Clarkesworld Magazine - Issue 65 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, fantasy, magazine, short story, clarkesworld, science fiction magazine, fantasy magazine, short stories, semiprozine
Publisher: Wyrm Publishing
Published: 2012-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

Red

Red has a job at the local Wal-Mart. She is the only one of the Riverside Kirks to have dropped out of school and seek employment elsewhere. She saves every cent and one day will buy a steamboat ticket to anywhere out of Iowa. She does not care about the moon or space or destiny. She loves her family and cheers for the local team at football games, but there is a deep restlessness in her feet. Each night she wakes from her dreams to find herself knee deep in the English River with her nightgown and underclothes floating away downstream. She doesn’t tell anyone of her plan to escape, least of all her brother T who will see it as yet another rejection. She suspects her presence is the only thing which protects him from the other Kirks. One day they will discover his birthday is not March 22, but 2 minutes past. She does not know what will happen then, but does not trust the calculated laziness in Captain’s eyes, or the pounding of Jimmy’s fists, or Jamie’s nonchalance, or any of the others whose only concern is moving in perfect synchronization with what is expected of them.

It must be the thought of her brother, the need to protect him which wakes her before she can dive into the deep part of the river and float away forever.

Walking back on the long dirt road Red feels her skin tingling in the moonlight and she knows that any boy looking out from his window will think she is a white stag or changeling or star. She hopes he falls in love with her so one day, when she is gone from this place, there will be an idea of her that takes root and grows. Perhaps in this way enough of her spirit will remain behind to cocoon her brother. Perhaps when she is gone he will fill into some of her Kirkness, enough to belong. Enough that the others will not push him away.

Water is always the problem, Red thinks. It moves and carries where it will. Red caresses the open sores on her legs, and the infections taking root therein. She wishes her sleeping brain had the sense to put on waders before stepping out the door but knows that contagion is an inevitable condition. If not the river, then the rain, then the tap, then the bottled water they import from the Delta in exchange for organic crops. At Wal-Mart she prepares the sleeping lofts where the outlying farmers will come to live when the river floods. No one builds for permanence anymore and she marvels at the other Kirks insistence on pattern.

Every day her brother comes in attempting to buy beer. Every day he fails.

“Why,” she asks T.

“If I don’t, they’ll kick me out.”

“Why,” she later asks the cashier.

“Have you seen the crap floating around in one of those cans?”

“But Captain?”

“Little prick deserves whatever salmonella he catches.”

In the winter months, Red returns to school and sits with the other Kirks in the back corner but she is ever so slightly out of step.

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