Maybe a Fox Read Free Page B

was “a tale of two brothers, both beautiful, who loved the same girl.” Each brother longed for the girl, and finally, in frustration, they told her to choose one or the other for her husband. The girl, in despair, said that she couldn’t. She loved them both. So the older brother said, “Let the river decide.” It was agreed that whichever one of them swam through the underground cavern and came up in the pool first would win the girl’s hand. After all, they had seen turtles and even geese dodge under the swirling water and minutes later pop up in the quiet waters of the pool.
    With that, both of the boys stripped off their clothes and grabbed for the other’s hand. As they leaped from the river’s side, they each called to the other, “Brother!” Right away, the smaller and younger panicked. He tried to swim out of the current, tried to make it back to the tree-lined banks. Terrified, the older and stronger brother swam to follow. But it was too late. They couldn’t get out of the water’s grip. It sucked them down, swallowed them whole.
    A hundred yards away, it spat the older one out, barely alive, his body battered and scratched from the tree roots that stretched below ground like a ropy sieve, trapping limbs and leaves and turtles. His skin was bruised from being knocked against the rocks that jutted into the darkness. He was so weak he could barely pull himself onto the banks.
    But the younger brother. Where was he? The older brother called and called and called. But there was no answer. The river kept him as a prize.
    When the older brother recovered, he married the girl in a small, sad ceremony that seemed all the smaller for the absence of his brother. What the older brother didn’t tell anyone was that something else had happened underneath the earth where the water flowed.
    The boy and the girl grew older. They had many children. At last the time came for them to pass on, and the boy-no-longer-beautiful could not contain his terrible secret for another day. Finally he confessed.
    â€œI had his hand. I was trying to pull him up with me, trying and trying. But I wasn’t strong enough, and in the end I . . . I let go.”
    And all the tears that the old man had held inside for so many years streamed down his cheeks.
    The story of the River Brothers had always made Jules worry. The thought of the Slip, being sucked underground by the force of the water, made her heart race. And that was just fine with their dad.
    Don’t ever go near the Slip.
    How many times had he told them that? So many. Despite his rigid rules, Jules loved her quiet, strong dad. Chess Sherman. She loved the way he hummed while he read the newspaper, and how, after he checked their homework at night, he said, “This is Sylvie and Jules’s dad, signing off.”
    Jules knew that whenever he started a sentence with “This is Jules and Sylvie’s dad,” it was almost the same as a hug. He had never been big on telling them that he loved them, but Jules knew that he did by the way he said that sentence, like he was so very glad that he was Jules and Sylvie’s dad, their dad, their sweet dad. And somehow, knowing that he claimed them like that helped take up the space that their mother had left. For her, anyway, if not for Sylvie. For Dad was living and breathing and right there with them, to remind them of the Do Nots and to sign off on their homework and to make sure they ate their dinners and did their chores. To count on them and to take care of them.
    But Jules’s memory of their mother was disappearing, just like their mom’s favorite mug, the one with the flamingo on it, had disappeared without a trace. It had sat on the windowsill above the kitchen sink for as long as Jules could remember, and then one day it wasn’t there. Frantic, Jules had searched all over the house for it. Sylvie too. But it was gone.
    Gone, like their