"F—" Tyler's hissed consonant broke a two-hour silence as Dad turned onto Papaw's road. The sudden agony that shot through his leg and up his back, and he doubled over the small table in front of him, head in his arms. His leg throbbed, hot and awful.

"Sorry, Son," Dad said. A knob clicked; the radio static that had pervaded the trip disappeared, replaced with tires crunching on the rough road. "The driveway ain't much better."

Each bump sent a new shock through Tyler's leg. Somehow, the pain was worse than it had been at the hospital. Before Dad had turned onto Papaw's road, the sensation had dulled into pins-and-needles that synchronized with the radio static. If Papaw's driveway was as Tyler remembered it, it was a crude gravel patch at a forty-five-degree angle.

Dad spoke a warning about turning into Papaw's driveway as the van slowed nearly to a halt.

The initial jolt shook the milk crate from under Tyler's leg, and the heavy cast smashed his leg into the floor of the van. Searing pain, white. His leg dragged, feeling like it was being torn from his body. The tips of his fingers wrapped around the cold metal edges of the table as color drained from his face. His head rolled to the side, and his vision faded to a brown pinprick.

On the barge. The frogs screamed and the bugs sang. Inky no-moon night, absence of stars; fish decay and rain on the wind. The river—dark, darker than the sky—lapped against the deck. Then: silence. Bizarre quiet—except the water—and then the boat shook...

A cold hand touched his skin, tilted his face upward. The tan headliner sagged above him. A hand waved in his vision. He turned his head. Red hair. Kat. She asked, "You alright?"

He felt cold all over, except his leg. He shook his head. There was chatter in the background. He had been doubled-over the table, but, like magic, he was sitting limply in the seat. His leg felt close to falling off at the groin; the rest felt freshly sunburnt all the way through.

"Well, I guess that was a dumb question, huh?" Kat asked. She turned her head and said something out the van door behind her, then turned to face him again.

"Did I pass out?" Tyler asked.

"Maybe a lil'bit," Kat said. The tone was surprisingly tender.

"Y'sound awful concerned for bein' so venomous b'fore."

"I think ya've been gone s'long that ya forgot what family's like."

Forgot what family's like. Tyler's eyebrows drew down while Kat leaned out of the van and yelled that he was okay. Dad's response echoed back, and then he was in the van.

Even after three years, nothing had changed. Kat and Dad pulled Tyler up to his feet and onto his crutches like no time had passed since they had all seen each other. They encouraged him, like they had when he broke his leg as child, to talk to them, even through his teeth, as a sign that he was listening to their simple words and commands.

Then, he was out of the van with a leaked curse and back into the mountains with his dad and his sister on either side of him. The air was humid, laden with plant decay from a recent rain, and the trees towered up to the sky behind Papaw's single-story brown house. He felt small. Dad urged him forward with a tap on the shoulder and a, "C'mon."

"I forgot," Tyler said. He didn't elaborate, because he couldn't—he had never known so much could be forgotten: the smells, family, the imposing tree-covered mountains reaching up and up and up. Kat urged him on, and he drunkenly shifted weight forward on his crutches to move toward the flaking white pillars of Papaw's porch. He felt off-balance. One crutch slipped on the gravel.

Rain pelted the wood deck around him. Was he bleeding? His cheek was wet, water began filling his nose...

Dad grabbed onto him before he fell. Tyler grumbled an incomprehensible noise of thanks, wondering why he remembered lying on the deck of the Anne-Marie while he—through Dad and Kat's help—navigated up the stairs and onto Papaw's porch. A phone rang, and Kat cursed under her breath.

"I gotta take this," she said. She didn't sound happy.

"I'll get 'im inside, then," Dad said.

"Who's that?" Tyler asked.

"Don't worry 'bout it." Dad glanced back at Kat, one arm around Tyler as he helped guide him over the threshold into Papaw's living room. "'Least not yet." His eyes darted around the room, and then he pointed—"Here, this chair looks nice." The brown leather chair was in the corner of the room, and, through some awkward maneuvering while Kat yelled in the background, Tyler was comfortably seated. Kat's shrill voice upped an octave outside.

"I had better, uh—" Dad trailed off, nodding his head toward the door.

"Yeah," Tyler said. "Lemme know what's up. Thanks for helping."

"You're welcome," Dad said as he went out the door.

As the door shut behind him, Kat's shrill voice: "You ain't gotta fuckin' right to be talking to me that way!" Quick, quick enough to hear through the door closing. Then, Tyler was alone, except for Kat's voice marginally muffled by the walls and windows. A faucet ran somewhere in the house, droning under her angry words.

"I'm your goddamn mother and you better fuckin' listen to what I have to say!" Kat's was clearly audible through the door. Her next line was muffled, and Dad's voice came from behind the white front door. Whatever he said dampened her responses to incoherent chatter.

He glanced around the room. Pictures of family hung on the wood-paneled walls, most in black-and-white featuring youthful family members. One of the colored pictures showed Courtney, Mamaw and Papaw. Kat was missing. Soot—probably from the wood-burning stove that warmed the home in the winter—clung to the frames. The air was dusty, filled with muffled sounds of an argument between Kat, Courtney and Dad, but the chair was comfortable, and Tyler's pain had resided back to a dull ache.

Through the window behind the striped loveseat, Kat yelled on her phone a phrase full of obscenities, and Dad waved his hands at her to lower her voice.

"Ah, there 'e is," Papaw said. Tyler started, then twisted around to look up at his grandfather. One hand was on the back of the chair Tyler sat in, and the other held a glass of water. "Did us a right scare, ya did."

"Sorry, Papaw," Tyler said. Papaw handed the glass of water to Tyler, who gladly took it. It smelled of chlorine.

"You shoulda seen it," Papaw said as he walked across the room to the loveseat. "Kat was inna tizzy; ain't seen her like that wi' worry in a minute." Before sitting, he turned to Tyler and gestured out at Kat, who typed on her phone with frenzied fingers, lips flapping with stifled words about trains and Courtney. "That, we're used to."

Papaw settled onto the loveseat, placing one arm over its top and another on a doily-adorned pillow. Tyler's water tasted like it had been taken from a swimming pool, bitter on his tongue and throat.

"But," Papaw said, continuing as though the moments of silence had never existed, "I've been 'round them 'nough fer a lifetime—Kat an' yer dad. You, though!" He pointed at Tyler. "I 'aven't seen ya in forever! What has this grandson been up to?" He gestured vaguely toward Tyler's cast. "'Side from shatterin' 'is leg an' all."

All the pictures that hung neatly on the walls showcased members of the family, but mostly Mamaw and Papaw at his age. They had kids, then, at twenty-six, and a house, and a car. What had he been "up to?" His gaze stuck to a picture of Mamaw and Papaw, young, on the wood-paneled wall close to the window. There seemed less time between the photo and the graying man on the loveseat than there was in the past three years of Tyler's life.

"I—well," Tyler said, "y'heard me tell Dad about the train an' the barge, right?"

"Yep."

"Well... 'fore that, I had a stint up in Minneapolis, worked at some bar up there as security." Tyler grinned, then did his best to lean forward and dropped his voice into a secretive tone. "I had a whole girlfriend up there."

"No," Papaw gasped, both hands falling fully on his lap. The corners of his lips disappeared in his smile.

"Oh, yes. An' she was so pretty, Papaw, but she thought—" Tyler looked around him, as though paranoid, then over Papaw's shoulder to make sure Kat and Dad were still on the porch "—oh, Lordy, she thought she were a vampire." He laughed, and Papaw joined in. "Can ya believe it? A vampire, Papaw!"

"I can't believe a lick o' that," Papaw said, his voice airless after laughing. "Tyler 'imself, a security guard?" He looked Tyler up-and-down in scrutiny. "Yer too scrawny! Y'don't got 'nough blood in ya for no vampire. C'mon, now, Boy!"

"Nope, it happened!" Tyler said. "But she was too crazy, an' it was too flat and cold up there. Depressin' in the wintertime, and—" he put on the gaudiest, fakest Minnesotan accent he could "—oye, nunna 'em could talk right." He and Papaw chuckled, and he said, "Didn't stay too long, not there."

They sat in a momentary silence, both with grins stuck to their faces. Kat and Dad's yelling was momentarily forgotten. Minneapolis really had been brief—only a month—and Tyler grasped for another grandfather-friendly endeavor to talk about. After Minneapolis he worked a single week on a cargo ship on Lake Michigan. The deep water illuminated only by a spotlight began to creep too far into Tyler's mind, causing his mind to settle not just on the waters of the lake, but on the night aboard the Anne-Marie.

He needed sleep. The accident was too heavy on his mind. To dispatch the silence—Papaw was waiting in earnest for him to gather his thoughts—he almost began to talk about his job on the train, but then the doorknob clicked. They both turned to look, and Dad put one foot in, the door still mostly shut. He said something in a hushed tone over his shoulder before fully stepping inside. His hand remained on the doorknob.

"Good, yer lookin' better," Dad said. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, "Where's your stuff?" Stuff. Said as though Dad wasn't aware of Tyler's nomadic lifestyle and the fact that his son's belongings all fit in the back of one run-down station wagon. The chlorine from the tap water suddenly soured Tyler's stomach.

"Parked at the museum in Cincinnati," Tyler said, placing an arm over his stomach and squeezing to combat the sudden nausea. "I'll pay for the tow."

"You ain't got money for that after your medical bills." Tyler opened his mouth, but Dad cut him off, "Y'can pay Kat 'n Courtney back when you get workers' comp if yer really worried about it."

Papaw sat back into the loveseat, sinking into the fabric and appearing to turn more gray at the sound of his great-granddaughter's name. Courtney was a teenager; she didn't have much money—neither did Kat.

Tyler knitted his eyebrows together and asked, "Is that what got Kat so upset?" He paused; no answer. "The money?" Dad shook his head. Tyler frowned, then asked, "Courtney?" Dad nodded. Tyler grimaced. Courtney had avoided her mother the last time he saw her; it made sense the two weren't getting along.

"Well, she clearly has got a phone," Tyler said, very carefully, "so she sho—"

Kat poked her head over Dad's arm, lips turned down into a snarl. She asked, "What wonderful thing were ya about ta say 'bout my daughter?" Every word was enunciated very carefully, clearly—nothing was to be misconstrued.

"Nothin' about her," Tyler said, "just that she can Google the address. S'the museum in Cincinnati."

"Good." Quick, sharp. Kat looked at Dad, contempt deep in her eyes, then back at Tyler. "Text me a picture of yer car, or its license plate, or whatever. We got a train t'catch." She stepped back from Dad, then stuck her hand through the door and waved. "See ya, Tyler, Papaw."

The door hung open. Her footsteps echoed, hollow, across the porch and the door slammed to the van. Dad's chin fell to his chest, and he muttered something about needing to go get Courtney. A quick goodbye, and the door was shut.

"He raised ya both better 'n that," Papaw said as the van's engine roared outside. "I'unno why 'e takes it from 'er like that. Kat cin be so..." He sighed. His eyebrows drew together, pulling more wrinkles out of his thin hairline and onto his face. Tyler nodded.

"I don't know what has gotten into that girl," Papaw said. He shook his head; the shadows on his face deepened. "Or yer dad."

"I—" Tyler frowned. It hadn't been like that before, not where Dad bent over backward for Kat. Mamaw had kept her in check, made sure she wasn't off-the-hook, although she had been too giving, at least in Tyler's opinion. Mamaw and Papaw practically raised Courtney.

"How old's Courtney?" Tyler finally asked.

"Turnin' eighteen soon, God love 'er," Papaw said. There was a deep concern in his tone, a sadness that Tyler wasn't certain was only from seeing a great-grandchild age into adulthood.

He wanted to ask what had happened in Meadow Bridge, with the family, since Mamaw passed. The family wasn't right. Kat wasn't right—she was too mean. Dad wasn't right—he was too soft. And Papaw, even though he seemed fine, had aged drastically, his skin translucent and sickly. The way Papaw talked to Kat in the van at the hospital had been so full of concern for her health, but, then, on the highway, his whisper was so stern and secretive when she mentioned what had happened down in "the holler."

Was Kat an alcoholic? Certainly not any more than anyone else in the county; everyone relied on the moonshiners in the hollers for good booze. Tyler asked, "Drugs?"

"Kat?" Papaw asked. Tyler nodded. Papaw nodded back, then sighed and shook his head. He said, "Feels futile, y'know. I ain't got nothin' against you, Tyler, but y've been traipsin' about wi'out a thought in th' world, an' the family's been a-sufferin' since yer Mamaw passed." He looked up at Tyler and met his gaze, his pale eyes beady in his sinking flesh. "I know comin' home cin be hard af'er all that, an' I ain't sayin' ya bein' here woulda changed a thing... but it sure would have been nice to 'ave seen ya 'fore all this."

It was like a punch to the gut, churning over Tyler's stomach all over again with the chlorinated water. He nodded his head slowly, solemnly, keeping eye contact, then tilted his head back as he felt bile at the back of his throat. A curse was there, a fuck in the back of his throat, but instead he sighed and raised his hands to his eyes, pushing in on them as the gravity of his grandfather's disappointment washed over him.

"I'm sorry," Tyler said, voice heavy with the guilt that ladened his thoughts. He lowered his head to look at Papaw, who still sat with his casual pose on the loveseat. "Really, I am."

"I know ya are," Papaw said. "I hain't gonna hold it against ya, but ya know the rest o' the family ain't so kind." His lips scrunched to the side, then he shook his head. "They done forgot what 't's like ta be young." He paused. "Or are young 'emselves."

"Yeah, well..." Tyler trailed off and shrugged, putting on a fake smile that mirrored Papaw's. Youth as a concept was always at the butt of the man's jokes—Tyler knew he remembered what it was like. The photos of his life surrounded them; it would have been impossible to forget.

"I take it yer not gonna take a room t'night?"

"Pro'ly not, Papaw." Tyler looked to his cast: heavy and dark. "I mean, I may if I gotta git up to pee sometime 'fore now and tomorrow. This chair's comfortable."

"It ain't even six yet, Ty!" Papaw laughed. Tyler allowed himself a chuckle, but the depths of animosity he witnessed welling out of Kat alone seemed endless. Even though Papaw had forgiven him for his youth, there still uneasiness around Kat and Dad.

"Well, no, you're right," Tyler said, "but I feel like I'm'bout to fall asleep on ya here."

"Oh, that's fine, then." Papaw took the information with such stride that Tyler wondered what his grandfather was up to when family wasn't around. "Feel free ta make yerself at home. I'unno if I can help ya with yer leg, but I'll pro'ly go down to th' diner for some supper if ya want something."

"I trust ya to pick for me," Tyler said. "S'been so long since I've been there anyhow, I don't think I know the menu anymore."

Papaw got up from the couch in a single, fluid motion. Despite his sunken-in features and thin, balding hair, he seemed limber as ever. He tilted his neck to crack it, then patted his pockets. After a moment of checking every pocket, he huffed and said, "I reckon I must've kept it 'ere or misplaced 't in th' van."

He shuffled past Tyler, into the doorway to the kitchen. Drawers and cabinets opened and shut, and papers were pushed around. The diner always was Tyler's favorite place to go in town as a teenager—listening to the elders' stories of their lives invigorated him then. It would be hard to say how it would make him feel after being absent from town so long. Ruminating on who could possibly still be alive from his last visit five years prior, his grandfather came back into the room.

"Did ya find it?" Tyler asked.

"Sure did," Papaw said as he turned to Tyler. "T'was on th' table." He started his way to the door again, but a question popped in Tyler's head.

"Wait," Tyler said. Papaw stopped, turning, his hand resting on the arm of the loveseat. "Where ya goin' in Florida?"

"Oh, uh—" Papaw looked up toward the ceiling, then back to Tyler. "Miami, I 'lieve."

"Y'believe?"

Papaw sighed, then moved and sat back on the loveseat, though his posture was stiffer than before. His whisper to Kat replayed in Tyler's head, how Papaw held something so secretive that it turned Kat's face pale. The unnamed holler had sparked the same uncharacteristic behavior from Papaw—eyes dark, mouth set in a firm frown.

"I, uh—" Papaw trailed off, sighed. "I'm, uh, retirin' down there."

"Oh." There was no more to add.

Papaw rubbed the back of his neck. He didn't move from the loveseat, and instead fixated his gaze at something—likely a picture—just above Tyler's head.

"Assisted livin'?" Tyler finally asked.

Papaw took a deep breath and let it out, loudly. He said, "Yessir."

"At least it ain't a nursin' home." Tyler's words had slowed. Papaw nodded his head, then looked Tyler in the eye and smiled.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, yer right." He shook his head. "I just—I'unno how long I'll last. May end up inna home later." He paused. "Or a hospice."

Gray, grayer; the veins in his skin gave him a bruised look in some places. Tyler's gut churned. He asked, "Why—Why's that?"

"Cancer." Papaw looked off into space again.

Fuck. Tyler couldn't say that. He could think it. He wracked his brain for a better response. Papaw got up from the loveseat. Tyler, with no words to say, gestured Papaw over. His footsteps seemed irregular as he made his way across the hardwood floor; Tyler sat up and extended his arms out for a hug.

He clung to his grandpa's shirt. Papaw squeezed him tight.

"Florida's pretty," Tyler said in the embrace. His grandfather nodded his head on Tyler's shoulder. "You'll... yer gonna like it there." They let go, and Papaw re-righted himself. "When I get this cast off, y'ain't gonna see the end of me. I promise."

Papaw's eyes wrinkled, though his smile was cartoonishly faked. Tyler could have been there before. Should have been, for three years.

They said goodbye as Papaw left the house, and Tyler stared up at the ceiling as he heard his grandfather's footsteps out to his car. True silence overtook the home as Papaw drove off down the road—asphalt crinkled, distant, then: nothing.

"Shit," Tyler said, filling the air with his profanity for all the photographs to hear. He put his fingers on his eyes and pressed, running his fingertips down his face from his eyelids.

Cancer. Florida. Tyler had missed it. He missed years with his grandfather. How long until he was just a picture on the wall, like Mamaw? How long did it take a headstone to wear away the name? Tyler flicked tears off his face.

Exhaustion, a tiredness in all his limbs; with no one around, his eyes began to droop. His heart raced: Papaw. Papaw's disappointment. Kat's drug use. Courtney being old enough to pick up his car, and doing so. He reclined the chair further and allowed his eyes to shut. Even with his eyes closed, the smell of Papaw's house made it impossible to forget the time he had spent there, or the people who were there, once. Mamaw's silhouette danced behind his eyes.

It was dark when he startled awake from a nightmare. Drowning. Again. A vague recollection of the mountains in his dreams fizzled out the more he tried to think about it, and he needed to pee anyway.

He managed, through painful and extreme aerobics, to stand up on his crutches. After a moment to catch his breath and allow the pain to dull down, he limped to the restroom. The crutches clinked, and the wood boards creaked, and Papaw was snoring loud over the fan in his room.

Tyler had to sit to pee. It was emasculating.

After he managed to get back up on his crutches, he hobbled into the kitchen for another glass of water. Flicking the light switch revealed the small, old kitchen filled with 80's cigarette-smoke yellow appliances. The round table—made by Papaw's papaw—took up most of the room. In the center of the table was a newspaper—the one Papaw had been filling out a crossword on. Tyler wiped the crust from his eyelashes and reached for the paper. It was quiet as he pulled it across the table and flipped it over.

Just below the Fayette Tribune's header was the paper's main headline, punctuated with a picture of body bags down a dirt lane:

MASS DEATH IN MOONSHINERS' HOLLOW

The holler. Moonshiners'. Of course—it was the closest to town.

Tyler pulled a chair out and carefully sat upon it, his mission for water indefinitely postponed. The article was contained in its entirety under the massive headline and its picture:

Thirty-one people were found dead in Moonshiners' Hollow over the weekend. All families were found deceased and holding hands around a table. Individuals were also found deceased near mealtime. A resident of Meadow Bridge contacted police Saturday night, concerned for the welfare of a man from the hollow whom he had not seen in a week.

All inhabitants of Moonshiners' were accounted for in the thirty-one deaths. Detectives are looking into a possible mass-homicide due to the bodies' vicinity to food. They had no further comment.

Local law officials advise locking your doors and cars. A curfew of 10PM for residents of Fayette County is currently being heard by the county council.

Tyler carefully sat the paper back as he found it, crossword-side up, and leaned back into the chair. Cobwebs overtook the tops of the cabinets. They had been clean three years prior.

Then, nothing was the same, not beyond the surface.