November 6, 2006
Chapter 7
(Filed under: The Novel)The alarm clock went off early and Charlie whined. Anwyn sat up, strangely awake, and got out of bed. She pulled her running shorts and a tanktop out of the dresser and quickly got dressed in front of the mirror. She pulled her hair into a pony tail and grabbed light weight jacket.
She went downstairs and Charlie followed. Her dad wasn't up yet, preferring to sleep in a little on a Saturday. Sometimes Anwyn liked to sleep in, and sometimes she liked to get up early. When her and Isabelle stayed with their Grandpa Frank she liked to get up early and have breakfast with her grandfather, listening to his stories.
Anwyn got a drink of water and then grabbed Charlie's leash and headed out the front door. Outside the air was crisp and gave Anwyn's bare legs goose bumps. She bent down next to Charlie and clipped his leash to his collar, gave his chin a scratch. The pale sky began to lighten, the sun just beginning to rise.
Anwyn started off, jogging towards the center of town with Charlie trotting next to her. The morning air was quiet. A dog barked in the distance and Charlie instinctively looked up. Anwyn felt her blood pumping, her muscles slowly waking up. She jogged to the blacktop and turned south towards the river. The post office was dark and quiet. It wouldn't open for another hour. The lights of the gas station hummed and she could see the owner, George, inside, manning the register for any farmers who needed a sixth day of work. But otherwise Richmond was sleeping in this Saturday.
She reached the railroad tracks and picked up her pace, encouraging Charlie to run a little harder. His tongue flapped loose in his mouth, but he was eager to be outside. She passed the south end of town and left Richmond behind, and the horizon opened up completely. You could still see it in town, but once you left all the buildings behind it opened up completely. Stands of trees here and there on the horizon broke up the complete flatness, but they were so far away and low to the ground that it didn't matter. The sky felt enormous, stretching in every direction as far as the eye could see. It seemed easy to believe that the world was flat.
Once Anwyn came across a news article that researchers had decided to compare the topography of Kansas to a pancake and see if it really was flatter than a pancake. Indeed it was. No surprise to anyone who ever stood in central Kansas and felt the flatness in their very being.
She showed the article to her dad and Jack just groaned and got defensive about his home state.
"Well sure, if you look at the relative size of Kansas compared to the height of our hills, that would seem incredibly flat. Look at the small size of a pancake in relation to the little dips and holes in the surface—those would be relatively large since the surface area of the pancake is so small." Yes, Anwyn's father was definitely a computer geek.
"Notice that they don't compare the relative flatness of any other state to a pancake," Jack pointed out. "Unless you've got the Rocky Mountains running through your state I best most states are as flat as a pancake."
But flatness didn't have to be a bad thing. It did something to you. Being able to see for miles and miles in every direction somehow changed your perception. It felt different. Anwyn soaked it up as she ran.
She came to the bridge and kept on going, climbing the height of the bridge and finally slowing to a stop at the peek. Charlie panted beside her. She leaned her hands on the concrete guard rail and looked out over the Arkansas river. The sandy shore below felt inviting and she trotted on across the bridge with Charlie, following the two ruts that curved down to the river.
She squatted in the damp sand next to Charlie, still panting, and breathed heavy herself. The riverbed dipped down below the flat land in a ravine—what you'd expect from a river. The edges were lined with trees and it was the one place where the impending feeling of flatness was minimized. The water rushed and swirled, going over and around sand bars and shallows, downed trees and the occasional piece of junk dumped in the river long ago.
One of the last times they came to Kansas Anwyn remembered coming here. They walked down from Grandpa Miller's house, her and Isabelle and Catalina and Oliver. They were going swimming. At least that was the line Anwyn and Oliver had bought. Swimming in the dirty brown water of the Arkansas didn't appeal to Isabelle or Catalina who were more interested in laying on the sand, soaking up the sun and talking about boys. Both were just entering high school and it was a new obsession.
The older girls spread their towels out in the sand and stripped down to their bathing suits. They both wore two piece bikinis, the kind that would have been impractical for the swimming and playing they would have done only a few years before. But now they felt above such things and planned to be as inactive as possible. Isabelle's suit was white with pink polka-dots, and her skin had been tanned from a summer of doing exactly this. Catalina's suit was solid black.
Oliver and Anwyn stripped to their swimsuits as well, but left their towels and clothe in a wadded pile on the shore and ran for the water. It was a dry summer day in Kansas, a day where the heat just surrounded you, and neither one could imagine wanting to lie around in the sun. They splashed in and went under and came up soaked and laughing. They ran to a sandbar and found a place deep enough to jump in and went one after the other jumping and shrieking and jumping again.
They had been swimming for a while when Oliver noticed someone on the bridge. He was looking down and watching quietly, staring at the girls and paying little attention to Oliver and Anwyn. Oliver pointed the observer out to Anwyn and the two watched him. They swam to the far side of the river and then came closer and closer to the bridge, looking up at the stranger.
He wore a dirty cap and jeans and after a few minutes summoned up his courage to walk down to the river and confront the two sun bathing girls who had just happened to position themselves within perfect view of the bridge, as if on purpose.
Anwyn and Oliver were under the bridge now, in the shadows, quiet and watching. They exchanged glances and giggled, then turned back to spying on their siblings again.
The boy kicked his way through the weeds, coming down the embankment to the sandy shore where Isabelle and Catalina were stretched out on the sand. They heard him coming but didn't move, trying to lie as still as possible, thinking of themselves as older and sexier than they really were.
The boy stopped a dozen feet shy of their towels and his eyes went up and down both girls, confirming for himself what he saw from up on the bridge. Anwyn and Oliver were hushed, unable to hear what was going on. They watched as the boy said something and the two girls pretended to break from their trance. They turned to the boy and then sat up. The three began talking.
"What's he saying?" Anwyn asked.
"I can't hear," Oliver said.
The girls giggled and the noise echoed among the trees. The boy evidently said something funny. The boy eventually sat in the sand next to the girls and the talking continued. Anwyn grew bored and dragged Oliver farther down the river, away from the teenage trio.
It had maybe been an hour later. Oliver and Anwyn had been down river, climbing trees and diving off the branches that hung over the water. As they came to the bridge they remembered the boy and decided to be try and eavesdrop again. In the shadows under the bridge they could see the shore, but Catalina sat on her towel alone, fidgeting and looking nervous. She kept glancing up river.
Anwyn and Oliver exchanged glances and then swam up river, sticking to the far side of a sand bar so Catalina wouldn't see them. Fifty yards from the bridge they finally saw Isabelle and the boy with the dirty cap standing on the shore among the trees. They never told anybody what they saw. Oliver wanted to stand up, to stride forward and stop them, but Anwyn took his hand and shook her head no.
"Isabelle can take care of herself," she whispered and dragged him away.
As Anwyn looked down on the Arkansas River from the bridge remembering that day, she still hadn't told anyone what she had seen.
Isabelle and the boy were kissing. His shirt was off—yet he still had the hat on. There arms were intertwined and Oliver and Anwyn watched his hands struggle with the clasp to the top of Isabelle's bikini. This was the moment when Oliver wanted to surge forward. But Anwyn pulled him away, knowing this was her sister's moment to do what she would do. Oliver and Anwyn never knew what happened.
As the boy tried to go farther than Isabelle had agreed—and that's really what it was—the conversation on the beach was the most ridiculous of flirting. The boy wanted to be close to cute girls and the cute girls wanted to be close to a boy. Somehow he convinced Isabelle to go up the river away with him—Catalina wouldn't go for it, she knew she had to live in the same town as this kid. Isabelle just wanted the thrill and as they walked she told the boy he could only kiss her. He nodded, looking innocent.
When he tried to undo her top, Isabelle pushed back. He kept coming and she pushed back once more. He came towards her a third time, awkward and pathetic and Isabelle stopped kissing him and pushed him back.
"I told you," was all she said. With her arms still around the boy she jerked him close—directly into her raised knee. Hardly a whimper came from the boy as he dropped to the sand, his dirty hat falling into the river.
Oliver and Anwyn were drying off when Isabelle came back to the bridge alone. She rolled her eyes at Catalina and Oliver and Anwyn tried to pretend like they didn't know anything.
Years later standing on top of the bridge with Charlie, Anwyn still wondered what had happened with the boy. With hindsight she could assume the worst. But somehow she knew her sister to be better than that. She took one final look at the empty beach below and then turned back to Richmond, Charlie trotting at her side.
Posted by kevin at November 6, 2006 9:19 PM
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