Light Over Water Read Free Page A

compressed and the lines around it like two
parentheses.  “Come on, love,” he said as he drew his wife up the hill toward
their house.  The young boys ran off, racing toward the public wharf, where
they would, no doubt, soak up more enthusiasm.  Sam noticed that Cleo stayed
with them, her eyes rarely leaving Aubrey Newell’s face.
    Sam sank to a
sitting position, his back against one of the pilings that supported the dock. 
He smiled to himself before meeting the eyes of his sisters, and Alison.  They
settled themselves on the dock, but no one spoke.  The girls all watched him
expectantly.  He wondered what they were waiting for.  He shook his head and
laughed.  “Finally! It’s really happening, Aubrey!”  He thought of his father’s
words on this very day and knew that now there’d be no question about whose war
it was.  Aubrey smiled half-heartedly, standing uncomfortably as if an
outsider.  Sam gestured to him, “Come on, sit down.  Let’s see what it says.” 
Aubrey awkwardly sat near him but didn’t look at the paper.
    “Does it say
there’ll be a draft, Sam?” Esther questioned.
              Sam shrugged as he
scanned the newspaper, not really reading but trying to absorb the news.  His
smile dissipated like the watery afternoon sunlight.  His dark sympathetic eyes
lifted to his mother’s form as she slowly climbed the slope to their house.  He
had watched her grow thinner, older and more depleted with each successive
child.  She never complained.  She loved her family wholeheartedly and just
seemed to take the changes as part of life.  But today she looked so frail and
terribly vulnerable.
              Sam sighed deeply
then and closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the piling.  When they
were younger, the six of them; Sam, Esther and Cleo, along with Alison and her
brothers Remick and Owen, would sit along this wharf, foot to foot along the
rows of pilings.  They worked it, if possible, so that two could sit exactly
between the logs, arranging and rearranging as they grew.   For a long time Sam
and Alison fit best.  Then Sam shot ahead, his legs wedged tighter and tighter,
while Alison stopped growing at just over five feet.  They had to switch so
Alison sat with Esther and eventually none of the boys fit together with
anyone.  Alison sat against the piling across from him; both her long braids draped
over one shoulder, playing with the ends as she glanced at him.   Sam could
tell that she was near tears, but had no idea why she would be so upset at this
exciting news nor yet how to calm her.  But then he himself felt both elation
and concern for his mother.
              The Eliot’s dog,
Brute, a brindled old mutt who belied his name, came and eased himself down
beside Sam, who began to stroke his head and smooth his  fur.
              “Are you going to
enlist?” Cleo asked him.  Her eyes flickered over his way as he nodded, then
back to Aubrey.  “What about you, Aubrey?” she continued.
              Aubrey Newell
shrugged uncomfortably.  “I dunno,” was his terse reply.  “I want to,” he
added, looking at Esther and Alison when he noted their reaction.  “I’ll have
to lie about my age.  Lots do.  I can’t wait to see some action, can you,
Sam?”  His words were wary, with an obviously pretended confidence and Sam
realized suddenly how little Aubrey had ever said about the war.
              “You seem a lot older
than seventeen,” Cleo told Aubrey, her heart-shaped face as readable as the
sky.
              Esther said, “Surely
with our involvement in the war it can’t last much longer.  Don’t you think it
will be over quickly now?”  Sam and Aubrey both nodded, with Aubrey adding, “I
hope not before we get there.”
              Alison bit her lip, a
habit she’d had for years when she was actually trying to keep herself from
blurting out