Free The Plover: A Novel by Brian Doyle Page A

from their passage. But she could not speak and she could not write and she could not catch his eye in such a way that he knew she knew; and she discovered she did not want to catch his eye that way, for fear he would know she knew, and be pained by his own retreat; to hurt him was unthinkable, incomprehensible, unimaginable, it hurt to even think about hurting him; but she missed those towels more than anything in the world. A thousand times those towels had wicked up water from her shimmering skin, and sacrificed their nubs to her, and become so incredibly thin you really could see through them when they billowed in the yard like small sails in a salty wind; but no words fit their softness anymore, they were way beyond soft, they were a sort of skin themselves when her mom ever so gently rubbed her with them after a bath; but Pipa remembered her father’s hands behind those towels like sweet bones under the skin, and remembered the day he only used two towels instead of three, and then one instead of two, and then none instead of one. She knew.
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    She also knew more than anyone knew she knew. She knew how to call to birds in ways no one heard but the birds. She knew how to see inside dark places without using your eyes. She knew how to sleep with her eyes open and how to be awake in some parts of you and asleep in others. She was learning how to call to fish although whales and porpoises were as yet a mystery. She knew which trees were the friendliest near the house they used to have. She could hear what people meant when they said things they didn’t mean. She could hear people coming from a long way away. Miles and miles. People were much larger than their bodies, is how she would have tried to explain it if she could talk again. People are a lot longer and thicker than they think they are. People jostle with more things than they know they do. We don’t have any words yet for how this happens but this happens, is what she would try to say. Our bigger selves are always bumping into each other and into other things. Only things that are alive have this big thing around them. Some people and some living things, when we jostle and bump them it’s comfortable, it’s like when Dad would dry me off with the towel gentle and rough, it’s good to be rubbed like that, or like when Dad bumped shoulders with his brothers and they would laugh, but some people and some things, when your bigger self bumps against their bigger self, it feels uncomfortable, or it even hurts. And some big selves don’t forget that hurt. The hurting stays like a scar. Like your big self remembers things that you don’t. But only living things, or things that used to be alive. And your big self stays alive for a while after your body stops. Like it’s always looking for the smaller person that used to be in the middle of it. And other people’s big selves are looking for that missing person too. But the missing person isn’t there anymore so the big self gets smaller and thinner and it cries as it fades. I heard Mama’s big self crying all the time afterwards. Crying for the person it used to have inside it. Her big self, it used to go around the house looking for Mama and crying and crying, and Daddy would say what is that noise, Pip, it sounds like a cat is stuck under the house, I better go see if there are raccoon kits down cellar or what, and I would want to shout Daddy it is Mama’s big self! don’t you feel Mama’s big self? But he didn’t feel it. Or maybe he did but he didn’t say. His big self is quiet now. It didn’t used to be so quiet! His big self was the loudest funniest self you ever saw! It would rub against any other big selves and that would be so funny! Like that time with all those whales on the beach, there were so many big laughing selves I kept getting knocked down on the beach when they laughed and we were all laughing so hard! Those were the biggest selves I ever saw until now. Daddy sent them back.