Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates Read Free Book Online

the Anglican God to Whom—in Whom?—for Whom?—she had long ago been confirmed.
    Grandpa Ross when he was dying his
flesh shriveling back from the bone but his eyes alert as always, kindly
brimming with love for her whom he knew as, never "Kelly," but
"Lizzie," his dearest grandchild of the several grandchildren for
whom he had been a conduit into the world told her as if imparting a worrisome
secret, The way you make your life, the love you put into
it—that's God.

 

    She was alone,
he had been with her, and he was gone
and now she was alone but he has gone to get help of course.
    In her shock not knowing at first where
she was, what tight-clamped place this was, what darkness, not knowing what had
happened because it had happened so abruptly like a scene blurred with speed
glimpsed from a rushing window and there was blood in her eyes, her eyes were
wide open staring and sightless, her head pounding violently where the bone was
cracked, she knew the bone was cracked believing that it would be through this
fissure the black water would pour to
extinguish her life unless she could find a way to escape unless he will be back to help me of course.
    In
fact he was comforting her, smiling, frowning concerned and solicitous touching
her shoulder with his fingertips. Don't doubt me,
Kelly. Never.
    He
knew her name, he had called her by name. He had
looked at her with love so she knew.
    He
was her friend. He was no one she knew but he was her friend, that she knew. In another minute she would remember
his name.
    It
was a car that had trapped her, she was jammed somehow in the front seat of a
car but the space was very small because the roof and the dashboard and the
door beside her had buckled inward pinning her legs and crushing her right
kneecap held as if in a vise and her ribs on that side were broken but the pain
seemed to be held in suspension like a thought not yet fully acknowledged
scarcely any sensation at all so she knew she would be all right so long as she
could lift her head free of the seeping black water that smelled of raw sewage
and was cold, colder than you could imagine on such a warm midsummer night.
    She
would manage to breathe even while swallowing water, there was a way to do it,
snorting water out of her nose, thrashing her head from side to side then
leaning as far as her strength would allow her away from the smashed door, her
left shoulder was broken perhaps, she would not think of it now for in the
hospital they would take care of her, they had saved her friend once, her
friend from school the girl whose name she could not remember except to know
that Kelly was not that girl, she was calling Help, help me!—here —confused
because where was up? where was the sky?—he'd been desperate to get free using
her very body to lever himself out the door overhead where no door should be,
forcing the door open against the weight of whatever it was that pressed it
down and squeezing his big-boned body through that space that seemed scarcely
large enough for Kelly Kelleher herself to squeeze through but he was strong he
was frantic kicking and scrambling like a great upright maddened fish knowing
to save itself by instinct.
    And
what did she have of him, my God what prize did her silly fingers clutch, her
broken nails she'd taken time to polish the night before, using Buffy's polish,
what was it for God's sake—a shoe?
    An empty shoe?
     
    But
no: there is only one direction, and he would come to her from that direction.
She knew.
     
    *
* *
     
    Except,
she knew also that the car, submerged, how many feet below the surface of the
water she couldn't guess, it might be only a few inches in fact, with a part of
her brain that remained pragmatic, pitiless she knew that though the car
retained air, a bubble, or bubbles, of air, it would fill by degrees, it could
not not fill, thin trickles of water pushing through
myriad holes, fissures, cracks like the webbed cracks in the windshield, by
degrees the water