Read Up Through the Water for Free Online Page B

ribbon of highway and then to Lila. He knew an injured horse would be shot.
    “Calm down,” she said. The pony blinked a watery eye. “Once it gets light, the birds will eat its eyes out.” The animal's breath steadied. Eddie's legs felt shaky, the air around him throbbed.
    “Get the flashlight. We'll drag it to the water.”
    Eddie walked toward the hum of light. He wanted to run hard toward the beach and look back to see the horse sprout wings—thick, feathery, and muscular as a duck's—and fly toward the stars. The faded lights of the sky reminded him of the ovals and longer-shaped cuts that scattered his mother's face—there was something about those cuts, they seemed to hold a charged and tingling energy. And there was something also around the pony that reminded Eddie of his mother. Both threw the same invisible hurt and wobbly arrows. His mother's eye paired, in his head, with the pony's.
    “Get over here,” Lila yelled to him. He cleared the fence, grabbed the light, then ran back. “Take your shirt off,” she said and he pulled the T-shirt over his head. She asked him to hold the light as she tied the shirt around the horse's neck. A thick line of blood ran from the animal's ear. “You pull and I'll push from behind.”
    The horse made horrible rattling sounds. Its fur scraped in the mud. It thrashed its unhurt leg and swung its head and then grew tired and still, its slack weight like a rock.
    During these moments they stopped to rest. Lila stroked its neck and hummed as if putting the pony to sleep. But eventually it would buckle and try to push itself up with its head. Right before the shore, the pony gave a long gravelly moan that made Eddie feel sick. Finally, after what seemed like an hour, the horse's head touched water and its thick tongue lapped.
    Their tennis shoes squelched on the shelves and rolls of the seafloor. Lila told him to stop. He pulled on the loose arm of the shirt. The water was at his chest. He was not the greatest swimmer and was worried the horse might somehow pin him under. “Put your hands on its shoulders and stay clear of the back legs,” Lila said and moved slowly through the water like a moonwalker. She bent her head down to whisper into the horse's ear.
    At first the pony was quieted by the sensation of weightlessness, but then it began to twist, its front leg smacking Eddie's arm as the animal tried desperately to get some footing. Lila carefully untied the T-shirt and with both hands pushed the horse's head underwater. She tipped her face up to the stars. The horse twitched and the water splashed high. Bubbles rolled from its nostrils. Lila closed her eyes and Eddie, with his arms around its belly, tried to keep the pony steady. A few bubbles rose.
    “It's almost dead,” Lila whispered, loosening her hand and testing the water above the horse's face. The body slackened. She moved away, dipped her head under the sea, and put a hand to her wet hair.
    Eddie let the horse go. It sank down a little, the tide moved it. Blood from the cut leg swirled thick and greasy around him. Lila was waiting in the tall swamp grass. Her features were hazy. She seemed somehow taller and Eddie felt almost afraid. But he recognized then the familiar cadence of her breath above the movement of the water and the birds’ voices.
    Ahead, a slow green light nudged against the shore. He walked toward it and leaned down. Lila's hand caught his. “They're worms,” she said, poking one with a dry blade of grass. “And they can crawl under your skin.”
    *  *  *
    The next day Eddie shot baskets on the cement court in front of the island school. From each point he shot a couple, then moved just a half step, paralleled his hands, flipped his wrist, and tossed the old leather ball. He was barefoot and each jump scratched his feet. They were not as tender as they had been the first shoeless days of summer, but not as rawhide hard as his mother's—pebbles stuck as he bounced.
    With each shot he