“It’s your finger, Gammy.”
“Alder wood pops,” she said.
The young man looked at me.
“Thanks for your time,” I said.
“Sorry.”
The highway was nasty as I drove back to Lander. The temperature had dropped suddenly and every curve looked like black ice to me. The snow was falling heavily now. I made it to a motel and lay in bed and did nothing. It was only Friday night and I had exhausted every avenue I could think of. I wondered what I was supposed to do for a week and then I remembered that if I waited a week Roberta Cloud would be dead. At least, she had told me she would be. I would have to go to her house the next morning and tell her that I had failed, that there was no way I could track down Davy.
I fell asleep wanting to dream about finding Davy Cloud, but I didn’t. I dreamed about an old girlfriend that I’d never loved. And so I woke up in a bad mood.
The world was buried in snow on Saturday morning. My car along with it. I raked the windshield clear and then chipped and scraped off the ice. My fingers were numb when I started my engine. I returned to my room and let the car run for a while. I wanted the heat in the car and I wasn’t sure if I could even shift and steer with my hands as frozen as they were. I snapped on the television for a weather report and there was Graham Greene talking to Val Kilmer in Thunderheart. Greene’s character was complaining about Kilmer’s character having a vision.
I fell in behind a snowplow on the highway and though it was slow going I felt more confident about the safety of the road. But that was short-lived as the plow turned around at the reservation border and I was left to push through six inches of snow with my Subaru.
There were a couple of cars and a pickup parked at Roberta Cloud’s house. I tramped through the snow to her door and knocked. A young woman answered.
“Are you Mr. Keene?” she asked before I could say anything.
“I am.”
“Come in.” There were two other women inside the house and a tall man who drank from a large travel mug.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“She’s dying,” the man said.
“She’s been asking for you,” the woman who met me at the door said. “Who are you?”
“A friend,” I said.
“Let’s go then,” she said. She led me into the room where Roberta Cloud lay on the bed under quilts.
“He’s here, Roberta,” the woman said and left.
“Mr. Keene, you’re back.” He voice was so weak, so soft I could barely hear her from five feet away.
“Yes ma’am.”
“I knew you would find my Davy. Davy, my Davy.” Roberta Cloud reached out her hand. She was so weak that I thought I could feel her life slipping away.
I stepped close and took the old woman’s hand. It felt like a baby bird. Her bones felt like nothing. I said nothing.
“Davy, my Davy,” she whispered. “I’ve missed you so much. I love you.”
I didn’t make a sound. I rubbed the back of her little hand with my thumb.
“It’s been too long,” Roberta Cloud said. She said that several times until her voice just trailed off.
I watched her face. I felt her leave. I didn’t even hear her last breath. She was just gone.
One of the women came in and I looked up at her. She left and I heard her tell the others that Roberta Cloud was no more. There was no crying. I let go of her hand and stood up. She looked peaceful. I toyed with the idea that I was partly responsible for that. I also felt terrible that I had lied to her. I told myself it was not exactly a lie. I had simply let her assume something. But of course I had lied.
I left the room and joined the others in the kitchen.
“So, who are you?” one of the women asked.
“Ms. Cloud asked me to come here and then asked me to find her son, her eighty-two-year-old son. I couldn’t find him.”
“That’s because he died when he was a boy,” the man said.
“Excuse me?”
“He would have been my great-uncle, I think,” one of the women said. “Granduncle?”
I looked back at the bedroom.
“What did she say to you?” the woman from the door asked.
“She thought I was Davy,” I said.
“And so you were,” the man said. “So you were.”
About the Author
PERCIVAL EVERETT is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of more than twenty books, including Percival Everett by Virgil Russell, Assumption, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, The Water Cure, Wounded, Erasure, and Glyph.
About the Novel
The text of Half an Inch of Water is set in Adobe Caslon Pro. Book design by Rachel Holscher. Composition by Bookmobile Design & Digital Publisher Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Manufactured by Versa Press on acid-free, 30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.