Percival Everett - Half an Inch of Water - Stories

Zed didn’t want to, but Norma pressed him and he complied. They stepped through the frigid, falling water, Zed breaking into an unrequested canter to get through quickly. Norma even let out a bit of a yelp. She slapped the horse’s neck and said, “That was bracing, wasn’t it, boy?” She looked up and there was what looked to be a cave, but it wasn’t a cave; there was light at the other side of it. It was a huge hole in the rock wall, big enough to ride through. Again Zed resisted, but she pushed on through the muddy floor and out into a different place altogether. The sky was blue, not slate gray. The air was warm and snow threatened, but no wind blew.

She rode through a meadow filled with fairy trumpets and purple lupines and newly bloomed chickweed. She could see fireweed crowding a slope in the distance. The flowers didn’t make sense altogether, and the chickweed should have been long gone. The meadow was thick with wheatgrass and brome. Zed had noticed the grass as well. Norma stopped and let him drop his head to graze while she surveyed the landscape and the cloudless sky. Then she spotted movement in the brush on a slope. She thought at first it was a mountain lion and then saw it was a dog, a young dog bounding, a German shepherd. The dog came closer, barking, playing. It could have been Zach, the way he looked, the way he crouched and leaped. She dismounted, rested on a knee, and called the dog.

The animal came to her. He couldn’t have been older than two years. She rubbed his ears and the feeling made her happy. He had no collar. “Whose boy are you?” she asked and looked around for the owner. “So, where the hell am I, eh, fella?” she asked the dog. She left Zed standing on his rein and walked with the dog toward a gentle slope. She felt strong, loose, and she gained the crest of the ridge without becoming winded. She looked down at a verdant and amazing valley, a valley she had never seen before, junipers and scrub on the hills, hardwood trees along and between two moderately fast-flowing rivers that became one slowly twisting body. There was a beaver dam on a creek and birds everywhere.

The dog pranced around her. Norma watched the shepherd, listened to his bark, observed the way he slightly favored his left front paw. Just like her Zach. She felt excited and frightened by this. She had watched Zach grow old and die and yet this animal was just like her young pet. She scratched his neck and turned him over and there was a scar on his belly, a scar from when he’d been cut by barbed wire when he was a young pup. Zach. This dog had the same scar. Norma felt dizzy, lost, then happy. She stood, turned, and looked down at Zed grazing.

Her mind didn’t exactly race, but it made many stops. She was lost, that much she accepted. The weather was so very different here. She understood that there were often microclimates that were observably different from adjacent ones, but this was so much more. The dog was remarkably similar to her Zach, but it couldn’t be him. But it was him. And if it was him, then where was she? If it was Zach, then what else was possible? She stared back at the rivers below. The jagged white of the fast water appeared to spell something, but of course it didn’t. Zach was dead. Zach was dead, she kept telling herself. But this dog had Zach’s scar. What else was here? She slipped out of her jacket, sat, and the dog lay down beside her.

She found herself searching the air for a familiar scent, any familiar scent. There was none. She stared. She listened. She imagined trout in the water below her. She imagined the whistling of her husband as he fished. She imagined the footfalls of her daughter coming up the hill behind her. She tried to smell her. Somehow she knew that if she smelled her child, she would be real. She put her face to the dog and sniffed. She couldn’t tell if he smelled like Zach.

Time was getting away from her. The sheriff had the helicopter up now. Neighbors were no doubt on horseback searching for her. Braden was pacing the yard, useless to do anything else. Then it occurred to her that the light was not changing, the sun was where it had been when she first rode into this place. She was frightened suddenly, but then the feeling was gone and she was empty, but not really, as she expected something, someone. She was ashamed to think it, so she said her daughter’s name. “Nathalie.” She said her husband’s name. “Howard.” No scents followed the breeze to her. No whistling, no singing, no whispering, no footfalls. But the dog was here. Zach was here.

Norma looked down at Zed and at the way they had come in. The horse whinnied and stepped nervously. Norma stood and the dog lay still and remained still while she walked down the slope to the meadow. The dog raised only his head as she peered up at him from Zed’s side. She checked the cinch and mounted. She sat there for a few minutes, then turned the horse and headed back.

She found the gap in the wall and rode through and came out under the falls, the water shockingly cold, to find it snowing, to find the air frigid, the sky a steel gray. From the falls she knew the general way home, though she still considered herself lost. She rode for nearly an hour, when above the trees she heard the distant chopping of a helicopter. The noise grew closer but there was no way she could be seen in the dense forest. The snow fell harder and her bones complained. What she realized was that she was disoriented, not simply because she was lost, but because she could not reasonably process where she had just found herself. In fact, the awareness of her feeling adrift made her feel more so.

She came to a clearing and someone called to her. A man’s voice, hoarse with the cold air and concern, found her and she held up.

“Norma!” It was Dan Hilton.

“Hey there, Dan,” she said. “I suppose I’ve gotten a lot of people worried. I’m a little cold.”

“Where’s your coat?” he asked. He had his parka quickly off and put around the old woman.

“I don’t know,” she said. She hadn’t realized she’d forgotten it at the lake. All of a sudden her disorientation was real and profound.

Dan spoke into his two-way radio, but Norma didn’t hear any of what he was saying. “Let’s get you home,” he said to her. “You okay to ride or you want me to lead him?”

“I’m okay. Let’s go.”

Norma followed the man down a familiar ravine, up over a ridge, and then she was looking down at her pastures. The snow was falling heavily. In the yard were parked a paramedic’s vehicle, a sheriff’s car, and Braden’s Nissan. Pat Hilton and her daughter were there also.

Braden ran out to meet her. “Mrs. Snow, are you all right?” He turned to Dan. “Mr. Hilton, is she okay?”

“I think so,” Dan said.

In the yard, the medic and the sheriff’s deputy helped her down from the saddle. “Easy does it,” the medic said.

Pat hovered close. “You’re going to be fine, dear,” she said. “Just fine. We’ll take good care of you.”

Norma looked past Pat at her daughter, standing near the medic’s truck with her arms folded across her chest.

“You gave us a scare, Mrs. Snow,” the deputy said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, absently.

“Well, let’s get you in the house,” the medic said.

Inside, the medic took off his gloves and gently felt Norma’s face and neck. He checked her pulse, took her temperature, and measured her blood pressure. Pat brought in a cup of tea.

“That’s good,” the medic said. “She’s cold. Suffered a bit of exposure out there. Another blanket, too.”

“I’ll get one,” Pat said.

“I need to ask you some questions, Mrs. Snow, okay?”

Norma nodded.

“Do you know who I am?”

Norma studied the man’s face for a long second. “Yes, you’re the boy who rode the goat.”