Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman

Author:Christopher Buehlman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

“SORRY I WAS flirting a little.”

“You both were.”

“You know I don’t mean anything by it, I hope?”

“No. I think you probably draw the line at college sophomores. I’m just glad I squeaked in.”

“You’re wicked.”

“Everyone’s wicked. I was worse than her at her age. It’s harmless enough. You’re the best-looking example of what a grown-up man might look like in this town. And I guess she’d like to strap on my long legs and take them for a spin, but she’ll find out pretty soon the boys will like her short legs just fine. Just the same, I don’t think I’ll want to make love tonight.”

“No?”

“I don’t think I will. I don’t entirely like the way I feel just now. I’m not even twenty-five yet. I’m not supposed to feel old. How do you do that to us? How does every one of you manage to do that to every one of us?”

After school the next day, Dora went to see Mr. Woodruff, the father of Sarah, her most promising student.

I went with her.

Sarah had not shown up again after the Falmouth boy was killed, which didn’t surprise Dora. Half of her students were still out, protecting the nest or being protected in it. Or just pulling up potatoes and okra because nobody cared about Manifest Destiny with Tyson’s skinny little ghost howling by the locust tree.

Eudora didn’t like this Woodruff man very much.

It had been he who told the class on the day that Tyson’s body was found. Just came in without knocking, barked out the news without a sliver of discretion, and took his girl off by the arm. And in that drawl so thick it sounded like he had been dropped on his head as an infant.

It would be hard to get Sarah back from such a man.

She had her lips pursed and a worry line on her brow when I knocked.

Mr. Woodruff looked at us as if he were a bear who couldn’t understand what a couple of deer were doing knocking at the entrance to his cave. The rain was coming hard, so he invited us off the dripping porch and inside. The porch with its puddles. The porch with its mosquitoes and mosquito hawks and moths and flying ants still crucified on the rusting screen, and gouges in the screen where part of it hung and made a lip. Perhaps the bugs had been left to warn others.

“How are you doing?” I said, offering him my hand, but quickly retiring it unshaken.

“I’ve come to talk to you about Sarah,” Dora offered.

He grunted.

When he finally saw that we weren’t going away, he let us into the house and we all sat in homemade chairs in the close space of the front room. The air was thick and hot and damp. Sarah looked up from the chicken she was plucking in the kitchen and peeked through the doorway, but she did not risk a hello. I guessed she never knew exactly when to speak in this house, but with her daddy it was good to err in favor of silence.

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