Read Dark Water Rising for Free Online Page A

feeling the achy tightness that twelve hours’ labor brings when you’re not used to it. Tomorrow I’d work that soreness out, but I didn’t see how I could work away the bitterness inside me if Papa kept adding to it every day.
    The three Judson brothers arrived early Wednesday wearing black mourning bands around their shirt-sleeves. One glance and I knew Frank and Charlie were twins—same nose, same crooked teeth, same cowlick in their identical brown hair. They looked to be about twenty, some years younger than their brother.
    Zachary Judson already had the markings of a working carpenter—that leathery brown skin with the tiny hatch lines that would eventually deepen, like mud cracking under a scorching sun. I’d seen it happen to Papa and knew that it was in my future as well.
    Mr. Farrell introduced me to the Judson boys, and after I’d offered my condolences, he put me and Josiah to work with Zach.
    I liked Zach right off, and I think Josiah did, too. The man didn’t say much, but when he did, I heard a slow easiness behind his words. I followed on his heels all morning, doing whatever he asked, but always watching. There was something almost mystifying in the way he rested saw and nail against lumber—just for a second—like he was listening, like the wood had whispered something to him I couldn’t quite hear.
    After our noon meal, I began to notice a connection between the three of us, an invisible rhythm that bound us one to the other. We danced to music only we could hear. One set of hands. A single purpose.
    I was startled later to see the sun sinking below the tree line. Like chickens picking off june bugs, we’d finished one job after another, and the hours had disappeared clean and without notice. I looked back, surprised at what we’d accomplished. I think Mr. Farrell was, too.
    “Well, I swan,” he said, pushing his straw hat back off his forehead, “if you three don’t make a dang good team.” He walked off with a grin on his face, shaking his head. “Bright and early tomorrow, boys,” he hollered over his shoulder. “Bright and early.”
    I helped put away the lumber and tools, then saidmy good-byes. Zach nodded and headed north with his brothers. They’d said very little about themselves, but Henry had already told me about their mama passing last summer. And now their daddy was gone, too, leaving Zach with eight younger brothers and sisters to worry over. Curious about where he lived, I watched him till he turned east on Avenue P, then hurried after Josiah. He’d already lit out for the beach, like yesterday.
    This time, I didn’t talk much, at least not at first. I didn’t have any idea where Josiah’s thoughts were, but mine were a jumble of captured moments that played and replayed in my head. And all of them had to do with Zach and the way he worked. But even so, it wasn’t long before I remembered that I still didn’t know anything about him. Like yesterday, he’d been keeping a half pace behind me, which made talking difficult, so I slowed down and matched my steps with his. Confusion flickered across his face, and I saw a definite hesitation in his gait, but he kept to my pace.
    “I was wondering,” I said to him. “Do you live with your parents?”
    “No, sir. I lives with my granddaddy.”
    “Just the two of you?”
    “Yessir.”
    “Oh.”
    He never raised his eyes to look at me.
    “Well, I noticed that you turned down the alleybehind my uncle’s house yesterday. Maybe you know him? Nathan Braeden?”
    He tossed me a quick glance. “Yessir, I knows Mister Braeden. My granddaddy works for ’im.”
    “Your grandfather is Ezra?”
    “Yessir.”
    I grinned at him. “I stayed at my uncle’s house just this past Friday. Ezra helped us get moved into our rental the next morning.”
    “I knows. Satdy was my first workday or I woulda hepped. It were Mister Braeden that got me my job.”
    I laughed. “He got me my job, too.”
    Josiah never looked me in the