Count Backwards from Nine

Sorrel Lake has dropped eleven feet, and the drowned steeple of the old Tabernacle stands above the water for the first time since 1997. Tammy Wooten works midnights for county dispatch because she hasn't slept right since she was sixteen — since the August her sister walked into a nine-night prayer vigil and never walked out. Now her console lights up with a phone number that died when the valley flooded, and a woman on the line is counting backwards from nine.