High Water Read Online Free PDF

house, he saw a lone box set part of the way over the lip of the truck bed. Pete looked for Walter as he reached down to pick up the box. Barely touching it, he watched as it fell in slow motion to the ground. The drop caused the box to fold in on itself, creating a minor explosion of pens, pencils, highlighters, and other office supplies. Paperclips scattered into the gravel, the two almost the same color. His laptop, one he had mentally cursed only a minute ago, sat at the bottom of the carnage.  The screen had detached from the body of the laptop with several keys acrobatically fleeing the keyboard in the explosion.
    “What the fuck?” Pete whispered, baffled. Walter walked back out of the house carrying a large box.
    “Walter, when did you put this box here?” Pete pointed at the wreckage on the ground.
    “What?” Walter asked from behind his box.
    “The box, you put it here. When I picked it up it fell right off the edge and exploded,” Pete said, trying to keep his cool. It wasn’t working. “My computer is broken.” He shouldn’t have been pissed, but it was a computer. His computer.
    “Looks like you should have packed your shit better,” Walter replied, flippant. He stood and looked Pete in the eye, frowning. Pete now saw that Walter’s box was marked OFFICE and FRAGILE.
    “Listen, it’s not about how I packed my shit. Why do you keep putting boxes at the edge of the truck?”
    “I thought we were doing like ah, you know that thing they do with sandbags when it floods.”
    Pete slapped his forehead for the second time that day. “Jesus fucking Christ,” Pete said loudly.
    “You mean Moses.”
    “What? No I don’t. You mean Moses.”
    Walter gave him an incredulous look, “I think you need to read the Bible again, Pete.”
    “Go fuck yourself, Walt.”
    “What did I tell you about cursing, Pete?” Walter said, setting the box on the edge of the truck bed.

Upchucks
     
    “Hey baby!” Pete said to Liz when he opened the door.
    Liz Boyer was a few inches shorter than Pete, with a toothy, glowing smile she wore often and that reached all the way to her eyes. All curves from top to bottom, she had hips Pete liked to put his hands around and a smooth neck he liked to kiss. Liz had changed out of her work uniform and was wearing dark brown khaki shorts and a maroon t-shirt with a trippy print of an ancient god.  The shirt was a souvenir from a great afrobeat show they’d seen a few years back. His girlfriend’s shoulder length strawberry blonde hair was slightly disheveled after a full shift, but he thought she still looked stunning.
    “Hey Pete,” Liz greeted him, her mouth breaking into a grin that likely matched the one he came to the door wearing.
    “Come on in, do I have something for you,” he said, moving aside to let her walk past him.
    “You always know what I need” she said, hugging him to her. As usual, she felt right in his arms. Over the fragrant smell of her hair, Pete detected a faint odor of chlorine.
    “You want to talk about your day?” he said, breaking away and leading her to a setup he had prepared for her visit. She joined him in the center of the living room floor, next to a stray box, on top of which was a glass bowl, an ashtray, and Pete’s herb grinder. The couch was in the truck, ready to be moved. Taking a seat on the wood floor, Liz curled her legs up and propped herself up with the opposite arm. She brushed her hair over her shoulder and gave him a cute frown.
    “Oh good lord, no, not yet, anyway.”
    “Let me tell you about the move, then.”
    “Why, what happened?” she said, a cautious smile appearing at the corner of her lips. “Let me guess.” Vapor danced in sensuous wisps on unseen air currents as she smoked.
    “Don’t bother, I’ll tell you. Walter had no idea what he was doing. I thought he was going to move things back into the house.”
    She laughed, bouncing a little as she did so. “That’s Walter for you, nothing, if not