Black Water

by Louise Doughty

  ‘Oh,’ said Poppa, gently detaching Bud from his trousers and giving him a small shove back towards the table, glancing at the food, ‘that dragon.’

  That night, Harper lay awake in his room after bedtime, as he often did, using his new torch to make hand puppets on the wall. He and Bud still shared the same small room – he didn’t really see why he couldn’t have the one that his mother and Michael had used. It had been kept just as it was three years ago, except cleaner, and was now called ‘the guest room’. It annoyed Harper that he got sent to bed at the same time as Bud. He was more than twice his age, after all. Nina said it was okay for him to read for a bit while Bud went to sleep but often he lay awake with his hands behind his head for some time. Since he got his new torch, last birthday, he had taken to making finger puppet shows on the walls, the stories of princes and warriors that his mother used to tell him about, from the place she always called ‘the Indies’. It was the only time he missed his mother, at bedtime; something about telling himself the stories made him hear her voice, occasionally. His shadow shows were always an amalgam of his mother’s tales and events from the cartoons he and Bud were allowed to go to on Saturdays at the Variety picture house for nine cents apiece, although he didn’t think the original Arjuna had had a space rocket.

  That particular evening, Harper was doing a puppet show for himself with the torch laid horizontally on top of books piled on his bedside table. Across the room, Bud was asleep, curled up turned away from him, the small hillock of his back exposed where his quilt had slipped down. Then Harper heard voices from across the landing.

  Bored of his own puppet show – Arjuna always won, of course – he crept out of bed and went out onto the landing. The door to Poppa and Nina’s room was not quite closed.

  ‘C’mon,’ he heard Nina say. ‘They’re growing boys, especially Nicolaas, a few days is all I’m asking.’

  ‘I can see they’re growing.’ Poppa sounded disgruntled but not annoyed. He sounded like a man who had already lost the argument. ‘Seems like they’re doing just fine to me.’

  ‘He just wants to feel like a normal boy, you know, in a family, doing things that families do.’

  ‘That’s true enough, honey, but how many black families do you know get out in all that “fresh air” you talk about?’

  ‘You saying fresh air is just for white people?’

  ‘I’m saying fresh air costs money. How many families you know . . .’

  Nina’s voice rose. ‘I’m not talking about the families we know, I’m talking about ours. You telling me you’re scared of the looks we going to get from whitefolks on a path through a forest? After you stand up in front of judges?’

  ‘You know that’s not true.’ The way Nina and Poppa talked when they were alone was different from the way they talked in front of Harper and Bud, less proper, a kind of in-joke, as if they were about to start laughing and thumping each other any minute.

  ‘You scared of bears!’

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘You are, Michael Senior! Shame on you, big man like you and he’s scared of bears!’

  He loved that laughing tone they had when they talked to each other like this. He loved nothing better than overhearing it. Eavesdropping was a habit he had got into when Michael and his mother were around and it had proved a habit hard to break – but when he eavesdropped on Nina and Poppa, what he heard mostly was them teasing each other.

  The door to his room creaked. He looked round. Bud stood there in his pyjamas. Harper lifted a finger to his lips and gave him a stern look to be quiet.

  ‘I need to pee,’ whispered Bud.

  ‘Ssshh . . .’ said Harper, ‘they’re talking about taking us on holiday.’

  Bud’s eyes widened. He crept up behind Harper, shuffling his bare feet silently along the boards so as not to lift them, then stood very close, leaning his head on Bud’s arm.

  ‘You know, the boys would probably go somewhere for a bit of fun . . .’ Poppa’s voice was the tone of a man negotiating the terms of his capitulation. ‘Like the beach, or amusements, you know, throw balls at coconuts, eat sticky stuff. There’s a great big ocean over thataway, you know, goes by the name of the Pacific. You saying you want to go the other direction?’

  ‘Fresh air, and some education, somewhere they can climb up a mountain and use up some of that energy, camping maybe.’

  ‘I couldn’t put up a tent, woman, not if my life depended on it.’

  ‘Bet you those boys could.’

  ‘I’m just not sure about people like us going to a National Park.’

  ‘People like us, huh? People like us?’ It sounded like Nina had thrown a pillow at Poppa’s head and Poppa had batted it away. ‘The Martins are people like us and they went to see the Carlsbad Caverns.’

  ‘That’s New Mexico. That’s different.’

  ‘People down there worse than California.’

  ‘Well, that’s true.’

  It had been Nina’s idea, but when they got to the National Park she discovered that walking uphill all day was not really her thing. And the superintendent of the campsite stuck them in the canvas cabin furthest away from the amenities because, they were all convinced, they were the only non-white family in the whole damn village and Poppa had said, ‘I told you so,’ which had wounded Nina’s pride. And then some Mexican nuns arrived and were put in the canvas cabin next to them and that cheered Nina up no end because, she said, at least she had some women to talk some sense to. And so it happened that that day, it was just the three of them, Poppa, him and Bud, that set off up the mountain path to see the waterfall.

  They were all in something of a bad mood, having argued about which way to go at the bottom of the path: it was early and not many people were about. It was incredibly hot. Poppa had said that it was cooler the higher up you got, that the hot air settled in the valley and that all you needed to do was walk up a little bit and then the breezes would blow, but Harper and Bud were unconvinced. ‘I’m only five,’ Bud moaned, as they stood studying the wooden sign at the bottom of the path. ‘I’m smaller than you and you.’ He was drawing a shape in the dirt with the toe of his shoe. Harper tried to be the good one, lifting his head, breathing in the scented air from the pine trees, but Poppa didn’t notice, just grumbled, ‘Come on boys, Nina says you need fresh air and it’s fresh air you’re going to get. Whether you like it or not.’

  The dirt track was steep right from the very beginning and hard work. Harper’s feet slipped on the loose scree. They didn’t have proper leather boots like they had seen some of the serious climbers wearing – he and Bud were in the cloth shoes they wore for physical education at school. The thin rubber soles did nothing to protect them from the pebbles and sharp stones on the path.

  Poppa went ahead, his long legs taking a stride that equalled four small steps of theirs. He and Bud began to play a desultory game, hanging back, kicking at loose stones on the path, kicking them forward, running up to them, kicking them forward again. He noticed how unpredictable the trajectory of each stone was. A smooth one could shoot far ahead even if it was small and light. An awkward-shaped, multiple-sided one would sometimes tumble twice then lodge in the dirt, however hard you kicked it. Some went in a straight line. Some somersaulted off the edge of the path into the gully below: the path was bordered by a steep, wooded rise on one side and a plummet down to the riverbed on the other.

  After a short while, Poppa stopped, withdrew a handkerchief and mopped his brow, then turned and said, ‘C’mon you two, you’re idling. We want to make that waterfall before we need to stop and eat.’ He was carrying a knapsack with a metal water bottle and three small sandwiches. The thought of a sandwich, Harper realised, was the only thing that would get him up the mountain.

  At that point, a middle-aged couple came down the path. They must have risen early if they had been up to the fall and were on the descent already. They stared at Poppa as they approached, slowing their pace. They both had those leather boots on, wi
th stripy laces, thick socks, long shorts and walking sticks. The man was white-haired, wearing glasses; the woman had her hair in a headscarf. Poppa moved to one side on the narrow path, politely, to let them pass. They stared at him, then their gazes shifted to Harper and Bud, and Harper saw on their faces the calculation that people often made when they were out as a family: Poppa black, Bud black but light-skinned – and him, something hard to guess at. Part-something.

  Even though Poppa had moved to one side to let them pass, they didn’t say thank you or smile at him. Instead, the woman said lightly, to her husband, as they passed Bud who was trailing third, ‘Well, I can’t say I realised this was the coloured path.’

  The three of them stood still for a while after the couple disappeared down the path, around the bend, then he walked up to Poppa and said, ‘There wasn’t a sign.’

  Poppa’s face was set. ‘No, son,’ he said, ‘there’s no sign because there isn’t any coloured path and there isn’t any whites-only path here either, that woman just thought there should be. Take no notice, she’s just ignorant.’ He looked up the path and passed his hand over his face, then muttered, ‘As if this mountain isn’t steep enough.’

  Then Bud ran up to them, his hand outstretched, calling, ‘Poppa!’ and Poppa turned and took his hand firmly, his large one enfolding Bud’s small one, and said softly, ‘Come along, son.’

  They all set off again, Bud and Poppa walking ahead of him, holding hands, and Harper found himself hanging back. He kicked at stones on his own. After a few more paces, Poppa turned his head to the side and without looking round properly, said over his shoulder, still walking, ‘You too, Slim Jim, you too,’ and he ran ahead and took Poppa’s other hand, and they walked like that for a few minutes more until the path narrowed too much for them to walk side by side and he and Bud ran ahead gleefully, jumping and shouting, ‘Who’s behind now, Poppa!’ and the moment with the couple, the looks, was gone.

  All three of them were panting as they neared the top of the path, and then they stopped for a while and sat on a plain plank bench by the side and looked out through the dense cover of trees where the sun struck through in brilliant beams. They took it in turn to drink from the water bottle. Ahead of them, they could see that the path forked. To the right, it widened out – the left-hand fork was steep and narrow.

  Poppa was studying the pencil-drawn map he had made after looking at the visitors’ information in the lodge at the bottom of the hill.

  ‘We can go that way,’ he said, pointing to the right-hand fork, ‘which is easier but takes a little longer, and goes up to the official viewing point, or we can go that way. Steeper but shorter I think.’

  ‘Shorter! Shorter!’ said Bud.

  ‘Shorter doesn’t mean easier, son.’

  In Bud’s world it did.

  Poppa looked down at his map and frowned at his own handwriting, turned it upside down and back again, the full three hundred and sixty degrees.

  There were voices then, and a moment later, a group of eight or nine white people, two families with older children, came down the wider, easier path. Poppa nodded at them as they passed. One of the men nodded back. The rest of the group ignored him. ‘Okay,’ Poppa said after they had gone, ‘let’s try that way.’ He pointed to the narrow, steep path, the left-hand path.

  By the time they were halfway up, they were bad-tempered with each other again. The terrain was steep and at intervals involved clambering over boulders that blocked the narrow path: Poppa hauled Bud up by his arm a couple of times – Harper refused help. The trees and undergrowth of ferns and bushes were so dense that they heard the thunder of the fall before they could see it: and then at a point about halfway up, there was a space where there was a gap in the trees and, yes – there it was, as if suspended mid-air, the magnificent crash of brilliant water, frothing and foaming as it fell.

  All three of them stopped to look: the relentlessness of it, the continuous descent of all that water. It carried the eye down as a passing train carries the eye along but just kept falling and falling, so densely white in the centre it seemed blue, the fine mist of spray all around, hanging in the air: and most miraculous of all – the air full of small rainbows, faint small rainbows flung in all directions in the mist.

  ‘Whoa . . .’ breathed Bud. He was not a boy who was easily impressed by natural wonders.

  Harper looked up, to where the top of the fall was just visible high above them, where the water shot out horizontally, foaming ferociously, such was its force and power. ‘We really going all the way to the top?’

  ‘You bet,’ Poppa replied, mopping his brow. ‘There’ll be somewhere up there we can sit down, have the sandwiches. We should have brought Nina, what do you reckon?’

  Harper pulled a face. ‘It’s going to get slippy up top, the rocks will be wet.’

  ‘Well, you two take care.’

  The path became steeper and steeper: their pace became slower and slower. At times he doubted it was really a path at all, just a scramble through the trees over boulders made treacherous with spray water and rotting brown ferns. We should have taken the longer path, he thought, never mind how many looks we got, but he didn’t share this thought with Poppa or Bud.

  It must have been an hour before they reached the top, and then they emerged into a clearing that was a little way upriver from the edge of the fall. At this point, the river turned just before it fell: he was disappointed you couldn’t see the edge. Bet you can from the official viewing point, he thought.

  You couldn’t see it but you could hear it, the thunder of it – and feel it too; the air in the clearing was hung with fine spray. A large, wet stone made a natural platform that went up to the river’s edge and here the river was so wide the water was very shallow – it would be easy to wade across to the other side: it would come only partway up your calves, he thought. The widening of the river meant it slipped more slowly at this point. There was no frothing or foaming here; the water was completely calm: you could see the gleaming brown and grey rocks on the bed. Right by the edge closest to them, there was a natural pool made by a dip in the riverbed. And here, miraculously, the water was still. Around the edge of the pool, it flowed in small eddies downstream towards the fall, but inside the pool, the water was motionless and clear as glass.

  ‘Well, look at that,’ said Poppa. ‘Perfect.’

  From somewhere upriver, they could hear voices, the people at the official viewing point, out of sight amongst the trees: but here, they had their own private spot, a clear pool and total privacy. It had been worth climbing that more difficult path.

  ‘Can we get our clothes wet?’ Harper asked. It was going to be difficult not to if they stopped for their sandwiches here.

  ‘Sure,’ Poppa said, ‘let’s take our shoes off. It’ll all dry soon enough back at the camp.’

  It was strange to think how hot it was down in the valley below, with the cool damp air up here: the relief of it. Odd to think they would be descending into such heat on the way back. He thought about how, when you were hot, you couldn’t imagine ever being cold again: and vice versa. Some things could only be felt, not imagined.

  The rock was too wet to sit on so they perched on boulders at the edge, each on their separate one, grinning at each other while they ate their sandwiches. Bud finished first, as usual, leaving his crusts; Poppa wheeled a large hand, ‘Bring them on over here, Bud.’ When he had handed his crusts over, Bud said, ‘Can I go paddle in that pool?’

  ‘You crazy?’ scoffed Harper. ‘That water will be freezing. That’s ice melt, Bud.’

  Poppa frowned.

  ‘Please!’ said Bud, putting his head on one side, smiling. It annoyed the hell out of Harper when Bud did that. Bud was five, he wasn’t a baby any more – but he sure knew how to behave like one when he wanted his own way. He could twist Poppa round his little finger with that look.

  ‘You’ll have to take everything off excepting your underpants,’ Poppa said.

  Bu
d jumped up and down a couple of times, then began to undress.

  ‘He’s crazy,’ Harper commented, although in fact, the thought of dabbling his feet in that glassy water had already occurred to him. He couldn’t do it now, though, or Bud would say, ‘You’re copying me.’

  Bud passed Poppa his T-shirt and his shorts and Poppa hung them on the twig of a bush behind him. Then he put on his stern voice, ‘Now listen, no swimming, I mean it. You get in that pool and paddle, stay close to the bank here, that’s it, okay? Two minutes.’ In the distance, through the trees, Harper could hear some people on the official viewing platform laughing and calling out to each other, taking photographs, perhaps.

  Bud dipped a toe in the water and then shrieked, pulling his elbows into his torso and screwing up his face. ‘It’s cold!’

  ‘Told ya,’ Harper said. He was still sitting on his rock, wishing there was another sandwich and thinking how the littlest one in a family got to do all the cute stuff, while he had to be grown-up and responsible. ‘Chicken!’ he called out, as Bud hopped from foot to foot.

  ‘Am not!’ Bud called back.

  ‘I’d get in before you fall in dancing round like that,’ Poppa said, laughing.

  Gingerly, Bud stepped in. The pool was very shallow – when he stood upright it only came halfway up his thighs. He kept his arms bent and elbows tucked in tight.

  ‘Come on out, Bud,’ said Poppa, smiling, ‘it’s too cold. Let’s dry you off with my handkerchief.’

  ‘You can’t do much in that,’ said Harper, and heard in his own voice a mean edge. ‘It’s too shallow to float in even.’

  Goaded, Bud dropped down, bending his knees, and leant back, and then there he was in the pool, arms and legs extended, floating on the surface in a starfish shape, and Poppa called, ‘Whoo-hoo!’ and clapped a couple of times and Harper waited for Bud to jump up shivering but he stayed in the starfish shape, eyes clenched tight shut, face turned up to the sky, and said, ‘Whoa . . .’ in satisfaction at his own bravery.