*Recently I was reminded of the stories of Flannery O'Connor, and I remembered that I'd written a kind of tribute to her and her short story "The River" a few years ago. Most of her stories require work of the reader; "The River" is no exception. It burned several images upon my mind as I read and reread it, and those images manifested in some of my own characters. Mrs. Perkins hails from her own short story, but her first appearance is in a novel I'm still working on. Harold comes from the same novel, and the following story takes place years before he makes his vows to become a priest. They both live on the street named Eldorado.
Back Porch River
The old book on Mrs. Perkins's thighs weighed on her; the pages had yellowed years prior, yet somehow it was new to her tonight and pressed down upon her. It felt alive and warm to her legs as the words and images swirled through her mind. And it was a welcome warmth, for she sat on her back porch under a clear autumn sky. She liked to read this way, the kitchen light behind her as the only light, the distant stars overhead, the night's chill rising from her feet to her legs to be stopped at her lap. Her thin shawl and thick book kept the cold from her.
The last few years Mrs. Perkins had avoided stories with a vigilance known only to schoolboys wriggling in their desks, but the books had crept in upon her and now took a deep place within. She hadn't been able to rid herself of the library that had belonged to her husband, and slowly it had dragged her into a foreign joy.
So it was that she began to seek the unexpected. Of course, as she remembered from old teachers, stories had to deal in unrealities and improbabilities. The beat of her heart and the throb in her veins warned of other things, however, things that connected her on this porch with the contents of these pages.
Carefully, her fingers traced the edges of her lips, and for a moment she traveled elsewhere. The story she finished held up its scenes for her: an unkempt apartment, a lone boy, a red river. Yet her own house and her own porch interrupted and pushed in upon her imagination, and in a memory that became a vision, she watched herself wait for the first sight of the neighboring boys. It was as though she walked toward herself, and she saw her own eyes and she knew her own tortured heart. And it was there, on the back porch with the weight on her legs, that she wept for herself.
A strand of grey hair broke from the bun at the back of her head; it swam on the same breeze that lifted the messengers of trees up and down Eldorado, and it touched her closed eyes. She smiled, and as her eyelids struggled to open against her tears, a new and blurry sight replaced her vision. The one hair looked many times its size through the water stuck to her lashes. Grey upon grey danced and touched and spun away and came to stick for a moment on the wet, then spun away again upon the wind.
And the weight on her lap told her what it was, what was meant by the vision and the grey mercy. The truth of it was on her tongue. She began to mouth the words, her eyes seeing grey then blinking shut, until the sound came. Though she had cried, her throat showed no sign of it, but was clear. "I would have perished in my affliction."
The wind died. A moment of calm fell upon her head, upon her hands and lap.
And then a shout. A voice pierced the night; Harold -- she knew the boy immediately -- cried out one liquid word, "Paul!" He repeated the name time and again as he moved closer to Mrs. Perkins, and she couldn't help but think of peacocks and their wail.
"Paul!" Harold crashed over the low back fence, his air knocked from his chest by the limestone path. He remained where he fell and sucked for breath.
Mrs. Perkins sat and waited. Like the vision, like the color at her eyes, the weight of the pages revealed Harold to her. And again she saw a wide red river, and the tears were not for herself, but for the one who reached from the story, for Bevel. And for the boy just off the porch.
"That tricked me, Paul." Harold moaned but didn't move.
Yes, and for the things that choked them and threatened their lives. That last image from the story of little Henry who wanted to be called Bevel as he plunged with joy into the water, it took Mrs. Perkins's mind whole. There, in the water, drowning but not with a fight.
"Paul -- " Harold's voice brought her back and set her on the porch, her ears still tingling with the sound of the rushing river. "Paul, you are a wizard." For a moment Harold's tongue and lips stuck on the "zz," and he giggled to the night.
Mrs. Perkins waited as though her feet were called back to the bank, to the clay, to watch Bevel. But Harold talked.
"I'm still your friend, wizzzzzard, but shrinking a fence to trip me up -- and I have no shoes!" Harold sat up and inspected his loose socks. "I've been thieved. The bushes on Mrs. P's corner. They took them." Which was half true. An hour before, when his head pulled him places he didn't want to go, he'd sat in the soft evergreen bushes to make the world sit still. "No, Paul, I remember now. I napped. Yes. I napped in the bush. You know I can't sleep with shoes on."
"Harold," Mrs. Perkins reached out over the flowing water. "Harold, come sit by me." Yet, how was it? She saw both boys now -- Bevel as the river pulled him away and down, and Harold as he moved just below her in the shadows. Harold's head and eyes popped up to look at Mrs. Perkins. The kitchen light glowed yellow.
"Wizard. You are a true wizard, Paul." Harold staggered to his feet, all the while mumbling about shapeshifters and witches.
"Come up and sit still, Harold."
"I'm still. The world. It spins." Finally, after he held his hands out on the air in front of him, then to the side, he walked up the porch steps to the seat next to Mrs. Perkins. "And as soon as that chair slows down, I'll sit."
And so they talked, Mrs. Perkins as she saw double -- the river in the silences and Harold when either of them spoke -- and Harold as he stood with Mrs. Perkins at his left, the dancing chair in front of him.
"Harold, I'm not Paul -- you're drunk."
"You made the world buck just then, Paul. Don't." Harold put his arms out again, and he played at surfing the porch planks.
"Harold, I'm Mrs. Perkins." Would the weight crush her legs? Or the river pull them both under? She found the arms of her chair and held to them. They became a touchstone for her -- "You're drunk, and I'm Mrs. Perkins, not Paul" -- her fingernails dug into the wood and shot a splinter beneath, into the flesh. She lost her breath so that Harold had time to think and answer.
"An interesting hypo, hypoth -- hypothth -- "
"Hypothesis." Mrs. Perkins's eyes closed, for she began to realize her backyard was flooding, and in order to save Harold, she had to focus. "Harold, sit. Thank you."
Harold rubbed his head and face. "That is better. But you are strong, Paul." He leaned forward to clear the blur and to see Paul. "No need to push."
"Listen. Harold, do you hear the water rising? Don't get up, you ass, just -- just listen." Her eyes were sealed shut, her hand out to find Harold. "Do you hear it?"
"Paul, if you are Mrs. Perkins, your French is not excused." Harold sat back and folded his arms, his hair tangled with branchlets and dirt, his face puckered in scorn. He whispered, "You are absurd, little man."
Mrs. Perkins had to lean against her chair and breathe. She found that words would not form in her mind, for the river lapped at and sprayed the porch; it chased her thoughts, and as Harold watched, she bowed her head.
"You know, Paul, when you are done with this game, I will talk to your face. Plain talk, Paul. You need plain words for your wizard mind."
Mrs. Perkins heard Harold, but it was as one who tried to hear from underwater. She gasped.
"Plain. Talk." He took care to emphasize the n and k.
"Keep -- " but she couldn't finish. The water's sound swamped her head.
"This is becoming worrisome, little Paul. Keep, keep," and he repeated the word over and over, a mock expression of concern on his mouth.
Harold's voice allowed her to escape for just long enough to attack him; she flew from her seat, the book in her hand, and grabbed a handful of his hair. He tried to yell, but only gagged and reached up to free himself from her grip. A moment more and he would have succeeded, which she knew, so she swung her arm wildly and hit him with the open book. The impact made a deep thud on his jaw. Dirt and sticks exploded onto the wooden floor of the porch. All was stilled.
Mrs. Perkins stood with a fistful of Harold's hair that had ripped from his scalp. The pages of the book were unaffected by the assault, and now they flapped and murmured in a slight breeze.
"Paul, you know I have to destroy you now," Harold said. His hand covered the spot that had been hit, and he still looked away and down.
Mrs. Perkins's chest rose and fell, pushing heavy puffs of air through her nose. Her arm brought the book up and back, ready to swing again.
Just as Harold thought he would spring from his chair, he noticed the nylon-clad legs and the house slippers in front of him. He hesitated. "Huh?" His eyes snapped to hers. "Mrs. Perkins?"
She let her arm fall; the pages slapped her thigh, bent the opposite direction, and rested.
"Mrs. Perkins," Harold's eyes widened, "what are you doing here?"
She took several deep breaths. "This," she exhaled, "is my porch." And she would have continued to explain the situation -- that he was drunk, and the river currently filling her yard would sweep them away if they didn't hurry inside -- when she realized two things: Harold had fallen asleep with his face in his hand and a crooked half-grin frozen across the cheek pointing to the sky, and the river was gone.
Her empty hand shook, and the other squeezed the cover and pages until the tips of her fingers whitened. She walked to the edge of the porch; the kitchen light fell on the grass below, and it looked stiff like metal. Slowly, Mrs. Perkins sat down on the steps that led to the garden. From there she could hear Harold's sleeping noises and the occasional swish of the breeze through the chrysanthemums. Both hands gathered the book closer and pressed it to her chest.
Night carried on with its business. Stars looked on and trees prepared their messengers as long as Mrs. Perkins sat still. Yet when she stirred hours later, all in sight of her hushed. All took note, and the faintest water sounds trickled on the air.
It was like this:
Mrs. Perkins sat under the yellow light and read -- at first so the words were only mumbled from her lips. She knew the story. She knew Bevel's wet end. And yet on she read, and the words transformed her mind into a place for the characters to dwell.
It was the middle of the story when she began to read louder. Harold stirred and spoke from a dream, but Mrs. Perkins read on without noticing. And the middle was passed with the end rising, looming ahead.
Bevel woke alone though the apartment contained his father and mother. He ate what he could find. Then, as Mrs. Perkins knew, he wanted what was in the river. The preacher had stood in the midst of it the day before and said the way to the Kingdom was under the red water. Bevel didn't know of God's Kingdom, but an assurance grew within, and then he walked the path that took him out of the city and to the open place by the riverbank. That's where he would go in.
Mrs. Perkins paused; she noticed a change in Harold's breathing. Now she knew he listened, but she didn't look up. Just as she began to read once more, but before her voice became the only sound, she heard the trickle again and realized that it had grown.
And now Bevel was in, the dread that should have been his covered over in peace. He let the river take him.
Mrs. Perkins closed the book and said, "I woke you."
Harold saw that she cried. "What were you reading?"
"A story about a little boy." She wiped her cheeks under her eyes and turned toward the kitchen light so her face shined in the darkness.
"Oh, just a story?" Harold tried to take his gaze away from her, but found it difficult.
"Just." She said the word as though by saying it she rid herself of its filth.
Harold realized a foreign sound grew below the wooden boards at his feet, and yet he looked at her; the light bathed her, he thought, and he was conscious of the fact that he'd been drunk in her presence.
"Harold, I'm quite sure I've missed a world of meaning in this story. Yet every time I read it, I end in tears." She spoke with a stillness that was impossible; Harold tired to match it. "The first time I only wept because the boy doesn't know he'll die. The second time because I couldn't save him. But now -- now I weep because the man who tried to find the boy in the water, the only one who saw him go under, didn't know it wasn't the boy who needed to be rescued."
"Who was he?" Harold blurted when she paused. He surprised himself, but she was unmoved.
"Mr. Paradise." And now her hand searched the worn cover, and a shallow sigh escaped her mouth. "So I cry for the irony of it, Harold."
He nodded, but slightly so he wondered if he'd actually nodded at all.
"Will you hear it again? All the way through?"
"Yes. Please. And Mrs. Perkins? Sorry about, well, sorry about tonight."
"Harold, I've watched you and your friends grow up. You're forgiven. And know not much shocks me anymore." She flipped to the beginning of the story, sniffed once, and said, "Now listen."
They had the story once more.
Harold shifted in his seat twice, once at the telling of Bevel's new understanding of the man in a sheet sawing a board in a picture, and once toward the end when he knew what Bevel was after.
Soon, he realized he either didn't hear Mrs. Perkins finish the story, or she stopped short, and the absence of her voice brought Harold away from the red clay pasture and riverside. But he held his tongue, for now he heard soft beckoning behind and below his chair. She listened, too -- Harold saw in her face that she listened with expectancy.
"Was that always there?" Harold asked the question without turning away from her. He watched her face.
"Was what always there?"
"Your fountain. I didn't notice the water sounds before."
Not unkindly she replied, "You didn't notice much before, Harold."
In days past, he would have looked away and found a reason to go at such words, but he saw at once she didn't mean it as a judgement, or at least he saw her more than he felt his shame. "Yes, Mrs. Perkins, I know."
"Harold, before, you knew me as the old neighbor lady. Now, follow me and know me as a mother." She stood beside him, her hand out. Her closeness poured over him and gave him no time to ponder her quickness, for he hadn't noticed that she'd moved.
And he found his own mouth asking, "But the water?" For they stood arm in arm on the first step of the porch, river water leaping at their soles.
"I'm glad you see it, too, Harold." As they stepped into the cold, the red and moving cold, Eldorado welcomed the morning. The sun glanced through the garden and bounced off the river. An amber glow met their eyes, and for a moment they paused to let it warm their faces.
Waist deep chills crept over them as they continued. Harold shivered.
"It's foolish to do, but I can't help but look for Bevel." Mrs. Perkins laughed.
"Mrs. Perkins, you have a river in your backyard." He pulled her back and closer to his side. "I'll look for him, too." The tears in their eyes danced in their smiles and in their joy.
They went under, one after the other -- one to renew her joy, the other to finally find his. And when the current moved through their hair and kissed their foreheads, they heard the Name as though spoken upon them from the river's source.
"It is good for me that I was afflicted..." Mrs. Perkins said.
Harold heard her, and would have heard what followed, but he felt the water's receding and he was distracted; his heart tried to hold on to the moment.
"...that I might learn your statutes." Mrs. Perkins faced the sun with her eyes closed.
But Harold searched for any trace of the river. Light filled the garden, and Mrs. Perkins led him back to the porch.
"Was it there -- the water, was it there?" His face showed lines of doubt.
"Look at your socks, Harold. And my slippers. They're soaked."
Harold saw the dry ground, and he saw his socks and her slippers.
"Don't ask how. Or why, even. Those questions will only haunt you." She still had his hand, and now she squeezed it so he would look her in the eye. "You only need to ask what is now required of you."
He breathed and searched her pupils and the light reflected in them.
"Remember, 'You count.' Now you count."
And they talked of many things through the morning; the sun spied on them like sparks in the waving branches of her trees and hedge. All the while Harold sat with his elbows rested on his knees, his hands folded one into the other. When a chill rose over his spine or his chest fell into his stomach at something she said, his palms would rub his wrists until the calm returned. The beat of his heart regulated, both hands refolded into stillness.
And then Harold stood at the gate with a book under his arm. Panic took him, froze him to the spot, until Mrs. Perkins spoke.
"Here, Harold, I almost forgot." She held out a feather of many colors that twisted gold and green and blue in the light. "I'll be here; I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. We can talk of the river or the peacock lady's stories," her hand covered her throat where it caught and stopped her voice. She turned toward the house.
"Mrs. Perkins?" Harold's free hand went out to her. "Thank you."
She nodded without turning fully back to him, but grabbed his hand and patted it.
When Harold finally walked out of Mrs. Perkins's back yard, his hands rejoiced in the book and the feather, and his socks squished on the limestone and then on the sidewalk. He found himself in the middle of Eldorado where the asphalt was already warm, and yet his feet were cool with the river between his toes. Down the street he spread the water, greeting the quiet houses with the wet slap of his feet.
Carefully, her fingers traced the edges of her lips, and for a moment she traveled elsewhere. The story she finished held up its scenes for her: an unkempt apartment, a lone boy, a red river. Yet her own house and her own porch interrupted and pushed in upon her imagination, and in a memory that became a vision, she watched herself wait for the first sight of the neighboring boys. It was as though she walked toward herself, and she saw her own eyes and she knew her own tortured heart. And it was there, on the back porch with the weight on her legs, that she wept for herself.
A strand of grey hair broke from the bun at the back of her head; it swam on the same breeze that lifted the messengers of trees up and down Eldorado, and it touched her closed eyes. She smiled, and as her eyelids struggled to open against her tears, a new and blurry sight replaced her vision. The one hair looked many times its size through the water stuck to her lashes. Grey upon grey danced and touched and spun away and came to stick for a moment on the wet, then spun away again upon the wind.
And the weight on her lap told her what it was, what was meant by the vision and the grey mercy. The truth of it was on her tongue. She began to mouth the words, her eyes seeing grey then blinking shut, until the sound came. Though she had cried, her throat showed no sign of it, but was clear. "I would have perished in my affliction."
The wind died. A moment of calm fell upon her head, upon her hands and lap.
And then a shout. A voice pierced the night; Harold -- she knew the boy immediately -- cried out one liquid word, "Paul!" He repeated the name time and again as he moved closer to Mrs. Perkins, and she couldn't help but think of peacocks and their wail.
"Paul!" Harold crashed over the low back fence, his air knocked from his chest by the limestone path. He remained where he fell and sucked for breath.
Mrs. Perkins sat and waited. Like the vision, like the color at her eyes, the weight of the pages revealed Harold to her. And again she saw a wide red river, and the tears were not for herself, but for the one who reached from the story, for Bevel. And for the boy just off the porch.
"That tricked me, Paul." Harold moaned but didn't move.
Yes, and for the things that choked them and threatened their lives. That last image from the story of little Henry who wanted to be called Bevel as he plunged with joy into the water, it took Mrs. Perkins's mind whole. There, in the water, drowning but not with a fight.
"Paul -- " Harold's voice brought her back and set her on the porch, her ears still tingling with the sound of the rushing river. "Paul, you are a wizard." For a moment Harold's tongue and lips stuck on the "zz," and he giggled to the night.
Mrs. Perkins waited as though her feet were called back to the bank, to the clay, to watch Bevel. But Harold talked.
"I'm still your friend, wizzzzzard, but shrinking a fence to trip me up -- and I have no shoes!" Harold sat up and inspected his loose socks. "I've been thieved. The bushes on Mrs. P's corner. They took them." Which was half true. An hour before, when his head pulled him places he didn't want to go, he'd sat in the soft evergreen bushes to make the world sit still. "No, Paul, I remember now. I napped. Yes. I napped in the bush. You know I can't sleep with shoes on."
"Harold," Mrs. Perkins reached out over the flowing water. "Harold, come sit by me." Yet, how was it? She saw both boys now -- Bevel as the river pulled him away and down, and Harold as he moved just below her in the shadows. Harold's head and eyes popped up to look at Mrs. Perkins. The kitchen light glowed yellow.
"Wizard. You are a true wizard, Paul." Harold staggered to his feet, all the while mumbling about shapeshifters and witches.
"Come up and sit still, Harold."
"I'm still. The world. It spins." Finally, after he held his hands out on the air in front of him, then to the side, he walked up the porch steps to the seat next to Mrs. Perkins. "And as soon as that chair slows down, I'll sit."
And so they talked, Mrs. Perkins as she saw double -- the river in the silences and Harold when either of them spoke -- and Harold as he stood with Mrs. Perkins at his left, the dancing chair in front of him.
"Harold, I'm not Paul -- you're drunk."
"You made the world buck just then, Paul. Don't." Harold put his arms out again, and he played at surfing the porch planks.
"Harold, I'm Mrs. Perkins." Would the weight crush her legs? Or the river pull them both under? She found the arms of her chair and held to them. They became a touchstone for her -- "You're drunk, and I'm Mrs. Perkins, not Paul" -- her fingernails dug into the wood and shot a splinter beneath, into the flesh. She lost her breath so that Harold had time to think and answer.
"An interesting hypo, hypoth -- hypothth -- "
"Hypothesis." Mrs. Perkins's eyes closed, for she began to realize her backyard was flooding, and in order to save Harold, she had to focus. "Harold, sit. Thank you."
Harold rubbed his head and face. "That is better. But you are strong, Paul." He leaned forward to clear the blur and to see Paul. "No need to push."
"Listen. Harold, do you hear the water rising? Don't get up, you ass, just -- just listen." Her eyes were sealed shut, her hand out to find Harold. "Do you hear it?"
"Paul, if you are Mrs. Perkins, your French is not excused." Harold sat back and folded his arms, his hair tangled with branchlets and dirt, his face puckered in scorn. He whispered, "You are absurd, little man."
Mrs. Perkins had to lean against her chair and breathe. She found that words would not form in her mind, for the river lapped at and sprayed the porch; it chased her thoughts, and as Harold watched, she bowed her head.
"You know, Paul, when you are done with this game, I will talk to your face. Plain talk, Paul. You need plain words for your wizard mind."
Mrs. Perkins heard Harold, but it was as one who tried to hear from underwater. She gasped.
"Plain. Talk." He took care to emphasize the n and k.
"Keep -- " but she couldn't finish. The water's sound swamped her head.
"This is becoming worrisome, little Paul. Keep, keep," and he repeated the word over and over, a mock expression of concern on his mouth.
Harold's voice allowed her to escape for just long enough to attack him; she flew from her seat, the book in her hand, and grabbed a handful of his hair. He tried to yell, but only gagged and reached up to free himself from her grip. A moment more and he would have succeeded, which she knew, so she swung her arm wildly and hit him with the open book. The impact made a deep thud on his jaw. Dirt and sticks exploded onto the wooden floor of the porch. All was stilled.
Mrs. Perkins stood with a fistful of Harold's hair that had ripped from his scalp. The pages of the book were unaffected by the assault, and now they flapped and murmured in a slight breeze.
"Paul, you know I have to destroy you now," Harold said. His hand covered the spot that had been hit, and he still looked away and down.
Mrs. Perkins's chest rose and fell, pushing heavy puffs of air through her nose. Her arm brought the book up and back, ready to swing again.
Just as Harold thought he would spring from his chair, he noticed the nylon-clad legs and the house slippers in front of him. He hesitated. "Huh?" His eyes snapped to hers. "Mrs. Perkins?"
She let her arm fall; the pages slapped her thigh, bent the opposite direction, and rested.
"Mrs. Perkins," Harold's eyes widened, "what are you doing here?"
She took several deep breaths. "This," she exhaled, "is my porch." And she would have continued to explain the situation -- that he was drunk, and the river currently filling her yard would sweep them away if they didn't hurry inside -- when she realized two things: Harold had fallen asleep with his face in his hand and a crooked half-grin frozen across the cheek pointing to the sky, and the river was gone.
Her empty hand shook, and the other squeezed the cover and pages until the tips of her fingers whitened. She walked to the edge of the porch; the kitchen light fell on the grass below, and it looked stiff like metal. Slowly, Mrs. Perkins sat down on the steps that led to the garden. From there she could hear Harold's sleeping noises and the occasional swish of the breeze through the chrysanthemums. Both hands gathered the book closer and pressed it to her chest.
Night carried on with its business. Stars looked on and trees prepared their messengers as long as Mrs. Perkins sat still. Yet when she stirred hours later, all in sight of her hushed. All took note, and the faintest water sounds trickled on the air.
It was like this:
Mrs. Perkins sat under the yellow light and read -- at first so the words were only mumbled from her lips. She knew the story. She knew Bevel's wet end. And yet on she read, and the words transformed her mind into a place for the characters to dwell.
It was the middle of the story when she began to read louder. Harold stirred and spoke from a dream, but Mrs. Perkins read on without noticing. And the middle was passed with the end rising, looming ahead.
Bevel woke alone though the apartment contained his father and mother. He ate what he could find. Then, as Mrs. Perkins knew, he wanted what was in the river. The preacher had stood in the midst of it the day before and said the way to the Kingdom was under the red water. Bevel didn't know of God's Kingdom, but an assurance grew within, and then he walked the path that took him out of the city and to the open place by the riverbank. That's where he would go in.
Mrs. Perkins paused; she noticed a change in Harold's breathing. Now she knew he listened, but she didn't look up. Just as she began to read once more, but before her voice became the only sound, she heard the trickle again and realized that it had grown.
And now Bevel was in, the dread that should have been his covered over in peace. He let the river take him.
Mrs. Perkins closed the book and said, "I woke you."
Harold saw that she cried. "What were you reading?"
"A story about a little boy." She wiped her cheeks under her eyes and turned toward the kitchen light so her face shined in the darkness.
"Oh, just a story?" Harold tried to take his gaze away from her, but found it difficult.
"Just." She said the word as though by saying it she rid herself of its filth.
Harold realized a foreign sound grew below the wooden boards at his feet, and yet he looked at her; the light bathed her, he thought, and he was conscious of the fact that he'd been drunk in her presence.
"Harold, I'm quite sure I've missed a world of meaning in this story. Yet every time I read it, I end in tears." She spoke with a stillness that was impossible; Harold tired to match it. "The first time I only wept because the boy doesn't know he'll die. The second time because I couldn't save him. But now -- now I weep because the man who tried to find the boy in the water, the only one who saw him go under, didn't know it wasn't the boy who needed to be rescued."
"Who was he?" Harold blurted when she paused. He surprised himself, but she was unmoved.
"Mr. Paradise." And now her hand searched the worn cover, and a shallow sigh escaped her mouth. "So I cry for the irony of it, Harold."
He nodded, but slightly so he wondered if he'd actually nodded at all.
"Will you hear it again? All the way through?"
"Yes. Please. And Mrs. Perkins? Sorry about, well, sorry about tonight."
"Harold, I've watched you and your friends grow up. You're forgiven. And know not much shocks me anymore." She flipped to the beginning of the story, sniffed once, and said, "Now listen."
They had the story once more.
Harold shifted in his seat twice, once at the telling of Bevel's new understanding of the man in a sheet sawing a board in a picture, and once toward the end when he knew what Bevel was after.
Soon, he realized he either didn't hear Mrs. Perkins finish the story, or she stopped short, and the absence of her voice brought Harold away from the red clay pasture and riverside. But he held his tongue, for now he heard soft beckoning behind and below his chair. She listened, too -- Harold saw in her face that she listened with expectancy.
"Was that always there?" Harold asked the question without turning away from her. He watched her face.
"Was what always there?"
"Your fountain. I didn't notice the water sounds before."
Not unkindly she replied, "You didn't notice much before, Harold."
In days past, he would have looked away and found a reason to go at such words, but he saw at once she didn't mean it as a judgement, or at least he saw her more than he felt his shame. "Yes, Mrs. Perkins, I know."
"Harold, before, you knew me as the old neighbor lady. Now, follow me and know me as a mother." She stood beside him, her hand out. Her closeness poured over him and gave him no time to ponder her quickness, for he hadn't noticed that she'd moved.
And he found his own mouth asking, "But the water?" For they stood arm in arm on the first step of the porch, river water leaping at their soles.
"I'm glad you see it, too, Harold." As they stepped into the cold, the red and moving cold, Eldorado welcomed the morning. The sun glanced through the garden and bounced off the river. An amber glow met their eyes, and for a moment they paused to let it warm their faces.
Waist deep chills crept over them as they continued. Harold shivered.
"It's foolish to do, but I can't help but look for Bevel." Mrs. Perkins laughed.
"Mrs. Perkins, you have a river in your backyard." He pulled her back and closer to his side. "I'll look for him, too." The tears in their eyes danced in their smiles and in their joy.
They went under, one after the other -- one to renew her joy, the other to finally find his. And when the current moved through their hair and kissed their foreheads, they heard the Name as though spoken upon them from the river's source.
"It is good for me that I was afflicted..." Mrs. Perkins said.
Harold heard her, and would have heard what followed, but he felt the water's receding and he was distracted; his heart tried to hold on to the moment.
"...that I might learn your statutes." Mrs. Perkins faced the sun with her eyes closed.
But Harold searched for any trace of the river. Light filled the garden, and Mrs. Perkins led him back to the porch.
"Was it there -- the water, was it there?" His face showed lines of doubt.
"Look at your socks, Harold. And my slippers. They're soaked."
Harold saw the dry ground, and he saw his socks and her slippers.
"Don't ask how. Or why, even. Those questions will only haunt you." She still had his hand, and now she squeezed it so he would look her in the eye. "You only need to ask what is now required of you."
He breathed and searched her pupils and the light reflected in them.
"Remember, 'You count.' Now you count."
And they talked of many things through the morning; the sun spied on them like sparks in the waving branches of her trees and hedge. All the while Harold sat with his elbows rested on his knees, his hands folded one into the other. When a chill rose over his spine or his chest fell into his stomach at something she said, his palms would rub his wrists until the calm returned. The beat of his heart regulated, both hands refolded into stillness.
And then Harold stood at the gate with a book under his arm. Panic took him, froze him to the spot, until Mrs. Perkins spoke.
"Here, Harold, I almost forgot." She held out a feather of many colors that twisted gold and green and blue in the light. "I'll be here; I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. We can talk of the river or the peacock lady's stories," her hand covered her throat where it caught and stopped her voice. She turned toward the house.
"Mrs. Perkins?" Harold's free hand went out to her. "Thank you."
She nodded without turning fully back to him, but grabbed his hand and patted it.
When Harold finally walked out of Mrs. Perkins's back yard, his hands rejoiced in the book and the feather, and his socks squished on the limestone and then on the sidewalk. He found himself in the middle of Eldorado where the asphalt was already warm, and yet his feet were cool with the river between his toes. Down the street he spread the water, greeting the quiet houses with the wet slap of his feet.
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