Blackwater by Eve Bunting Read Free Book Online

They haven’t found him. I bet he’s not dead at all. I bet he’s coming back.”

CHAPTER 7
    M y clock said 10:10 P.M.
    I bet he’s not dead at all. I bet he’s coming back.
    Alex’s words tumbled over and over inside my head. He was already asleep, grinding his teeth and mumbling and gulping air like a dying fish. The phone rang and rang, again.
    I lay there, knowing the most awful thing of all…that I hoped Otis was dead. Because if he wasn’t, if he had come back, if he was the one who’d left the towels as a warning, as a threat…I pushed my face into the pillow, liking the punishment of the stitches pulling. I didn’t hope he was dead, I didn’t. But if he could only have lost his memory, be blank about what happened. Nouse wishing Pauline wasn’t dead. Because she was. Nothing could change that.
    Downstairs Dad was playing “Red River Valley” on his guitar. So sad and lonely, like a train going off in the night across a dark, empty prairie. No dark, empty prairies around here, but I could imagine them. “I’ve always been proud of him,” he’d told Raoul. He’d always been proud of me.
    I got out of bed and stood in the shadows at the top of the stairs.
    Dad was sitting on the footstool where the newspaperman had sat. He wore his gray cardigan sweater with the moth holes in it. Dad loves that sweater. The Tiffany lampshade threw colors around him the way the stained-glass window used to throw colors around Pauline. My mom was stretched out on the couch, her arm across her eyes.
    The phone rang.
    Dad set down the guitar and went to pick it up. He listened, then said, “OK, we’ll turn it on.”
    “It’s your dad,” he told Mom. “He says it’s all on TV.”
    Grandpa said something else and Dad said,“I went to see her this evening. But only Wendy, her daughter, was there, with her baby. Mrs. McCandless is still out searching the river.” There was a four-heartbeat pause. “Yes. I talked to Pauline’s dad at the hospital. The one good piece of news is that Mrs. Genero’s doing better. The heart attack was mild.” Dad shook his head even though Grandpa couldn’t see. “Nothing,” he said. “Jenny called the police station a half hour ago. They still haven’t found Otis.”
    I drew deeper into the shadows.
    “We’ll tell him,” Dad said. “Thanks, Jim.”
    He hung up the phone. “I suppose we’d better watch this,” he told Mom and switched on the TV.
    I could see the picture. I could hear the voice. The anchorwoman was saying something about an earthquake in Mexico. And then she said, “Closer to home…we have a report of a tragic accident in Sonoma County. It seems the Blackwater River has taken another life, maybe two.” And there on the screen was the pond, the Toadstool, the endless torrent of the river.
    No! No! I cringed back into my room. Even in bed with the cover up to my chin, I couldn’t stop shivering.
    It was only a few minutes later when Mom came upstairs. She didn’t switch on our light, so there was only the glow from the landing. I faked being asleep. She smoothed my hair away from the stitches on my forehead, and I wanted to grab her hand, to cry and whisper everything that was true. But I couldn’t. She straightened Alex’s blanket before she tiptoed out.
    When I did sleep, there were horrible dreams, filled with the river. I was choking under its water. I’d half sleep and see Otis McCandless standing in front of me. “Sure I’m alive,” he said. “That was all a joke. Pauline’s alive too.” I’d half wake, and my heart would be bursting with happiness and relief, and then he would smile and his teeth were mustard yellow and river weeds were stuck between them, hanging down like walrus tusks.
    I woke up for real at five A.M. The sun wasn’t up, but daylight came through the drift of blue curtains. Alex was asleep. I felt my head. It didn’t hurt as much.
    I got up, found my jeans and sweatshirt and jacket, and put my sneakers on my bare