The Watery Part of the World - Michael Parker [10]
“She would not let me go after her,” Maggie said, talking about Whaley. “She would not let me I tried to she said it won’t safe, said I’d die going down there to check on her.”
Woodrow said, “Hush up now,” and she did. She struggled to keep up with him as he pushed up the hill toward the church passing on the way his house and seeing the roof of the kitchen gone off somewhere and only one wall of that tacked-on kitchen still standing and understanding it was his faulty work maybe what killed her as he’d built that kitchen to help her out. He’d added it on to make it easier on Sarah so she would not have to haul and tote everything from the summer kitchen. He’d built it out of washed-up timber and some he’d traded the O’Malleys for which won’t much better grade than what the tide brung up.
He stopped to look. Maggie behind him gave out a wheezy cry.
“Y’all found her back there?”
“In the kitchen.”
“Roof fell in on her?”
“Cut her up bad.”
“She bled to death?”
Maggie didn’t answer this. She couldn’t of bled to death in any hour. They must of left her there all night. They left her there all night long on the floor and then the waters rose and had they gone down there and at least moved her up the hill she’d be sitting up head-bandaged but good to go.
Woodrow went on up to the church. Maggie followed as far as Whaley’s front yard. He felt her about to say something and then he felt her think better of it. It was that quiet after the storm, on the island and in Woodrow’s head. The shock of imagining Sarah’s last hours cleared everything out of his head. Nothing much either in his heart. He did not feel anything walking alone now up the hill to the church. He did not notice the debris in the way and he walked over planks and shingles and gill nets and broken glass and chicken wire. He did not see the watermark on the side of the old post office where the surge crested. One of Whaley’s sheep lay drowned in the front yard of the Salter place and he did not see or smell it. He could not feel his shoes sucking into the mud. Somehow breath came in and out of him.
She was laid out on the altar three steps above the crust of mud and swollen hymnbooks and trash left behind when the sea said enough and took its leave. Appeared to Woodrow the sea itself and not one of his white women sisters had laid her out, then went right back to wherever it came from or wherever it was off to next. He’d rather this than anyone touching her, especially those who let her die.
Same clothes on as when he left her, though her hair had been hiding behind a kerchief and the kerchief was gone.
“Where is your kerchief?” he said, standing above her, looking down on her. One of her arms, tucked up tight alongside her, had fallen off onto a lower step. “Where?” he said. “What did they do with it?”
The silence following the slight echo of his stupid question in the high-ceilinged sanctuary brought Woodrow to his knees. Prayer was what he tried to make come out of his mouth next. Prayer had never really took with Woodrow. He’d wandered off from thanking or apologizing into a list of things he needed to do to get across the water for his boat. He felt so bad that he couldn’t even manage to give thirty seconds to God Almighty that he left off the entire endeavor. Here he was trying it again and aloud but what he heard in that high sanctuary was not anything even God could understand, unless it was true he understood everything and if that was so why even talk? So Woodrow just went to bawling, kneeling, rocking, spit streaming out of his mouth, so lost he was letting it drip all over, Dear Sarah Dear God I am sorry I ought never to have left you. Ought never to have trusted them. But it’s not their fault. Mine for not letting you leave.
Late that night moonlight came striping the middle pews through the stained glass and that the only light they had now: moon, sun,