The Spawning Grounds Read Free Page B

He did remember. Dennis Moses had said white men were like infants in their baths who tried to grab the water their mothers poured over them, thinking the water was a thing they could possess. But, Dennis said, they would never own this river or this land. The waters, the soil, would run through the cracks between their fingers, the way bathwater runs through a child’s fist.
    Nevertheless, Stew tapped his chest and repeated himself, defiant. “It’s ours now.”
    Alex shook his head but didn’t respond. Brandon skidded his bike to a stop next to him, as Abby leapt and barked around him. He petted the dog to calm her as he looked at the gun in Stew’s hands.
    “Where the hell have you been?” Stew asked him.
    “Had to change my clothes,” he said. “I fell in the river.”
    “I told you, never swim in that water. You know how many have died here? Christ, your own mother.”
    “You don’t need to remind him,” Hannah said.
    “I said I fell in,” Brandon told his grandfather. “And I was just in the shallows.”
    “So you saw your first water mystery, did you?” Alex asked Brandon, grinning.
    “What was that?” At last Stew tucked his rifle back in his scabbard.
    “I saw something in the water when I fell in,” Brandon said.
    “Something like what?” Stew asked.
    “I don’t know. It was see-through. But it
was
there, you know?”
    “Like a ghost swimming through water,” Alex said.
    Brandon turned to look at him. “You’ve seen it?”
    Alex paused, glancing at Stew. “Many people have seen it.”
    “I thought I saw a boy, too, standing on the river,” Brandon said. “I mean he was standing right on the water, like he was Jesus or something. Then he sank and I saw that ghost thing swimming towards me.”
    Alex nodded. “That’s the water mystery. The boy and the river ghost are one and the same.”
    Stew asked, “Your head wasn’t underwater, was it? You didn’t drink that thing in?” His grandfather’s expression was so grim, Brandon laughed a little in confusion.
    “No. Hannah pulled me up.”
    “Seriously,” said Alex. “That ghost in the water didn’t get inside you, did it?”
    Brandon shook his head. “No, I saw it on the river after.”
    “What’s this all about?” Hannah asked.
    “Nothing,” Stew said, cutting off Alex’s answer. Then he eyed Brandon. “Your imagination,” he said. He settled himself on his horse to face the river. Hannah raised an eyebrow at Alex, but he held up a hand as if to say,
Later
.
    As Stew cast his line, Hannah said, “For god’s sake, Grandpa, put the rod down. You don’t want to get yourself in trouble.”
    Stew reeled in his line and cast again. The fly hovered in the air until a swallow swooped down and nabbed it, flitting off with the fly in its mouth as it would a mosquito. Stew swore, cranked his line and the swallow fluttered towards him. “My own granddaughter thinks she can tell me what to do. Says I got to fence the river so my cattle can’t get themselves a drink when they want it. Then all of them environmentalist assholes at that meeting last week told me I can’t sell my own land.”
    “They don’t care if you sell,” Alex told him. “They just don’t want you to sell to this developer.”
    Stew grabbed the swallow and, tucking the glass rod under his arm, plucked the hook from the bird’s mouth. “The lot of you can go to hell,” he said as he opened his fist to let the bird go. The swallow flapped, confused, then darted away to skim the surface of the water.
    “You know, you’re the only local who supports that housing development,” Alex told Stew.
    “I don’t give a rat’s ass about that hellhole,” Stew said. “I can barely walk even with my canes. Won’t be long before I can’t get on the tractor. What am I going to do? Feed the cattle from a wheelchair? What kind of life is that? I want a few years of comfort before I’m gone. Is that asking too much?”
    “You’re always going on about how