The Watery Part of the World - Michael Parker [70]
Hours Woodrow spent down there watching gulls, terns, pelicans, glide down the coast, light on a wave as if it were all of a sudden brought to a halt and turned sand dune. Woodrow envied a bird. He was a boy when the brothers flew their first plane up the banks at Kitty Hawk. There was some news that everyone on the island heard and had something to allow about, though only thing it had to do with any of them was that they might have caught some of the same wind had lifted that machine off the dune. Wasn’t like any Lockerman or Midgette or Pollock or Whaley was going to go buying a ticket, flying up to New York for the weekend. Woodrow’s mother thought it was devilish, this business of a man acting bird, disrupting God’s own order. Sarah, too, put it down as foolishness. But Woodrow did not see a single thing wrong or ungodly concerning it. Afternoons lying across some sea-warped plywood on that slice of the island Sarah had made him, Woodrow flew so low above the water he’d wake to dampness above his lip, a moustache from the spray. He could not climb a dune without wanting so badly the breeze to lift him up and sweep him across the water.
He’d had these flying dreams before, back when he heard about the brothers’ machines, when he figured he might as well dream. Not as if he’d ever climb his black ass up in a real airplane. But now it didn’t seem to be about bird or plane. More like he wanted off, wanted across; more like this slice of Sarah’s could not hold him.
Another thing for Woodrow to not understand. He skimmed the waves and wiped the spray off his upper lip and said, I do not understand one bit of what has been delivered me. As for the sisters, he had no idea how they were getting on. Someone surely was seeing to them in his stead, lest they starve to death or sit bickering on the steps of the very church could have saved his Sarah’s life, Whaley moaning about not having any grocery store ads to read aloud, Miss Maggie talking about where’s Woodrow at, I need to see Woodrow, find Woodrow for me, not because she needed Woodrow, not because she had anything true or pure to relate to him or because she wanted to ask him how was he feeling was there anything she could do for him and God is my witness Woodrow Thornton I am sorry and so is my sister about what we let happen to your sweet Sarah, every waking moment I wish it was me the wind had took instead of her. No, it was more she needed him because she was tired of her sister. She needed something between her and Whaley. O’Malley could bring her over a big piece of plywood to put up on the church steps, serve the same purpose.
Sometimes he would come home past dusk mosquito-bit and hungry to find a stack of letters from Crawl and the rest of his children, but he did not need to know how to read or have them read out loud to him in order to know what was in them. He’d get him a High Life he’d iced down that morning and sit out on the porch holding the cold can to his cheek and in the other he would hold those letters. Up from the creek the tree frog song would rise, spreading across the yard like fog and here come the lick right off those envelopes and there go the words, out into the marsh, same ones and sweet ones but same ones, over and over, Daddy how you doing, how you holding up, for a line or two before We got room, you don’t need to bring a thing, come on over on the next ferry, or Crawl would be talking about I’ll be over across tomorrow to get you, Daddy, you can help me out at the club.
Spinning ball, said Woodrow to the night crabs crawling. High Life.
One day he could not go back to that place Sarah had made for him. She would just have to not understand. He could not live off down there by himself. Well, she’d say, the white women make you feel more alone than the