The Watery Part of the World - Michael Parker [45]
Woodrow said, more to himself than to her, “Seen him the other day.”
She waited for more, though she knew that was all. She asked a question, he supplied an answer. She got used to it over the years, mostly because she had to—there were only three of them left on the island, finally, and here’s how it is with three: two against one. She spent many the year feeling closer to Woodrow than she did her own sister. She wanted to know his insides, wanted to know what he felt about things. How he got through the days in that head of his, poling his skiff out to meet the mail boat, fishing for their supper, smoking his cigars, listening to Whaley read out her prices, what was he thinking? She’d never got so worked up about what was in a man’s head. Tell the truth, she didn’t care to hear what was in most of them’s heads. She’d been with quite a few who couldn’t tell her, not because they didn’t want to or didn’t know how—likely scenarios both—but because there won’t nothing up there but blood and cotton balls.
“Where?” she asked.
He went on with his hosing down.
“He fish off Shackleford sometime.”
Maggie felt her face stretching, hard red brick. One little bit of information and she felt as vibrantly alive as those first few weeks they spent together.
“Will you carry me across?” she said.
Woodrow came closer to a stare than she ever remembered.
“I need to see him.”
“Lay eyes on him? Or see him see him?”
Another first: he’d never asked her questions so personal and, for him, direct. She knew exactly what he meant by see him see him. She knew Woodrow was remembering the noises coming out of his summer kitchen back when she used to meet Boyd there after the boats came in. She knew what he did not want any part of.
She said, “Lay eyes. Just talk.”
Woodrow was back to what Whaley thought of as cigar store Indian Woodrow. But she knew he was thinking, processing, feeling. She wondered was he thinking, old Maggie can’t take not having her way. Still, something told her that Woodrow was on her side. He might not have suffered in the same way she had (and he might even agree with Whaley that ninety percent of Maggie’s suffering was of her own stubborn making), but she trusted him finally to understand her need to just lay eyes on him, talk to him.
What she wanted most of all was for Boyd to look inside her head like it was one of those ant farms a teacher brought onto the island once and see, as if through smudgy glass, her thoughts tunneling around each other. They every one had his name on them.
And he would know, just by looking at her, just by the sight of her climbing onto the dock, that he was right: they could not be on the island, and she could not be there without him.
“Will you take me, Woodrow?”
“What you gone tell Whaley?” he asked after the time it took him to light a cigar stub in a little wind.
She knew then that he’d do it, but only if she could come up with some reason to satisfy her sister. Woodrow sold Whaley fish, he odd-jobbed around the house, he had dealings with her that, fickle and ornery and hateful as she could be, she’d just as soon take and transfer to someone else, though it’d be pure spite to do so, for she knew good and well that Woodrow dealt as honestly as anyone up and down the banks.
“Female trouble,” said Maggie.
“Doctor comes to Meherrituck, you know