Louise Doughty - Black Water

So many times, in the aftermath, he found himself reliving that afternoon and holding back or running forward, insisting that they took the other fork in the path, being ill that morning, or pushing Bud off a step so that he would twist an ankle — anything, anything that would mean that day could not progress until the moment when time stopped altogether, in bright light, the thunder of white water in the air.

Other families had holidays, that was the truth. But other families were not like theirs: Poppa, Nina, Nicolaas and Bud. It wasn’t just their ages or their different skin tones, no one of the four of them alike, it was Poppa’s work too. Nina explained it to them one evening, when Poppa was, as usual, late for dinner. ‘Think of it like this, boys. Your Poppa is out there fighting this giant monster. It’s a great big monster that eats people. And he knows full well he can’t defeat it all on his own and that it’s going to take years and years but even when he works really hard that monster keeps on eating. But if he stops work for a bit, the monster eats harder and faster.’ She paused and looked at each of them sternly. ‘And so what’s Poppa to say to the people who get eaten if he takes a break? Sorry, I’ll be back tomorrow?’

Harper looked at Bud, across the table from him, five years old, wide-eyed, knife and fork clutched in the wrong hands. He thought maybe that comparison was a little much for his small brother.

The front door slammed and Poppa ambled, shoulders down, into the kitchen, loosening his tie. Bud dropped the knife and fork onto the table with a clatter, jumped down from his seat and flung himself against Poppa’s legs, burying his face in them. Poppa put his hand absently on Bud’s head and looked up and Nina said, ‘I was just explaining to the boys how you were out slaying the dragon.’

‘Oh,’ said Poppa, gently detaching Bud from his trousers and giving him a small shove back towards the table, glancing at the food, ‘that dragon.’

That night, Harper lay awake in his room after bedtime, as he often did, using his new torch to make hand puppets on the wall. He and Bud still shared the same small room — he didn’t really see why he couldn’t have the one that his mother and Michael had used. It had been kept just as it was three years ago, except cleaner, and was now called ‘the guest room’. It annoyed Harper that he got sent to bed at the same time as Bud. He was more than twice his age, after all. Nina said it was okay for him to read for a bit while Bud went to sleep but often he lay awake with his hands behind his head for some time. Since he got his new torch, last birthday, he had taken to making finger puppet shows on the walls, the stories of princes and warriors that his mother used to tell him about, from the place she always called ‘the Indies’. It was the only time he missed his mother, at bedtime; something about telling himself the stories made him hear her voice, occasionally. His shadow shows were always an amalgam of his mother’s tales and events from the cartoons he and Bud were allowed to go to on Saturdays at the Variety picture house for nine cents apiece, although he didn’t think the original Arjuna had had a space rocket.

That particular evening, Harper was doing a puppet show for himself with the torch laid horizontally on top of books piled on his bedside table. Across the room, Bud was asleep, curled up turned away from him, the small hillock of his back exposed where his quilt had slipped down. Then Harper heard voices from across the landing.

Bored of his own puppet show — Arjuna always won, of course — he crept out of bed and went out onto the landing. The door to Poppa and Nina’s room was not quite closed.

‘C’mon,’ he heard Nina say. ‘They’re growing boys, especially Nicolaas, a few days is all I’m asking.’

‘I can see they’re growing.’ Poppa sounded disgruntled but not annoyed. He sounded like a man who had already lost the argument. ‘Seems like they’re doing just fine to me.’

‘He just wants to feel like a normal boy, you know, in a family, doing things that families do.’

‘That’s true enough, honey, but how many black families do you know get out in all that “fresh air” you talk about?’

‘You saying fresh air is just for white people?’

‘I’m saying fresh air costs money. How many families you know. .’

Nina’s voice rose. ‘I’m not talking about the families we know, I’m talking about ours. You telling me you’re scared of the looks we going to get from whitefolks on a path through a forest? After you stand up in front of judges?’

‘You know that’s not true.’ The way Nina and Poppa talked when they were alone was different from the way they talked in front of Harper and Bud, less proper, a kind of in-joke, as if they were about to start laughing and thumping each other any minute.

‘You scared of bears !’

‘No. .’

‘You are , Michael Senior! Shame on you, big man like you and he’s scared of bears !’

He loved that laughing tone they had when they talked to each other like this. He loved nothing better than overhearing it. Eavesdropping was a habit he had got into when Michael and his mother were around and it had proved a habit hard to break — but when he eavesdropped on Nina and Poppa, what he heard mostly was them teasing each other.

The door to his room creaked. He looked round. Bud stood there in his pyjamas. Harper lifted a finger to his lips and gave him a stern look to be quiet.

‘I need to pee,’ whispered Bud.

‘Ssshh. .’ said Harper, ‘they’re talking about taking us on holiday.’

Bud’s eyes widened. He crept up behind Harper, shuffling his bare feet silently along the boards so as not to lift them, then stood very close, leaning his head on Bud’s arm.

‘You know, the boys would probably go somewhere for a bit of fun. .’ Poppa’s voice was the tone of a man negotiating the terms of his capitulation. ‘Like the beach, or amusements, you know, throw balls at coconuts, eat sticky stuff. There’s a great big ocean over thataway, you know, goes by the name of the Pacific. You saying you want to go the other direction?’

‘Fresh air, and some education, somewhere they can climb up a mountain and use up some of that energy, camping maybe.’

‘I couldn’t put up a tent, woman, not if my life depended on it.’

‘Bet you those boys could.’

‘I’m just not sure about people like us going to a National Park.’

‘ People like us , huh? People like us? ’ It sounded like Nina had thrown a pillow at Poppa’s head and Poppa had batted it away. ‘The Martins are people like us and they went to see the Carlsbad Caverns.’

‘That’s New Mexico. That’s different.’

‘People down there worse than California.’

‘Well, that’s true.’

It had been Nina’s idea, but when they got to the National Park she discovered that walking uphill all day was not really her thing. And the superintendent of the campsite stuck them in the canvas cabin furthest away from the amenities because, they were all convinced, they were the only non-white family in the whole damn village and Poppa had said, ‘I told you so,’ which had wounded Nina’s pride. And then some Mexican nuns arrived and were put in the canvas cabin next to them and that cheered Nina up no end because, she said, at least she had some women to talk some sense to. And so it happened that that day, it was just the three of them, Poppa, him and Bud, that set off up the mountain path to see the waterfall.

They were all in something of a bad mood, having argued about which way to go at the bottom of the path: it was early and not many people were about. It was incredibly hot. Poppa had said that it was cooler the higher up you got, that the hot air settled in the valley and that all you needed to do was walk up a little bit and then the breezes would blow, but Harper and Bud were unconvinced. ‘I’m only five ,’ Bud moaned, as they stood studying the wooden sign at the bottom of the path. ‘I’m smaller than you and you .’ He was drawing a shape in the dirt with the toe of his shoe. Harper tried to be the good one, lifting his head, breathing in the scented air from the pine trees, but Poppa didn’t notice, just grumbled, ‘Come on boys, Nina says you need fresh air and it’s fresh air you’re going to get. Whether you like it or not.’