The Beginning Place Read Online Free PDF Page A

clock said it was five minutes to seven. His watch said it was four minutes to seven.
    He sat down at the dinette table with a large bowl of cornflakes and two nectarines and ate, because he was hungry; the last twenty blocks he had thought mainly about breakfast. As he ate, however, his thoughts were not on breakfast. How had he spent an hour going to the creek place and an hour there and an hour coming back, between five o’clock and seven o’clock? And it was—
    His mind balked. He hunched his shoulders, drew his head down, felt his chest tighten in resistance, but drove himself
ahead at the words: It was evening, there, by the creek. Late evening, twilight. The stars coming out. He had got there at six in the morning in sunlight and come out at six in the morning in sunlight, and while he had been there it had been late evening. The evening of what day?
    “You want a cup of coffee?” his mother asked. Her voice was creaky with sleep, but not sharp.
    “Sure,” Hugh said, still pondering.
    He refilled his bowl with cornflakes, not wanting to cook while his mother was there, not wanting to bother with cooking anyhow. He sat, spoon in hand, brooding.
    His mother set a willow-ware mug of coffee down in front of him with a little flourish. “There, your majesty!”
    “Hunks,” he said, breakfast-tablese for Thanks, and went on eating and staring.
    “When did you go out?” She sat down across the Formica table from him with her cup of coffee.
    “About five.”
    “You jogged all that time, two hours?”
    “I don’t know. Sat around some.”
    “You shouldn’t overdo any kind of exercise in the beginning. Start slow and build it up. Two hours, that’s too much to begin with. You could do things to your heart. Like when people shovel snow in the winter the first time it snows and hundreds of them drop dead in the driveway every year. You have to start slow.”
    “All in the same driveway?” Hugh murmured, with a vague look of awakening.
    “Where did you run, anyhow? Just around and around? It must look funny.”
    “Oh, sort of around. Lot of empty streets.” He stood up. “I’m going to make my bed and stuff,” he said. He yawned hugely. “Not used to getting up so early.” He looked down at his mother. She was so small and thin, so tense and fierce, he wished he could pat her shoulder or kiss her hair, but she hated to be touched, and he always did it wrong anyhow.
    “You haven’t touched your coffee.”
    He looked down at the full mug; obediently drank it off in a couple of long gulps; and mooched off towards his room. “Have a good day,” he said.
     
     
    He would not have gone back but for the taste of the water. That water he must drink; no other quenched his thirst. Otherwise, he told himself, he would have stayed away, because there was something crazy going on. His watch would not run there. Either he was crazy or there was something unexplainable going on, some kind of monkeying with time, the kind of thing his mother and her occultist friend were interested in and he was not interested in and had no use for. Ordinary things were weird enough without getting messed up any farther, and life didn’t need any more complications than it had already. But the fact was, the one place where his life did not seem complicated was the place by the creek,
and he had to go back there to be quiet and think and be alone; to drink the water, to swim in the water.
    On his third visit there he decided to wade. He took off his shoes. The creek looked pretty shallow. He stepped into a deep bit and got wet to mid-thigh; splashed ashore, took off jeans, shirt, shorts, returned naked to the cold, noisy water. At its deepest it came no higher than his ribs, but there was one place where he could swim a few strokes. He went under, the strong currents pushing him, his hair floating loose around his face in the strange dark clarity of the underwater. He swam, scraped his knees on hidden rocks, set his hands and feet