Things You Would Know If You Grew Up Around Here by Nancy Wayson Dinan

Author:Nancy Wayson Dinan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

11:00 P.M.

Boyd, asleep on the ground. A smell on the air. The sea. The ancient animals passing through, stopping to gaze at the pool of trapped river perch. And Boyd, dreaming of rafts on the Rio Grande and Guadalupe, the bats of the summer dusks, the carpet of bluebonnets in the late spring. Sleeping deeply until the man knelt beside her and shook her by the shoulder.

Still, she was reluctant to wake. She felt adrift in something amniotic, as though parts of her were still being formed. A sense of starlight and fusion. The golden heart of ore on an anvil, dotted with the black specks of the exterior’s quick cooling. But the man continued his shaking, urgent and undeterred.

“Miss?”

In the place between sleep and wakefulness, she perceived that he spoke an old-fashioned German and that she understood it. She stretched and her shoulder slid out of his hand. When she opened her eyes, she saw him, rocked back on his heels in a squat, his elbows resting on his knees. His face was lined around the eyes but still young, his beard and mustache neat, his sideburns robust, his clothes homemade and worn.

She sat up and saw beyond him a woman, hair so light that it seemed silver in the moonlight. She wore a long dress of dark calico, and bare toes peeked out from the hem. Boyd thought the woman drew the moonlight. The woman opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

Boyd sat up, scratching her head and shifting to chase the sleep from her limbs. She didn’t know what time it was; the moon was still high, but the woman held a lantern.

“So sorry to wake you,” the man said. “Have you seen a child? A small boy?”

Boyd got her feet under her and rose. She was taller than the man, and she was only five feet four inches. She was still unsure about the world, still remembering the strange events of the day before. The air had a quality she could not describe; it spoke of storm, of a rift in sky and space, the atmosphere knitting itself back together.

“Please,” the woman said, taking a step forward. “You must help us. Have you seen a little boy come through here?”

Boyd had not seen a little boy. She did not know how to help. She looked into the darkness, her head turning first this way, then another. Then she remembered.

“Oh, Mother,” the man said to the woman. “We must find him. The ground is already crisp with frost.”

Boyd looked now at the ground and stepped in place a couple of times to test it. It was the end of May in central Texas. There was no danger—no possibility—of frost.

Of course Boyd would help them, though she was nearly positive the search was futile. She shouldered her backpack anyway. “I’ll help you look.”

The man and woman glanced at each other. Boyd did not know what they were thinking; their faces were expressionless. “Thank you,” the man said, and the woman walked forward, past the pool of trapped perch.

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