Percival Everett - Half an Inch of Water - Stories

He’d been over it all before. “What do you want me to say? I don’t hate her for dying. I don’t resent her. I’m not even sure I miss her anymore.”

The analyst scribbled.

“Want to hear about my dreams?”

“Yes, I would.”

“I don’t have dreams.”

“Everybody dreams,” she said.

“What do you dream about?” Daniel asked.

She scribbled.

“Who are those notes for?” he asked.

“For me.”

“They can’t be very interesting.”

“Why do you say that?”

“What do you find interesting about them?”

“Why don’t you tell me what you did this morning?”

“Look at last week’s notes,” Daniel said. “They will say that I saddled a roan gelding named Puker and went fishing. Just like every Saturday.”

“Are you angry with me? About coming here?”

Daniel smiled at her. “Not at all.”

“Then why the hostility?”

He looked out the window and said, calmly, “Why do you consider this hostility?”

“You don’t seem pleased.”

“Is a person supposed to seem pleased all the time?”

“Of course not.”

“Are you pleased right now?” Daniel asked.

The therapist scribbled.

Daniel walked outside and got into the car with his mother.

“How was that?” she asked, just as she asked every Saturday. She started the Subaru.

“Fine.”

“What did you talk about?”

“We talked about fishing and like that. Why do you keep bringing me here? I know you’re worried that I’m talking about you in there.”

“That’s not true.”

“Well, I’m not.”

At home Daniel cleaned out the tack room like his father requested. He finished sweeping and backed into his father, who had been watching from the doorway. His father looked at the room and nodded.

“You cleaned all the saddles, too?” his father asked.

“Yes sir.”

“That’s too bad. Now you’ve got to do it twice after covering them with dust from your sweeping.”

Daniel looked at the dust floating in the air, lit by the sun through the window. He didn’t say anything, just put the broom aside.

His father also said nothing more, just turned and walked away and out of the barn. Daniel stood, stared at the settling dust, and set to work again on the saddles. He didn’t polish the leather, merely wiped them down, but his father’s point had been made. Daniel didn’t think ahead. He, as always, had the order of things all turned around. He was a fuckup. He tarried in the tack room until he was certain he was late for supper.

He wandered inside to find his plate waiting for him on the kitchen table. His mother was washing the dishes. His father was lighting a fire in the fireplace shared by the kitchen and living room.

“Finished out there?” the man asked.

“All done.” Daniel sat at the table.

“I can heat that up for you, if you want,” his mother said.

“It’s fine, thanks.”

When the fire was burning his parents went into the living room and sat in front of it. Daniel studied their legs through the window of orange light while he chewed on cold chicken. They sat close together, but did not touch.

The next morning, after feeding the horses and cleaning out the water barrels, Daniel saddled Puker and rode to the beaver dam to find that in the night it had broken in several places. He imagined a bear or maybe a wolf — they were around again — but he really had no clue. It changed the stream’s face. He rode back against the current, studying the mud and the foam. He stopped finally and fished a riffle, using a zug bug, which he had always thought of as cheating. He stood midstream and covered the fast water without success. However, the creek’s newness was startling and he found himself leaving Puker to munch grass while he hiked upstream. He spent the better part of the morning being seduced by lie after lie until he remembered the horse. He put his line back on his reel and realized he was not so far now from the pool where his sister had drowned. He had not been back there since her death. He thought he could see the big cottonwood that once held the swinging rope. He thought about his therapist and how this was just the sort of thing she’d want to hear about and he knew he’d never tell her. He’d never tell her, because it didn’t amount to anything. He didn’t feel a thing and had no thought beyond recognition of that place. He turned around and fished his way downstream and to his horse. The horse was standing when he found his way back but was nervous.

“Whoa, boy,” he said to the gelding. He picked up the reins, feeling that at any second the animal might bolt. Daniel looked around, wondered if the bear that had possibly wrecked the beaver dam was still around. He was glad he didn’t have a rifle with him. If there was a bear and he was armed he might do something stupid like shoot it. His father always said that shooting a bear would only make it angry. He mounted the nervous horse and steadied him, rode away slowly. The last thing he wanted to do was drive quickly toward the beast if he happened to be nosing around. He never saw a bear or any sign.

The week passed, as weeks pass, but he did not ride out to fish. His parents thought this odd, were alarmed into silence by it, and his therapist asked him if he was angry, saying at the end, “You know, it’s okay to be angry.” Daniel walked through his days not quite as nervous as a green horse. Finally on a Saturday in mid-October he was saddled and riding to the creek, not to his usual spot, but to the place above, nearer his house, where his sister had drowned. He saw that the last riffle he’d fished was submerged now. The beavers must have repaired their dam and lodge. He had little desire to put his rod together. He sat in his saddle and stared at the water, at the brush on the other side and finally upstream at the big cottonwood. He studied the tree for a couple of minutes, long enough for the time to seem long, and nudged his horse to take a step in that direction.

He dismounted and stepped to the edge of the widest stretch of the stream. The beach there, what little of it was still exposed, was mud and pebbles. The willows on the far side were half-submerged. The water over there moved steadily, but the pool appeared calm, unstirred. A flash caught his eye, a big flash, unmistakably the showing of the underside of a fish, but so large. He thought the suddenness of it might have made him see it as larger, but then it flashed again. The trout was not rising to take food, but it cruised by again. Daniel sat beneath the cottonwood and watched the pool, counted four more appearances of the fish, easily the largest trout he had ever seen in the creek. Still, however, he made no move for his fly rod. He watched until the fish showed no more. He mounted and rode on home.

That night at dinner, Daniel asked his father, “What’s the biggest trout you’ve ever seen in the creek?”

“Years ago I hooked one that was thirteen, maybe fourteen inches, but I didn’t land him. He took off downstream through a riffle.”

“I think I saw one that’s at least twenty inches. I think bigger.”

“I think your eyes are playing tricks on you. That creek can’t support a fish that big.”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“Catch it and bring it to me and I’ll believe you.”

Daniel didn’t like being doubted, but he had to admit that he doubted himself. He looked at his father and didn’t feel anger, but he felt profound disappointment. “I think I will catch it,” he said.

His father laughed. “You do that.”

Daniel ceased paying attention in his classes, enough so that his parents were informed. They could not hide their terror. Daniel understood it. They had lost one child. Daniel realized as his mother and father at once pounced upon him and stayed clear of him that he had never known the circumstances of his sister’s death. And so, one night at dinner, he terrified them further.