Diary of a Witness by Catherine Ryan Hyde Read Free Book Online

in.
    He looked me up and down. “Am I disturbing your beauty sleep?”
    “I had a little trouble sleeping last night.”
    “Understandable.”
    Uncle Max is around sixty-five years old. Twenty years older than my mom. He’s really her half brother, from when their father—my grandfather—was married before. So he’s sort of like a grandfather to me. I call him my uncle, and he is, but he fits in that grandfather space. I got rooked on real grandparents. All four died before I was born.
    He still has all his hair, but it’s snow-white, and his beard is white and bristly. He reminds me of the pictures I’ve seen of Ernest Hemingway. He has this special way of talking, like an actor. Very dramatic. I always picture him holding a human skull and talking right to it, like in a Shakespeare play.
    Peaches was wiggling all around his feet.
    “I heard about what happened with the other boy.”
    “Oh. How?”
    “Lila called me. So do I need to properly ream you out for going out on a tiny boat in big swells with just another couple of kids? It was pretty damn stupid. Or did Lila cover that sufficiently already?”
    “Oh, she gave it to me good, all right.”
    “Figures. Lila does like to beat a subject to death.”
    “Hey. That’s my mother you’re talking about.”
    “Yeah, and she’s my baby sister, too, and I love her to pieces, but does she beat a subject to death or doesn’t she? I ask you.”
    I felt a little smile at the corner of my mouth. What a weird feeling. I thought I might never smile again.
    “Introduce me to your new friend,” Uncle Max said.
    At first I thought he meant Will. But he already met Will. “Huh?”
    “The fish, dense boy. The fish.”
    “Oh. Right.” Some friend.
    We worked together to pull it out of the fridge and take off the plastic wrap.
    “Now, that,” Uncle Max said, “is one truly beautiful beast.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “No, I am not kidding. It’s magnificent. You don’t think so?”
    “I think it looks like a monster.”
    “Well, it’s fierce. It’s a big, ferocious predator. But ferocity can be beautiful.”
    “Hum. Wow. I don’t know.” But I was really trying to look at it his way. I was really trying to see beauty in that fish. But the ugliness of yesterday got in the way. They just stayed all tangled up together in my head.
    “Well, I think so, anyway. Get me your fillet knife. I’ll show you how this is done. We may have to put it onnewspapers on the floor. I don’t think the counter will be big enough. So hold tight to that dog.” He looked down at Peaches, and so did I. Those little white curls, and those stubby legs. Like a poodle with some dachshund or basset or both. Silly but cute. “Oh, all right, hello , Peaches.” He always says it the same way, kind of grudgingly. And Peaches always falls all over herself with joy. “Why does that dog like me? I never give her the time of day.”
    But Uncle Max likes Peaches right back. He just doesn’t like to admit it.
    While he was filleting the fish, while I was holding tight to the wiggling dog, he said, “Tell me all about how it felt to catch this beauty.”
    All of a sudden it got hard to swallow. And my gut tingled the way it did when I was in trouble. “Well, at first it just felt like I was snared up on the bottom.”
    “Uh-huh. I see, I see. Then what?”
    “Um, I don’t know. Then I reeled it in.”
    “How did you get it into the boat without breaking the line?”
    “Oh. Sam had a net.”
    “Sam—that’s the boy who died?”
    He looked up at me. I never answered. I just looked right into his eyes and thought maybe he knew. Maybe he saw right through me. I didn’t know what else to say about how it felt to catch this fish. How would I know? So I said nothing at all.
    “Well, I was hoping for a romping good fish story, and that one sucked, but I understand. It was a rough day and you don’t care to talk about it. Fair enough. Make yourself useful, then. Fire up that deep