Part 34 (1/2)

Paul laughed. ”Kind of you to offer, then.”

They walked along the sh.o.r.e for a while.

”You know Clara pretty well?” Clayton asked.

”Pretty well,” Paul agreed.

”You think she'll help out with the kids again?”

Paul nodded.

”Thought so. She likes them, eh?”

”So do I,” Paul said.

”Yeah. You're her boyfriend?”

”No,” Paul said.

”Huh! I thought you were.”

Paul shook his head. ”We're friends,” he said.

Clayton laughed. ”Right.” He bent for a stone and threw it far into the river, the motion strong and fluid. Paul could see the athlete he might have been.

Drifting on the dunes on the other side of the sandbank, Trevor watched the birds landing on the water. Geese, crook-winged seagulls, birds he didn't know. When they landed on the water they followed no path. Even the huge white pterodactyl pelicans could come and go without leaving a trace. Around one spit of land he could see a mile down the river, n.o.body else in the world. Ahead, a long slender vase of a blue heron stood on a driftwood stump.

He stopped still. No thoughts, nothing but clean empty s.p.a.ce in his head. Then he turned around and walked back, his feet quiet on the sand. The funny little running birds left stick-man footprints on the sand so you could follow them back to the nest, but you would not because it would scare them. Trevor followed along one birdfoot trail and it led him straight to Darwin at the edge of the water.

He looked at Darwin's feet, and then up at his face.

”Let's go in,” Darwin said.

It was hot, hot, and the water was running along warm over the shallows. They were all half wet from wading already. He and Trevor went in first, but Clary followed with Dolly, holding Pearce's hands between them. Lorraine stood on the sh.o.r.e, and Dolly waved back at her, beckoning. Mrs. Zenko came and put her arm around Lorraine, the light wind whipping up her short hair, the same length as Lorraine's. Silver and black; to Clary they looked like a time-lapse photo, thirty-five and seventy.

Darwin grabbed Pearce and swung him around, first into the air and then flying, diving under the surface and back up again, like a bird, Clary thought, a sea-bird used to the waves. Pearce was laughing, not at all scared. Trevor splashed deeper with Dolly until they stepped off the edge of a submerged sandbar and went under for a second-but Darwin grabbed them up and held them, one in each arm.

Downriver, Paul raised his arms in exaggerated alarm and waded into the water toward them. Clayton looked like he might follow, but his mother was calling from her willow-bush hideaway, wanting him to fix her chair, and he turned aside.

Clary cleaved through the water in Paul's direction. His face looked free, almost happy. This was the first time she had seen him happy in months-and even then, she thought, it had been dark at the time.

”Please, I don't want that carpet back!” She was desperate, suddenly, never to have it back in her house.

”No, no, I want to keep it,” Paul said. ”But I thought I should offer-”

Rising out of the water right behind them, Darwin hooked his foot in the back of Paul's knees, collapsing him into the water, and then pulled Clary in and under and up again, and gave her a big kiss. Then he sloshed away, back to the kids.

It was a relief to be wet all over. Clary took Paul's hand and pulled him into the current with her, in up to their waists. The river married them under the surface, the same water flowing through them.

”I will talk,” he said. ”Myself, my own words.”

”Don't do anything different, I want what you, I mean you as-what you are. Except not to be worried, or fearful.”

Oh, is that all, he thought. Well then.

”You smell good,” she said. They fit together well. A driftwood stick floated by and Paul hooked it for a prop to brace them against the river current, stronger in this channel here.

”Look at them all, how big they are,” Clary said, seeing the children from a perspective-creating distance. Pearce was up to Mrs. Zenko's sweater-hem already.

”Can you be friends with Lorraine now?”

”Yes.” She stood straight, legs strong in the sweeping water, the sand carving away under her feet. ”But I don't think I can go to church any more. That might be hard on you.”

He nodded, looking down the river. ”Well, you'll have to be-not be fearful either.”

She touched his arm, his skin. Pretty well, she loved him.

”Did praying save her? One night, I thought my prayers were working. But they didn't work for my mother.”

He poked his stick into the deepest channel, making it deeper. ”I don't know,” he said. ”Why people die, when. I can't believe in a preordained arrangement, with death at the soul's most opportune time-or in a crafty, secretive G.o.d hunched over the plotting table in a war-room universe.”

He pulled the stick downstream, winding it along, and the water followed the stick. ”We're in the world. I think we are subject to the world, while we're here, and that G.o.d waits for us. That's all I can say.”

”Not that prayer has no purpose,” he added after a minute, looking up at her. ”How could I say that? I pray constantly!”

”Yes,” she said.

She bent down her head to see the s.h.i.+ning rocks under the wavering prism of the current. Paul looked at the sky, where G.o.d was not. Or was. Mauve-tinted shafts in bright hot blue. That window opening in the sky, in the clouds: always a vision of the country of heaven.

Trevor straggled along the water's edge, maybe lonesome. Paul turned and followed down the sandbar after him. Away grief's gasping, joyless days, dejection. There was a beacon, wasn't there, an eternal beam? World's wild-fire, leave but ash... He sprinted ahead, tagged Trevor and raced him back to the fire.

Darwin rustled his paper bags and brought out more fruit and bags of chips, and Clary remembered the chocolate, which had melted but could be squeezed out of the wrappers straight into their mouths.

Dolly lay on her back on sand beside the umbrella shading drowsy Pearce. Above them, clouds moved over the blue. ”Like a bunch of sheep,” she said to Pearce. ”Look! Bouncy legs, and wool!” He moved his head lazily to see around the umbrella, and pointed his finger up into the sky, but she was not sure he was seeing the same sheep she saw. Two people could never look at the sky the same way.

After one more sandwich Clayton stood up and gave his plastic net to Darwin to stick in the trash bag.

”I'm taking Mom back to town,” he told Lorraine. ”She's beat. These guys'll give you all a ride, right?”

Mrs. Pell was grey and sullen under her cotton hat. She had hardly spoken all afternoon. Clary and Paul said they had room for everyone, between them.

Clayton bent down to kiss Lorraine. The brim of his baseball cap got in the way; he took it off. His pale forehead under the springing hair caught her off-guard, and she kissed him back fondly.

”Later,” he said.

She smiled at him, as free as ever. ”See you,” she said.

He turned away from them all and went back across the streams and the rough gra.s.s with his mother. Clary looked after them. Both short, one stumpy, one skinny. She'll be in a nursing home within the year, Clary bet herself, for some comfort. She poured a big gla.s.s of water for Lorraine, and one for herself. She sat in Mrs. Pell's abandoned folding chair, and let those two go.

People had drifted away from the fire. Heat still rose off the sand in wobbling waves. Near Mrs. Zenko, watching in her chair, Trevor and Pearce lay flaked out on the dune with red faces-burnt? Clary checked, but they were just red from running. Lorraine squeezed more sunscreen onto both their hands and they slathered the boys again, making them jump with the sudden cold.