The Watery Part of the World by Michael Parker Read Free Book Online Page B

moment he was talking to her, in fact.
    â€œBest get to progging,” he was saying. He’d wrapped her some biscuits and a little leftover croaker in a cloth for her lunch.
    She hesitated in the doorway to thank him, but when she did, finally, say the words, he waved her away. “Helps me too,” he said.
    â€œI don’t see how. Now you’re taking care of two. Twice as hard.”
    â€œTwice the rewards,” he said, then he dropped his eyes in shyness. “We best not tarry now. Wasting good light.”
    She spent the day alone, scouring the coastline, pushing farther up the island away from the crowds. The farther she traveled, of course, the more distance there was to lug home whatever she found. So she made piles in the high dunes, lumber and some cookware—two pewter mugs, a lone piece of china—a strip of sail that would do nicely for a blanket, a few bottles she could use to fetch water. Within days she was lusting after not peaches but nails. Had the wind through the sea oats promised to bring her anything she wanted, she would have asked, hours before, for chocolate, books, Chopin. Now it was nails, a couple of hinges for her door, an ax, a saw, a hammer.
    A week or so after Whaley brought her into his hut, he lay sleeping on the bed. That night as always he offered her the tick, but she would not hear of it, not that her refusal ever dissuaded him from going through the exchange the next night. Whaley’s sleep-breath rose to a not-quite snore and rain pelted the piecemeal roof above her head, but what kept her awake was the thought of Whaley offering nightly his bed, the predictability of it, its link in a chain of daily occurrences she previously would have deemed quotidian. Ritual was just as important in her former milieu but it was understood so differently, as a pattern of society, a set of preordained rules observed by those who truly understood how life should be lived.
    Civilization depended upon adherence to such a pattern, and perhaps for that reason she had always resented it. Joseph had hisnext-day clothes laid out for him by his manservant by ten the night before. His family always decamped for DeBordieu Island on the first of May. Four o’clock came and tea was served, dinner at seven thirty sharp.
    Why not go to DeBordieu early this year, she asked Joseph, whose patience with such suggestions made her feel all the more fragile. Smile at her every word, humor her at all costs.
    On this island there was nothing static or plodding about routine. Survival was predicated on things being the same: the sea yielding food and delivering materials adaptable to your daily needs, the wind steady enough to keep the bugs away but not strong enough to cause the destruction of which it was so easily capable.
    This is what Theo was thinking, lying by the fire, inches away from Whaley, so close she could smell his sleep-breath, when the door blew open.
    Whaley rose so quickly she saw only his blanket, flung across the room. Then he was standing by the fire, gripping a piece of wood the length and thickness of an ax handle. She looked beyond him to see Daniels’s face, lit only by the remnant glow of fire in the hearth. He looked her over once before his eyes sought out Whaley in the smoky gloom. He seemed unconcerned about the makeshift weapon, as if he knew it would not be used on him.
    Theo kept her eyes on Whaley. “It’s my father come at last,” she said, and curtsied low, her skirts rustling the tick. “Home to Richmond Hill. Oh, how they’ve missed me, especially the Missus Astor.”
    â€œHush now,” said Whaley, and she knew by the fierceness of the tone that he knew she was putting on a show, and because he understood she kept it up, speaking lovingly of peaches, cream, pinafores, her favorite quilt, a lazy cat tinkling the piano keys, until Whaley, responding to something else in the room she could not see, raised his stick above