"Scott Thomas - Marcy Waters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thomas Scott)

Marcy Waters - a short story by Scott Thomas



Marcy Waters
a short story by Scott Thomas

Massachusetts -- 1859
Marcy Waters. How I remember her now, standing there by the banks of the
river, with the summer light warm on the current of eastbound water and in
the swift current of blood beneath her white skin. She lifted her skirt to
show me where the briars had bit at her ankles and she laughed, tossing
her long red hair, squinting her summer-green eyes.
We were both just ten, both stumbling between the inner world of dreams
and the outer world with its many colors and its slow days and the
confusing ache of impatience.
If there were indeed a world beyond our small New England town, it was
only in pictures and others people's words. We knew the shapes of the
seasons well enough, though... the cold-quilted hours of snow, the rusted
glory of apple-fat autumn, spring like a garden of colored ghosts and
summers that seemed many, the hot days stitched together by lightning.
Somewhere on a hill, east of a great swamp -- full of swallowing shadows
-- we sat and told stories of Indian spirits that moved like deer. Marcy
swore she saw one once when rain flew down from Canada and geese in great
numbers fidgeted on old John Whitney's fields. Crouched as a spider and
swift as a fox, it flitted in and out of wet shadows.
Another time, so she had me believe, they were in the trees about her
house, with owls. I told her she was a liar and she cried and when next we
spoke, she showed me a box made of strange grey wood. There were patterns
in the grain of wood, like owls or skulls or soft watery things that only
walk this earth in dreams.
She found it in May, when John Whitney died in that queer accident. It was
behind the wood pile where he'd been chopping. She hid it all summer, when
blackberries peered out from their thorny vines and climbed crazily over
cool stone walls. It was only when September brought soft rain and
squirrels that she dug it out from the hollow log where it had sheltered.
Only then did she hear the birds inside, and feel their eager flutters,
unborn against the wood.
Dear Marcy. Her heart was too large and soft a target for the world and a
boy with a tongue like mine. It was a trick, I said -- birds could not
live in a box for as long as she claimed. Well that had her crying for
sure. Open it, I said.
No, no, not here, she said; it had to be opened at the Indians' graves.
She ran with her prize. I followed, over the hill with the river below and
sunlight bright on her dress and her hair an envy of every autumn. I heard
her call out when she dropped the box and it went tumbling down the hill
and I heard the birds in the box screeching and the hiss of the fast dark
water.

Marcy Waters kissed me because the moon was pale and wandering and the