Dark Roots

Dark Roots Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: Dark Roots Read Online Free PDF
Author: Cate Kennedy
Tags: FIC000000, FIC019000, FIC029000
I tip it into the disposal bin, and fill up the vial with ordinary water out of the tap, and take it back out to them. And they’re as happy as Larry.’
    He smiles again and I smile back, finding it easy now to look straight back into his eyes. ‘Thank you for telling me that story,’ I answer, ‘because it doesn’t matter a bit, you know, whether it comes from Lourdes or the tap. Because it’s the faith that matters, the faith which heals. That’s how you’re blessed.’
    He snaps my suitcase shut and turns it towards me, stamps my passport and hands it back.
    â€˜I’ll let you get on your way then, Sister,’ he says. ‘Best of luck for the future.’
    â€˜Thanks,’ I say, moving away towards the escalator and the doors out. There’s a future out there all right, and once I get this outfit off I’m not going to miss one sweet open-mouthed breath of it. I am as light as a cloud as I walk towards the doors. I am free as air. I am blessed.

Flotsam
    Out here there’s a headwind, but they helped me drag a chair onto the verandah. A stupid chair, a white lounger with plastic webbing. It weighs next to nothing. Here the wind streams like liquid straight against my face.
    I am smiling, inside the pouring hiss of wind. I expected change, certainly, but I thought that the place would have crumbled, as I have, by years of sting and salt. I never would have expected this gentrification, this odd new architecture of lime-washed palings and curlicues of wood, the weathervanes and lofts of American farmhouses. The shacks under their layer of pine needles gone without trace. The hotel’s become lime-washed, too — all white in the dining room, polished boards revealed from under the carpet. The pub’s nautical theme back in my day was twice-weekly fishermen’s brawls, now it’s gloss-painted; ceiling fans, brass fittings, mint-green trim. It’s all polished up, sanded down, swept clean. I can’t get used to it.
    Out here the sea picks up the dark volcanic flecks and looks for something, sighs distractedly, turns them and searches. Small dark heaps of seaweed lie tangled at high-tide line, where the lip of the highest wave, draining away, has formed a long curving line of black. It’s not very good sand. I went to pristine beaches later in my life where the sand squeaked, where it broke like a loaf of sugar. My feet were hard here, and crusted with mica and dark grains. The sea dipping in a sudden churning trough, a dangerous choppy pull, then you’d go out further and it would calm down.
    Red needles up under the pines in the dark. Brushing them off your back. Matthew whispering, Now you’ll be for it . A dusted salt rim on your legs, feet filthy. Don’t know why I bothered going into the city to buy those shoes. A labour of love, my mother said, but that’s what you did in those days. That’s what you did.
    Took them off after five dances because Matthew wanted to go outside and you didn’t want to ruin them. Everything you owned was crusted with salt and mica. Pine needles and the smell of resin reminding you of your brother’s violin. Resin, rosin, were they the same thing, you kept thinking, lying looking up through the pines, knowing that this was it now, actually happening, and all the wondering and unease that had come before had been like walking miles to buy the shoes.
    The kids in the shacks sold bait to the drinkers in the hotel. Look at your hair, you’re like one of the shack kids , your mother would say, or, Look at your sister’s runny nose, you’d think she lived in the shacks . But when she was pregnant she pressed money into your hand and made you go down there and ask them for a bag of pippies, and she sat on the porch in her chair, feet flat and apart, belly huge, sucking the meat and salt water from the shells and looking out at the horizon but her eyes inward, focused on the
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