The World More Full of Weeping Read Free Page B

water.
He moved quickly and confidently: he’d been doing this
for several months. He’d broken a few slides at first, but
he’d gotten the hang of it. “Then you just slip it in here,”
he muttered, mostly to himself, as he positioned the slide
under the lens. “And you adjust the mirror . . .” Looking
through the lens, he adjusted the focus. “There.” He stepped
to one side, still holding the microscope. “You look.”
    Holding back her long blonde hair, Carly leaned over the
microscope. She looked for a moment, squinting her eyes,
then straightened up.
    â€œWhat is that?” she asked, her face wide and open.
“What did you do?”
    He had to suppress a laugh. “It’s water,” he said. “Just a
drop of water from the pond.” He gestured.
    â€œBut there are things . . . creatures.” She seemed to be
drawing away from the microscope.
    He nodded. “They are creatures,” he said. “That’s what . . .
They live in there.”
    Her face slowly broke into a smile. “They must be very
small,” she said.
    â€œThe microscope magnifies them so we can see them.”
    She looked at the microscope with what he thought was
curiosity.
    â€œDo you want to look again?”
    She stepped forward slowly and bent over the microscope.
“How did you find them?” she asked. “How did you know they
would be there?”
    â€œThey’re everywhere,” he said, excited to be talking about
it. “They’re all around us. Inside us. In the air and the water.”
    â€œEverywhere?”
    He nodded.
    â€œThen why haven’t I ever seen them?”
    â€œThere’s a whole world of them, a whole universe, all
around us. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean
they’re not there.”
    When she looked away from the eyepiece, she was
smiling. “Is this what you do in the woods?” she asked.
    He nodded, suddenly shy, suddenly unsure of his
decision to show the girl his microscope.
    â€œDo you want to see more hidden things, Brian?” she
asked. “I could show you. There’s a whole hidden world in
this forest I could show you, if you wanted.”

    The first truck parked behind Dean’s. People spilled from the
cab and cargo bed, mostly men, but a couple of women, too.
    Jeff knew everyone, at least in passing. Frank and Jim
from the Henderson Press hopped out of the truck’s bed,
along with Michelle Coombs and Phil Hardie. They drifted
over to form a group around Dean.
    Moving more slowly, Charlie Ellroy slid from the cab of the
truck and walked toward Jeff. He extended a hand, a formality
Jeff found oddly disconcerting. He shook it anyway.
    â€œBeen a while since we seen you in at the Horseshoe,”
Charlie said, shifting his mouth around his false teeth.
    Jeff nodded. “I’ve been pretty busy with Brian since . . .”
He trailed off as Diane stepped toward them.
    â€œHi, Charlie,” she said.
    â€œHow you holdin’ up?”
    She shrugged, and Jeff could see how much the façade
of calm was costing her.
    â€œSo you got a little boy lost,” he said to Jeff.
    â€œYeah. Looks that way.”
    â€œLike father like son.”
    It was the second time that cliché had been used that
afternoon, and something about it niggled at the back of
Brian’s mind. He was about to ask Charlie what he meant
when a second truck pulled into the driveway.
    â€œThat’ll be the cloggers,” Charlie muttered, watching
the driveway.
    The
truck
was
driven
by
Pieter
TeBrink,
Martin
TeBrink’s oldest son, now probably in his late twenties,
and was loaded with men who looked like they might have
been brothers or cousins. All shared the same straight
blond hair, the strong chins and white teeth, the broad
smiles.
TeBrinks
and
VanLeeuwens,
VanderPols
and
VanWycks. Scions of the Dutch farmers who owned most
of the land surrounding Henderson,