Swarm Read Online Free PDF

they didn’t know any differently. Sumac is also good. Soak the red berries and drink the liquid. It’s tangy, like a juice.
    â€œIf you went to the lake you should have brought back water,” Marvin said, interrupting my thoughts. He washed his hands in a basin of grey water in the sink. I cut up the beets as he slid a bar of soap between his hands and placed it, coated in brown grime, by the hot water tap that doesn’t work. The silence between us was tense, and it reminded me of our last night in the dark zone, lying together in the cold attic room, after he’d told me most of the truth, trying to think of a way out. He’d wanted to run, I remembered. The easy way out.
    I kept my back to him, relieved when he laid the towel on a stool under the useless wall telephone and left the room.
    By the time I served supper, Thomson was deeply asleep. Mouth open, he lay awkwardly, his shoulders twisted toward the back of the couch. Normally I would have let him sleep, but that night I shook him awake while Marvin watched. I wanted him to eat something, to fill his stomach with nutrients.
    â€œLascaux,” he said, his eyes fluttering open, the whites tinted yellow. “Lucy.”
    â€œWhere’s he gone to?” Marvin asked.
    â€œI don’t know.” His delirium scared me. Bringing him to the lake, out into the evening wind, seemed like a mistake. I should have let him rest or bathed him and sat him by the fire. He was overdue and starting to smell. Night was settling. Marvin went out onto the porch as I helped Thomson swallow a few sips of thyme and mullein tea and then let him slide back into sleep.
    Dusk filled the house while Marvin and I ate supper.
    â€œWe need to check the bees tomorrow,” I said and told Marvin how Thomson had wanted to go there. Marvin shovelled a forkful of greens into his mouth.
    â€œThe mites are just going to get them,” he said as he chewed.
    â€œThat’s optimistic,” I mumbled.
    â€œIt’s true.”
    â€œDo it for Thomson.” I pushed my beets around on the plate, watched their juice stain the fish pink. I was sick of them. On the other side of the large room, Thomson choked in his sleep. Marvin pushed his chair back and went to the couch, holding him upright as Thomson spat into the torn square of a sheet. I shaded my eyes with my hand and stared down at my plate. Before Marvin was through with Thomson, I took my food to the kitchen. From the cupboard, I pulled a package of red paper plates and filled one with my leftover beet slices and a large chunk of whitefish. I took it out the back door and put it on the porch for you. As if you were one of the stray cats that wandered the island before they were all hunted out. Skin and bones, on your way to going wild. When I stood and turned around, Marvin was standing in the doorway.
    â€œWhat are you doing?”
    â€œIf she’s going to steal,” I started to say.
    â€œShe?”
    And I told him. Thomson would have, sooner or later, even if it just slipped out.
    Through my life, I’ve imagined certain moments. My wedding, the way I would tell my husband that I was going to have his baby, how I would deal with my mother’s death. But that evening, I stood on the porch, the crickets in the background, a distant owl screeching its strange whinnying cry, and what I told Marvin was that I’d seen your footprints in our garden. Evidence of a new beginning. A child that could be ours.
    â€œThey’re tiny,” I said. “She’s a little—”
    â€œThat’s a third of our food,” he said, gesturing at the plate. A bright red polka dot on the weathered boards. It was August, no longer the beginning of summer, and we’d been salting fish for three months. There were beans and carrots and jams to can. Wild apples to dry. I looked down at your fish and beets. I’d covered your food with torn shards of plastic wrap from the ancient