Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz Read Free Book Online Page A

her on the roller coaster and how she'd loved it. She wanted to ride again and again, and he'd thanked God that he had enough money to treat her over and over. He'd discovered after the first ride that he disliked the roller coaster himself—the sudden drops made him feel sick to his stomach—but it was worth it to have her clinging to his arm, to listen to her happy screams, to feel her smooth hair against his face. He would have ridden with her all afternoon had her sister, waiting grimly at the bottom, their picnic basket over her arm, not finally grown impatient.
    “Enough's enough. You always have to go too far,” Amanda had said and, wrapping her fingers tightly around Mathilda's wrist, she dragged her off, almost before he was able to say goodbye. When Mathilda turned to wave at him with her free hand before the crowd closed behind them, he congratulated himself for having the foresight an hour earlier to have asked her where she lived.
    That was what he thought about before he fell asleep, but his dreams, as usual, wouldn't be steered. They took him far from Mathilda, back to France where the gray smoke mingled with the gray fog, into the foxhole where he had been resting with Sims and McKinley, two fellows from his squad, before a blast tossed him, limbs twisted in every direction, onto the half-frozen mud like a sack of potatoes. He remembered leaving the ground but not returning to it.
    He'd opened his eyes at the sound of groaning. It was Pete McKinley, about twenty feet away, struggling to pick himself up. Between them, Henny Sims lay in a heap, unmoving. Carl was about to call to McKinley when he saw the man stiffen, an odd, horrified look on his face. He followed McKinley's gaze to the rimof the foxhole. Three Huns were staring down at them, bayonets affixed.
    His body started involuntarily, but the Germans didn't even glance his way. They must have assumed he was dead, or at least still unconscious. Already they were clambering into the foxhole, moving toward McKinley, who'd managed to get to his knees. One of them stopped where Sims was heaped and used his bayonet to roll him onto his back. There was something wrong with Sims, Carl could see. Something funny about his head.
“ Tot,”
the Heinie said, and Carl realized that half of Henny's head was missing.
    “My gun,” Carl thought, and he believed he was reaching for it, believed even that he was standing, ready to fire it into their backs, but it was only an illusion. His body stayed frozen, stuck to the earth.
    And then red. That was how this dream that wasn't a dream always ended, with red that washed everything else away.
    It was still dark when the door slammed, and Amanda came in, cheeks pink, feet stamping, the milking done.
    “Ready for breakfast?” she asked, sticking her head around his door. Cold clouded around her, and she blew on her fingertips.
    Ruthie was already at the table by the time he'd made his way into the kitchen and collapsed on a chair. Like a dog guarding its food, she kept her eyes on Carl as she scooped cornflakes into her mouth, her fist clutched awkwardly around her spoon. Amanda cracked eggs smartly against the edge of a blue enamel bowl.
    “If you want to visit her grave first thing, Rudy'll take you,” she said. “Ruth is all set to go along, aren't you, Ruthie?” She wiped the girl's face with a dishrag and lifted her down from her chair.
    The thought startled him. He realized he'd been half imagining Mathilda away somewhere, visiting a cousin, or perhaps living in the island house. He was almost expecting her to return.
    “I really don't think I'm up to it.”
    “Oh, but, Carl,” she reproached him, “you really should. What will people think? And here,” she added, stepping out to the porch and coming back with a handful of branches studded with red berries. “I thought you might want to take these. I know they aren't really flowers, but you can't be choosy this time of year.”
    Ruth stood on her