The Sky Below by Stacey D'Erasmo Read Free Book Online

hot arm out the driver’s side window. We’d go three towns, four towns, passing one strip mall after the next. She would never tell me where we were headed, because that was part of it. We had to be like explorers in uncharted territory, although I guess I was the only one who really was; she knew where we were going. We’d pull over to some edge, or down a dirt road, and when we got out of the car Caroline would spray me all over
with bug spray until I was shellacked. She was very serious and thorough, spraying me down to the fingertips, the earlobes.
    Florida has swamps. More of them than you might think, some not far from the highway, some a stone’s throw from a shopping mall. I thought they were a secret, too, the swamps, Florida’s secret. Caroline loved them. After a while, truthfully, I knew that our expedition was always going to be into a swamp, but I pretended to be awed and surprised because I didn’t want her to stop taking me. It was the one place she’d let me go with her, out of all the times she took the car and drove away. I wondered if this was where she’d gotten her scratches and bumps, but she was so careful when we were there together, so delicate, almost reverent. She walked lightly.
    â€œThis way, Gabriel. In here.” And in we’d go, walking right into solid green. If someone had been looking, they’d have seen us disappear, as if we had walked into a time machine. But it was really that Caroline knew how to part the dank branches in such a way that the swamp would let us in, then close behind us. The sound of the insects was phenomenal, like they could eat the entire earth. If you walked as delicately as she did, it was almost as if you were walking on water, because the land was so tenuous and boggy. Caroline walked ahead of me, slender little flying bugs with bright blue wings studding her black braid. She stepped lightly. I stepped lightly, too, imagining that I was walking inside her footprints. We’d both be sweating in the long-sleeved shirts she made us wear, stepping in our cheap sneakers like flamingoes.
    â€œLook.” In her hand, maybe, a small damp frog with yellow spots on its back.
    She put it on my palm. I cupped my other hand over it. The tiny webbed feet of the frog seemed to adhere to my skin, and its belly moved against my palm like a beating heart.
    â€œShhh.” She leaned down and peered at the frog in my hands. “Little swamp guy. Okay, let him go, Gabe.”
    I bent down so he wouldn’t have too far to hop.
    As you go farther into the swamp, things change. You might think it’s getting more and more impassable, but then all of a sudden you’re in this incredible light and the water is moving. There are alligators. Caroline taught me how to spot their snouts. She told me they carry their young in their mouths. When you get in farther, some of the earth-eating insect noise dies away, leaving a thin curtain of insect sound between the outer world and this world, a world on swamp time. Swamp light is sweet. Many people don’t know that, but Caroline knew it. She knew the swamp’s secret: that inside the thick, dry shell of Brewster was somewhere beautiful and strange and very slow. You could imagine that inside an alligator it might be beautiful, too, gorgeous strong tendons and a translucent, cool, jade-green alligator heart. In case you ever got swallowed by one, you could look around in the jade-green light and see what was in there. Pieces of garden hose. Baby rattles. The bottom curve of the cool jade-green heart, like a sun hanging on the horizon of another planet. But when I was with Caroline in the shimmering swamp, I knew the alligators would leave us alone.
    As we wandered, Caroline would tell me the names of things and all about them. “You can eat this one, Gabe.” Holding up a long leaf. “But
not
this one.” Holding up a leaf just a little less long, but with more of a