Free Crow Lake by Mary Lawson Page A

and dark; dark face and neck and forearms, paler back and chest, white legs.
    He said, “Could you get me a bar of soap? I forgot it.” And I went up to the house and got one.
    He washed savagely, scrubbing at his body with the soap, rubbing it into his hair. Then he tossed it onto the beach and plunged into the water again, making a milk-white cloud in the dark water. He swam a long way out.
    You weren’t supposed to throw the soap onto the beach because it was almost impossible to get the sand out of it. You were supposed to put it on a rock. I picked it up and dipped it into the water and started trying to clean it off, but the sand just sank in deeper.
    Matt swam back and waded out of the water. He said, “Don’t bother, Kate,” and took the soap from me. He gave me a brief, tight smile as we walked up to the house, but it wasn’t a real smile, just a stretch of skin.
    Aunt Annie delayed supper as long as she could, hoping that Luke would appear, but in the end she served it without him. She’d cooked a leg of pork and there was a big bowl of applesauce, which I loved but found I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t eat anything. I couldn’t seem to swallow. Spit kept gathering in my mouth and I had to squeeze it down.
    Bo was having problems too. When Aunt Annie had put her supper in front of her, she’d thrown it on the floor, so now, white with exhaustion and with dark purple shadows under her eyes, she was sitting in front of an empty place, gloomily sucking her thumb.
    Matt ate in a steady, businesslike way, as if he were stoking a boiler. He’d changed into clean jeans and a shirt, and his hair was combed straight back. It dripped steadily onto his collar. There were scratches on his hands and arms from the straw. They’d been black before his swim but now they were fiery red.
    “More pork?” Aunt Annie said, grimly cheerful. If she was concerned about Luke she wasn’t going to show it.
    “Thanks,” Matt said. He handed her his plate.
    “Potatoes? Carrots? Applesauce?”
    “Thanks.”
    “The applesauce is from a Mrs. Lily Stanovich. Dropped by this afternoon. She was inquiring about you all. A weepy soul. Still, it was kind of her to bring the sauce—it saved me a lot of paring. I told her you were on the beach, Kate, and she was all for going down for a chat with you, but I told her you had your hands full with Bo and maybe another time. The vegetables are from Alice Pye. Now there’s a strange woman. She’ll be the wife of your employer, Matt.”
    She paused in a way that required an answer, so Matt nodded.
    “And what’s he like?”
    “Mr. Pye?”
    “Yes. What’s he like? Nice person to work for?”
    Matt chewed. “He pays okay,” he said at last.
    “That’s not what I’d call a fulsome description,” Aunt Annie said. “Put a little meat on it for us.”
    She’d had enough drama for one day and we were going to have a proper dinner-table conversation if it killed her.
    “You want me to describe Mr. Pye?”
    “I do. Tell us all about him. We want to be entertained.”
    Matt cut up a potato and forked a chunk in. You could see him considering adjectives and rejecting them. “I think he’s probably insane,” he said at last.
    “For goodness’ sake, Matt. An honest description.”
    “That’s an honest description. I think he’s probably insane. That’s my opinion.”
    “Insane in what way?”
    “He’s mad all the time.”
    “Mad isn’t a proper word.”
    “Furious. Raging mad. In a rage.”
    “Have you been having words with him?”
    “Not me. He doesn’t get at Luke or me—he knows we’d just walk off. It’s his kids he goes for. ‘Specially Laurie.’ You should have heard him this afternoon. Laurie’d left a gate open—you should have heard him.”
    “It’s a serious thing,” said Aunt Annie disapprovingly. She didn’t care for Matt’s description of his employer. “You wouldn’t know that, not being brought up on a farm, but a lot of damage can be done