The Long-Shining Waters Read Online Free Page A

from you, Mom.”
    “Put her on.”
    “She’s away on a playdate. I already told her the weekend is cancelled. You could come here. I’m not the only one with a car.”
    Nora stops scrubbing. “I work Saturday night,” she says in a measured tone. “I always work on Saturday night.” She places the glasses on the rack and takes on another pair of dirties. Again, there’s nothing but silence on the line. Nora keeps her eyes on the brushes as she works.
    “Look, I’m busy,” she says finally. “I really can’t talk now.”
    “I can hear you washing glasses. You can’t be that busy.”
    Nora looks blankly around the bar, catches Rose giving her a sympathetic look. The water sloshes in the stainless steel sink. There’s the sound of quarters being pumped into the cigarette machine, then the rod being pulled and the metallic thwack back, followed by a soft thud.

1622
     
    Grey Rabbit struggles to get to the surface, where patches of light undulate and swaths of color twirl in icy clouds. The pressure in her chest is a frozen boulder. She works her arms to push herself upward, kicking her legs with all her strength, but it’s slow, slow, the water’s thick as wind and she has to fight to move through it. Her chest feels like it will burst apart. She is nearly there. She kicks and flails, at last propelling herself up and free.
    But no, there is no relief. And there, above her, the taunting surface, twirling and swaying clear and ice blue, and then a child splashes in. The girl’s face wavers, growing huge and then small. Her eyes closed, her mouth a blue pucker. Grey Rabbit beats at the water like a frantic bird, trying to rise up and reach the child with her arms, but there is pressure against them, something holding her down, no, pulling, now lifting her upward, nearer and nearer to the sloshing light. Her face breaks the surface, and she gasps for air, mouths the dry brown emptiness around her. The child. She sees the tawny brown roof of her wigwam, then Bullhead’s broad back, turning away.
    She’s no longer underwater; her spirit is in her body. The sky through the smoke hole is purple. Her stomach tightens. Food. They need food. Bullhead is making a soft clicking noise with her mouth. “There’s fresh snow,” she says. “The tracking will be good. Night Cloud will take Standing Bird along.” She stirs the fire and disappears out the door flap.
    The girl’s round face, her lips a blue pucker. The image propels Grey Rabbit upright. Across the fire, her sons lay curled and sleeping. From outside come the sounds of Bullhead laying wood. Her words were neither reproachful nor angry, though Grey Rabbit sensed something between them meant for her. She drops her head as shame moves through her, quick as fire in dry grass. She should have been up and tending to her work, but instead she has let all the weight fall on Bullhead.
    At the log on the slope above their camp, Grey Rabbit loosens her clothing and squats, her sleep-warmed skin meeting the cold air. The smell of wood smoke lifts through the trees. Around her, the pines hold dots of snow in their bark, and everything is purple and newly rounded—the wigwam like an overturned bowl, the spruce boughs splayed like thick dark hands. Below, mist rises from Gichigami, veiled and shifting, growing thicker with the light. Soon the water will be entirely hidden, transformed into a vast land of cloud.
    Grey Rabbit pushes snow over the hole her urine carved, feels the new sharpness of her hip bones and a slight dizziness as she stands.
    Slowly she descends, apart, watching, her sons sitting near the fire, Night Cloud returning from the direction of the river. His path leaves a dark line in the snow.
     
    Night Cloud looks up to see his wife moving gingerly down the slope. Thinning. And quiet as a winter tree. He must make a sizable kill. He had placed another offering at the river cave. He finds tracks, scat, and bedding places, but the animals will not show