The Watery Part of the World Read Online Free Page A

he remember the good times, those afternoons when Crawl and the older sisters took care of the younger ones and he and Sarah sneaked off to the summer kitchen for some slow all afternoon loving? And later when it was just them on this island, all their children moved on, and the two of them would sit on the porch in silence for hours of a Sunday afternoon, the wind the only thing stopped by to see them all day and both of them just fine with that, with each other, with only each other?
    He ought to have brought
that
Sarah in the boat with him to keep him company. But instead he stirred up all this unfinished business, got her to talking about the things she liked to talk about, give his same old side of it for the hundredth time, tried to tell himself it was final, he had the last word.
    Which, talking down to a dead person, the one you loved most in this world, wrapping it up when they didn’t have a chance to defend, well—he’d’ve felt a whole lot of worse about it if it hadworked. But it did not do a damn bit of good. Mostly only made him feel worse.
    Still, he had these talks with her, every day. Sometimes all day long. Ever since he left her alone that day when Wilma came through.
    He’d gone across to Meherrituck on an errand for Whaley. She was wanting him to meet the mailman at the store around four o’clock. She knew he’d been fishing the ditch up behind Blue Harbor, knew it wasn’t too far out of his way. She also knew he would not want to kill time in Meherrituck, where people treated him mostly bad, made jokes behind his back on account of the O’Malleys when they met him for the mail sometimes would pass him a Sweet to smoke and a High Life to sip on, get him talking about the sisters, went right back to tell it all over Meherrituck how he was getting something off Miss Maggie and Miss Whaley liked to watch. He’d heard that. It had got back to him. From his house down by the inlet he could see across to Meherrituck and the winking lights of Blue Harbor and the lighthouse tossing its milky beam around but Woodrow hadn’t lost anything over there. Neither him nor the sisters crossed over unless one got bad sick. Whaley knew he did not want to go across that day. She knew he would not want to kill time over there, knew that to Woodrow Meherrituck had got just as bad as the mainland with all the ferries unloading the tourists and the natives getting it in their heads they were some rich somebodies.
    Oh, he could of said no to Whaley that day. He’d told her nobefore. He felt the storm coming, saw it in all the telling signs: way his stock behaved, scratching around in the yard all skittery, refusing to eat, squealing and whinnying at the way the wind died then rose, died and rose. He saw it in the shading of the clouds, black and fast and backlit by the last leaking away of any sun that day. When he tried to tell Whaley it was a storm coming and he did not want to leave Sarah, she said to him, Take Sarah with you, do her good to get off island, surely y’all got people over there to visit.
    This got away with Woodrow. Seemed like she was wanting him to take Sarah off the island so she and Maggie could have it to themselves, like they was wanting some white-only time on that island where his people had lived going back more than a hundred years, not so long as hers, true, but long enough so with only the four of them left it was by God his and Sarah’s island much as it was theirs.
    Before he left, he made them promise to check on Sarah should it start to blow (
if
he said, though he knew by then
when
was the word he needed) and he got up early that day as always and loaded up coolers to keep his catch cold while he killed time on ain’t-lost-nothing-over-to-Meherrituck. Sarah even came down to the dock to see him off, which she never did, but Woodrow tried to act like it was just another day out on the water. As soon as he was out on the water he felt the