the safety off. He took aim, but stopped and brought the rifle down. I was relieved until he asked, “Can you please turn your light off? I can’t aim with that light.” So we did, and we waited in the darkness.

All around us, we could feel it breathing, humming along the walls of the cave. I could feel nick taking aim, and it made the pores of my skin crawl and boil.

“You know, some people said this is a god.” Paige whispered. “Some of the old folks used to come down here and pray before the government came and told them they couldn’t any more – put up a fence with a bunch of stay away signs. And before them, people used to come down here to give offerings to it.”

Nick kept his aim. The cavern continued to hum. I couldn’t stand the noise. Paige kept whispering. “When Nick’s grandmother, the woman who raised him, died, they never found her body. She was a sick, frail woman with lungs filled with fluid and legs that wouldn’t work anymore. But she pulled all her tubes out, all her wires and needles, and she crawled out of her house one town over, and drove here in her long-dead husband’s truck. And when Nick came back from school he knew where to find her. He ran over here and we came down together to look. But we both already knew.”

A shot rang out, then a second and a third. In between shots, we could hear Nick’s breathing. He emptied however many rounds he had into the darkness. We could hear the rounds bouncing off the walls of the caverns, the ricochets cast sparks across the water and cut through the sounds of the rounds being fired.

“There’s nothing down here,” said Nick, walking back towards us. “It’s just an old cave filled with bad memories.” He walked between us, splitting our conversation. He turned on his flashlight and made his way down the tunnel. Paige turned to quickly follow after him, but I caught her by the arm before she could get away from me. I was tired with these games and made sure my voice reflected it.

“I don’t believe that for a second. What the hell is down here?”

She pulled her arm away from me. “I think it’s a turtle,” she said, quickly, and then she turned to follow after Nick. I hurried along too. I didn’t want to get lost again. All the way back I could feel the hot breath receding from my skin.

The rain turned to snow on the surface, and we had a long walk back without that warmth.