Coal Black Horse by Robert Olmstead Read Free Book Online Page B

and cuffed its high-water mark.
    It occurred to him, as it continued its rising, that it just might not stop, so fast and powerful was it coming on. He left off his concern for the little woman and began to scamper backward on his palms and heels. But this was not quick enough, so he stood to run, and it was in that moment of standing that a great chunk of earth the river had slowly beencarving began to subside. The bank gave way beneath his feet and he was being let down into the caramel water on a slab of red dirt collapsing into the river.
    His descent was slow and inexorable, and however hard he strained to scuttle the falling bank he could not keep himself from being shrugged away. He went under the dirty surface and even as he pushed the bottom to rise for air the deluge was already receding, and when he stood he found himself standing waist deep in muddy water. His wetted body cooled and yet was heated as if hornet-stung in the sluggish frothy water. His clothes skimmed with a slick of red clay and sluiced from his fingertips as if milk or blood.
    â€œYo, boy,” a voice called out. It was the little woman with the cane fish pole coming down to the water’s edge from the dry bank. Other than her nose and the bowl of her pipe, her face was shrouded in bonnet. “You drownded yourself?” she inquired.
    He cleared his burning nostrils and spit. He dragged himself into the shallows and pawed his way through the flooded briars, his shoes slogging through the scum until he reached a hard bed of silt and stone. He pawed at his face and eyes again. He shook out his arms, shucking their wetness into the air.
    The little woman was laughing at his calamity. She was a strange and ugly woman with narrow shoulders and a long beakish nose that ran constantly. Just as she’d wipe at it, another drip would form. About her being was the rank smell of old sweat that surpassed even the stagnant earth of the riverbank. With her geese jostling to flank her at the water’s edge that they might stare at him too, he thought she also made quite the comical.
    â€œDon’t you look a picture,” she cackled. “You have got to be careful. Accidents happen out here.”
    â€œIs this the Rappahannock?” he asked as he climbed the bank to stand at her feet. Hers was not a very kind face. Her face actually made him dizzy to look at as her skin seemed to run in the sunlight with a swarming fluid like vibration. His body iced as he realized that she was crawling with lice. They were running her skin in streaming volutions that swirled her cheeks and forehead and across her lips and yet she did not seem to notice.
    â€œThis little trickle?” she said. “Don’t be a ignoramus.” And then she said, “What do you want with the Rappahannock?”
    â€œYou ain’t a woman,” he said, before he could stop his voice in his throat. “You’re a man.”
    â€œEvery beggar’s got his stick for beating off the dogs,” the little woman said.
    She then swiped the bonnet and braided hair from her head in a single motion and she was indeed a man. The little man then unbuttoned the dress and shed it from his shoulders. Without the dress he was a queer, spindly little man, built like a boy with a boy’s frame and a boy’s muscles, but in the light his face skin revealed to run evermore with the motion of vibrating water. His bare neck and the wisps of hairs at his collar were beset. His naked arms and the backs of his hands were likewise a struggling infestation, but beyond belief he seemed to pay it no mind. Still, there appeared nothing to fear from him except his infestation.
    â€œYou really never know a man’s true nature.” The little man laughed.
    His face held an expression behind which little could be seen for the crawling mask he wore. The little man rooted inhis ear with his finger, as if there could possibly be something that would irritate him, and