dreamed existed. Places where the structures of the saltworks become white
mirages on the horizon, places where sunlight washes through groves of
maples and makes the ground quiver with leaf-shadow. They peer into a foundry
where shirtless men in masks pour molten iron from one vat into another; they
climb a tailings pile where a lone sapling grows like a single hand thrust up from
the underworld. Tom knows he’s risking everything—his freedom, Mother’s
trust, even his life—but how can he stop? How can he say no? To say no to
Ruby Hornaday would be to say no to the world.
Some Tuesdays Ruby brings along her red book with its images of corals and
jellies and underwater volcanoes. She tells him that when she grows up she’ll
go to parties where hostesses row guests offshore and everyone puts on special
helmets to go for strolls along the sea bottom. She tells him she’ll be a diver
who sinks herself a half mile into the sea in a steel ball with one window. In the
basement of the ocean, she says, she’ll find a separate universe, a place made
of lights: schools of fish glowing green, living galaxies wheeling through the
black.
In the ocean, says Ruby, half the rocks are alive. Half the plants are animals.
They hold hands; they chew Indian gum. She stuffs his mind full of kelp forests
and seascapes and dolphins
They hold hands; they chew Indian gum. She stuffs his mind full of kelp forests
and seascapes and dolphins. When I grow up, says Ruby, dreamily. When I
grow up . . .
Four more times Ruby walks around beneath the surface of a Rouge River
marsh while Tom stands on the bank working the pump. Four more times he
watches her rise back out like a fever. Amphibian, she laughs. It means two
lives.
Then Tom runs to the butcher’s and runs home, and his heart races, and spots
spread like inkblots in front of his eyes. Sometimes in the afternoons, when he
stands up from his chores, his vision slides away in violet streaks.
He sees the glowing white of the salt tunnels, the red of Ruby’s book, the orange
of her hair—he imagines her all grown up, standing on the bow of a ship, and
feels a core of lemon yellow light flaring brighter and brighter within him. It spills
from the slats between his ribs, from between his teeth, from the pupils of his
eyes.
He thinks: It is so much! So much!
***
So now you’re fifteen. And the doctor says sixteen?
Eighteen if I’m lucky.
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