The Watery Part of the World - Michael Parker [5]
“Everybody’s doing fine,” said Crawl. “But me and Violet and the boys, we worry about you over here all alone now.”
When Woodrow said he wasn’t alone, seemed like Crawl’d been hiding in a blind with his gun cocked, waiting on these very words to fly out of Woodrow’s mouth.
“You know you don’t got to stay here looking after them sisters until they die or you one. Those women don’t have no business staying over here anyway. Surely they got some kin somewhere will take them in.”
“Them two?” said Woodrow. He didn’t know of any kin, or even any friends except little Liz who worked for Dr. Levinson running his tape machine and slapping mosquitoes off his neck and making sure he ate something. Anymore, little Liz was about the only person he knew who even checked in on them. She wrote letters that Whaley claimed were only to her but whenever Maggie snatched them out of her sister’s hand and read them aloud they always asked after her and said something too about him, How’s Woodrow, Tell Woodrow I’m going to bring him some peaches, even once, Give Woodrow my love, which made Maggie snicker and liked to got away with Whaley.
“All I’m saying is, it’s not your job to look after them. Older they get worse it’s going to be. Least now they can still walk down to the dock to meet the mail boat.”
“We ain’t had mail in three years,” said Woodrow. “I been catching O’Malley and them out in the channel when they come back from meeting the ferry.”
Crawl shook his head at this, as if Woodrow wasn’t out on the water most days anyway.
“Come on, Daddy, just pack a bag. You don’t need much, I’ll carry you back across over here any time you want to go, let’s get in the boat.”
The boys were back by then, sitting on the steps, listening in. Woodrow got up and hugged little Woodrow so hard the boy went to squirm. When he embraced the older two he felt in their slack muscles the beginnings of that eye-cutting stage. They would not be coming back to the island to see him. Woodrow even wondered if they were not old enough for Crawl to run his daddy down in front of them. Look at your old granddaddy fussing after his white women, what for?
He sat out on the dock, finishing the pint of Canadian that Crawl had left him, watching the sun sink over the water and wondering what he’d be over there, off island, across the sound. Now who would he be over there? This he could not say but it wasn’t what they all thought: scared to find out. There were some things he feared—he didn’t think you could live and not be scared of something—say the Pamlico Sound, known to go from glassy to six-foot seas in an hour. Other people, their strange and unknowable motives, scared him. The lonely time that come up on him after Sarah died, swooped up close overhead like a vee of geese.
Fear of what they’d be if they left the island might have been what kept the sisters over here, though they had their other reasons, surely. Maggie would do right much what her big sister said when it came right down to it. Else, why was she still here? Why didn’t she leave when that Boyd asked her to go away with him? If she would not leave then, she’d not be leaving this island.
Whaley, well: seems like she stayed for when the Tape Recorders come over from Raleigh every spring. Every April, always the fat bearded one with his bird glasses called himself a doctor but would not look at Miss Maggie’s bad toes and for the past ten years little Liz, who Woodrow liked.
Whaley lived to get that letter said the Tape Recorders were due to visit. A good month before they arrived she spent setting up the Salter place where they stayed, planning meals, fetching items from Meherrituck, which meant Woodrow was the one running himself ragged to prepare for their arrival, all Whaley’s errands on top of his daily chores.
The moment they stepped off the boat Whaley’d switch