Come High Water Sneak Peek
Heâs twelve and doesnât know who he is anymore when Mary tells him to think of Forthlin like an island.Â
Water will come where itâs supposed to, she says. The waves will rise, and the rivers will flood, and itâll be a grand soft day, and all of the land and the islands and the sky will remain and life will go on, and he wonders if she knows. If she knows how aware he is on the permanance of that motionâthe forward march of time. If she knows heâs been as aware of it as anything since the moment he sat in a church pew and thought of the meaning of forever.Â
Heâs prone to fits. Thatâs what Mary calls them. Fits of fancy, only the fancy he knew existed stacked high in grocery store aislesâbrightly colored tins too high up for him to reach, Mary holding him firmly by the hand and tugging him down the aisle, away, towards the dented things nearly expired that she said they could do something with if they thought hard enough.Â
She thinks too much, Jim says. Thatâs the problem with him. He thinks too much about the wrong things, and not enough about the right ones. Do well in school. Tuck in your shirt. Wash those grass stains off your knees. Itâs not proper for a lady to sit that way. Itâs not right for her to roll around in the dirt with the boys.Â
He thinks too much. He thinks too much of the wrong things. He sees things in the picture shows. He sees things on stage. Thatâs all it is. Sheâll grow out of it. She was like that, at his age. Itâs a season. A season of change. A season of change that comes and does itâs work and lengthens limbs and swells with green and fruit and new life, and then it will leave and he wonât be able to think that way again, he wonât be able to be.Â
He thinks of rain when he sits at the dinner table in trousers too big for him, stolen from the floor of Mikeâs room. He thinks when the plate shatters on the floor behind his head.Â
âJames Jim McCartney!â Mary yells as she begins to stand, a sound punctuated by the slap of skin against skin as Jim backhands her. A thump. A weight hitting the floor.Â
Paul stares down at the table. The scuffed and pitted surface. A wedding present from your grandparents, Mary had told him time and time again, when Paul had groused as a child at being made to polish something so drab.Â
The spoon wiggles back and forth as the table quivers. Paul follows the wood grain with his eyes, looks to where Mike is perched across from him, eyes wide and unseeing like twin moons as he shakes apart.Â
âNo daughter of mine will be prancing about in ladâs trousers!â Jim menaces, taking Paul by the arm and yanking him sideways from the table.Â
His chair tips over. His feet catch on the table leg, and he ends up halfway to his knees, dangling uselessly from the arm Jim lofts into the air.Â
His shoulder socket pops. The feeling in his arm tingles out to nothing.Â
âMary,â He says. âYour name is Mary, like your mother. And you are my daughter. Do you hear me? Youâre my daughter,â he says, and Paul nods, and he nods, because he knows, he knows, because his body changes, and heâll never stop knowing.
