The Red Garden - Alice Hoffman [30]
They sat in a circle in the haunted place, to see if they experienced anything unusual. Will Starr remembered that his little sister used to come here to throw stones in the water. He laughed at her when she told him blue stones could make a wish come true. His sisters Amy and Mary had both been beautiful girls, one lost to the river, the other gone off with a traveling man, leaving behind a family where grief was the only emotion. His other sister, Olive, he had argued with long ago. Will laid his head against a birch tree stump and closed his eyes. The sun was warm and he fell asleep. Soon he was snoring.
“Do you think she has a message for us?” Mattie asked Evan Partridge, referring to the ghost she thought she’d seen. “Maybe she can lead us to the world beyond this one.”
Evan didn’t know. He wasn’t even sure there were such things as spirits and ghosts. “Maybe it’s only the way the sunlight comes through the trees. It appears to be a figure, but it’s really just a shadow.”
“She had a doll with her. I saw it in her hands. Do shadows have dolls?”
Evan smiled. “I suppose not,” he said.
“I don’t suppose anything,” Mattie told him. “Not anymore.”
She wondered what it would feel like to drown. How the water would fill your mouth and throat, how you would sink to the stony bottom where the currents were so green and cold, the chilly places the eels like best. You would look up and see the sky through the water and everything would be reversed. Perhaps time itself would go backward, unspooled like thread.
That’s what she wanted. This life of hers undone. Mattie went down to the river while her father-in-law slept and the boy stretched out in the grass. She took off the heavy boots and her socks, then unbuttoned her dress and pulled it over her head. Evan sat up straight when she did so, his mouth dry. He’d been seeing things ever since he’d gone to war and perhaps this was simply one more mad vision: the doves flying up, his brother’s face, Mattie Starr’s nearly naked body, her shoulders, her legs, her back.
She turned and gave him a look. She was real, all right. Evan struggled to his feet. The water was rushing so fast, one step and she would be taken downstream. If he wasn’t quick, he would watch mutely while she was swept away, the way he’d watched his world blown to pieces. Evan refused to allow his fate to be this and nothing more, to stand by helplessly while she drowned herself. He would not be defined by his inability to be a man. He raced down to the steep bank. He concentrated and willed himself to run and there he was, his arms around her. She pulled him in with her when she made the jump. They fell slowly, entwined in their strange embrace. There was barely a splash as they went in. It was more of a disappearance. Something invisible, yet there all the same. The river was colder than they would have imagined, ice water from the top of the mountain that had come tumbling down.
They went under to where everything was green. The air bubbles were like clouds. The clouds were like white stones thrown into the far distance. Evan circled one arm around Mattie Starr’s waist and with the other he held fast to a log jutting out from the bank. They sputtered and lifted their heads out of the water. They were in a quiet pool set off from the rush of water by stacked logs that served as a dam. The sunlight was falling into the water, spreading out in waves. The air was damp and sweet. Mattie looped her arms around his neck. She kissed him, then pulled away. When she saw the look on Evan’s face, she kissed him again. She put her tongue inside his mouth, kissing him more and more deeply. When the undershirt she wore slipped off her shoulders, she didn’t grab for it. It floated away, like a white lily. The water was shallow and they could nearly stand up, but it was easier not to. She took his hand and put it between her legs. She let him pull her undergarments down. There were