Louise Doughty - Black Water

‘Well, look at that,’ said Poppa. ‘Perfect.’

From somewhere upriver, they could hear voices, the people at the official viewing point, out of sight amongst the trees: but here, they had their own private spot, a clear pool and total privacy. It had been worth climbing that more difficult path.

‘Can we get our clothes wet?’ Harper asked. It was going to be difficult not to if they stopped for their sandwiches here.

‘Sure,’ Poppa said, ‘let’s take our shoes off. It’ll all dry soon enough back at the camp.’

It was strange to think how hot it was down in the valley below, with the cool damp air up here: the relief of it. Odd to think they would be descending into such heat on the way back. He thought about how, when you were hot, you couldn’t imagine ever being cold again: and vice versa. Some things could only be felt, not imagined.

The rock was too wet to sit on so they perched on boulders at the edge, each on their separate one, grinning at each other while they ate their sandwiches. Bud finished first, as usual, leaving his crusts; Poppa wheeled a large hand, ‘Bring them on over here, Bud.’ When he had handed his crusts over, Bud said, ‘Can I go paddle in that pool?’

‘You crazy?’ scoffed Harper. ‘That water will be freezing. That’s ice melt, Bud.’

Poppa frowned.

‘ Please! ’ said Bud, putting his head on one side, smiling. It annoyed the hell out of Harper when Bud did that. Bud was five, he wasn’t a baby any more — but he sure knew how to behave like one when he wanted his own way. He could twist Poppa round his little finger with that look.

‘You’ll have to take everything off excepting your underpants,’ Poppa said.

Bud jumped up and down a couple of times, then began to undress.

‘He’s crazy,’ Harper commented, although in fact, the thought of dabbling his feet in that glassy water had already occurred to him. He couldn’t do it now, though, or Bud would say, ‘You’re copying me.’

Bud passed Poppa his T-shirt and his shorts and Poppa hung them on the twig of a bush behind him. Then he put on his stern voice, ‘Now listen, no swimming , I mean it. You get in that pool and paddle, stay close to the bank here, that’s it, okay? Two minutes.’ In the distance, through the trees, Harper could hear some people on the official viewing platform laughing and calling out to each other, taking photographs, perhaps.

Bud dipped a toe in the water and then shrieked, pulling his elbows into his torso and screwing up his face. ‘It’s cold !’

‘Told ya,’ Harper said. He was still sitting on his rock, wishing there was another sandwich and thinking how the littlest one in a family got to do all the cute stuff, while he had to be grown-up and responsible. ‘Chicken!’ he called out, as Bud hopped from foot to foot.

‘Am not!’ Bud called back.

‘I’d get in before you fall in dancing round like that,’ Poppa said, laughing.

Gingerly, Bud stepped in. The pool was very shallow — when he stood upright it only came halfway up his thighs. He kept his arms bent and elbows tucked in tight.

‘Come on out, Bud,’ said Poppa, smiling, ‘it’s too cold. Let’s dry you off with my handkerchief.’

‘You can’t do much in that,’ said Harper, and heard in his own voice a mean edge. ‘It’s too shallow to float in even.’

Goaded, Bud dropped down, bending his knees, and leant back, and then there he was in the pool, arms and legs extended, floating on the surface in a starfish shape, and Poppa called, ‘Whoo-hoo!’ and clapped a couple of times and Harper waited for Bud to jump up shivering but he stayed in the starfish shape, eyes clenched tight shut, face turned up to the sky, and said, ‘Whoa. .’ in satisfaction at his own bravery.

Show-off , Harper thought. I give him ten seconds maximum .

Still lying flat, Bud began to turn. He was on his back in the water, spread out, eyes closed, arms and legs motionless: but even though he wasn’t moving any part of his body, he began to wheel in the water. Beneath the still surface of the shallow pool, there was a current, an invisible force turning Bud’s small floating body. As his brother began to spin, Harper jumped to his feet at the same time as Poppa and they both called out and Bud opened his eyes, raised his head and looked at them, just as the eddy at the edge of the pool took him, tumbled him, pulled him to the left. He made one attempt to stand, getting to his feet so quickly that he slipped immediately on the wet rocks. He was down again, then gone.

In the terrible and silent months that followed, the pictures that came into Harper’s head when he lay awake in his bed at night, eyes wide open in the dark, were this: the sunlight striking the water, how it was clear as glass; Bud’s arms and legs outstretched in a starfish pose and how it seemed that he began to turn and spin in the river so very slowly at first, even though everything had happened so quickly; the dreamy look on his face as he turned and drifted and then, all at once, went from a slow turn to spinning in the water as he lifted his small, questioning face at the sound of their cries. The water beyond the pool was still so shallow, no more than thigh height on him, but the current beneath the surface so strong that when he tried to stand it took his feet from under him in an instant.

As Bud disappeared around the corner towards the fall, pulled from sight, Harper looked at Poppa for confirmation that what he thought was happening was not happening, and that was the worst moment of all: the look on Poppa’s face as he stared after Bud, the knowledge that the fissure that had opened in his head had opened in Poppa’s head too. Something so horrible it could not even be imagined had actually happened, right before their eyes. The edge of the fall was a few feet away, just out of sight. While they were still trying to believe the unbelievable, Bud was already dead.

It was four months on from that afternoon, when their house was still cloaked in grief, that the letter came from Holland, the pale blue envelope with the blue and red flashes on the edge, wafer-thin like an old man’s skin, his mother’s spidery and precise hand, addressed to Michael Luther Senior.

It was a Saturday so he was home — he didn’t go to the cartoon shows at the Variety any more, not on his own. He had collected the letter from the mailbox himself. When he handed it to Nina, she put it on the kitchen counter and said lightly, ‘Let’s wait till your grandfather is home, shall we?’

‘Why is it to him?’ he asked, looking past Nina at the letter where it lay.

‘I really need some help with these greens.’ It was only later that he realised she had been playing for time.

Poppa arrived back about an hour later, carrying some fresh rolls from Balian’s. He had been calling in on a neighbour who needed some advice: lots of people wanted free advice from Poppa. The neighbour lived in a big house in Sugar Hill and while they had lunch Poppa talked about how this neighbour had not one but two white maids and how a famous musician lived next to him — the conversation was low-key, as it always was since that day. Harper felt much older, these days — old enough, in any case, to recognise that normality was effortful for all of them. It was only as Poppa was patting his lips with his napkin that Nina, who had scarcely spoken a word throughout the meal, rose, turned to the counter-top where the letter lay and held it up.

Poppa stared at the letter in Nina’s hand, and then he stared at Nina, and Nina stared right back.

‘It’s from my mother. .’ Harper announced, unnecessarily. ‘We haven’t opened it.’

Poppa said, calmly, his gaze still locked with Nina’s, ‘Nicolaas, if you’ve finished, you can go and play with Jimmy.’