Free The Hundred-Year Flood by Matthew Salesses Page A

her legs were scraped red by the bark.
    Pavel circled the maple and yelled up in iambic English: “Stay out of it. It’s privacy. I told you never coming back here.” He tried to cross his arms, then remembered his casts and gave up. One of the guests asked if they should get a blanket for Katka to jump into. Pavel shouted that he would make Tee sorry. The wind carried his warning.
    It was the first time since his uncle had died that Tee had felt the force of the wind. On the flight simulator on his parents’ computer, he had nosed down again and again, never able to save himself. Katka wrapped herself completely around her branch, shivering.
    Rockefeller stomped toward Pavel, and the two of them shouted in Czech, arguing or threatening. Their voices grew, then softened. Tee focused on the climb, shutting out everything else. “Hold on,” he said. “I’ll help you.” He climbed another few branches before the voices drew back into the house. Maybe Rockefeller would get forgiveness after all, the thing he most wanted.
    When Tee was four or five feet beneath her, Katka asked, “What do I mean to you, that you would climb up to me?”
    He felt a strange mixture of anticipation and regret, as if the question of meaning was a mysterious box they’d been saving to open. I want to know something about you that no one else knows , she had said before she showed him the same paintings that now burned below them.
    “Rain’s coming,” he said stupidly.
    He managed to stand on his branch and get closer. The wind pulled at the threads of his balance. He waited for his container to give him weight, but he was light, emptying.
    “He burned the paintings,” she said, “and all I could say was ‘fire.’”
    Tee wrapped one arm around the trunk and pictured Pavel standing over the images of her, which he had made and then destroyed. Tee pictured Katka running past the fire to the tree, not knowing what she was doing. She hid herself where everyone could see her. Tee didn’t want her to feel more exposed.
    “Remember The Giving Tree ?” she said. “I gave everything to Pavel.”
    “I’m sorry. I don’t know where to begin.”
    “Do not say you are sorry. Do not ever be sorry. The thing about pity is you can never take it back.”
    “I wasn’t pitying you.” The sky seemed to close its jaws. Had she climbed the tree then because of that book? Once, while Pavel was painting in the bedroom, she had said that she wanted to love like the giving tree—without reservation. “Come down,” Tee said, fumbling upward. “Things will change now.”
    She blinked and her eyes opened somehow bluer than before.
    Below, a shout went up, and then Pavel sprinted across the lawn. Rockefeller close behind him. The air was full of static, like a TV channel had gone dead. Someone didn’t want to watch anymore, Tee thought. Katka coughed, or stifled a hurt cry.
    “Get out!” Pavel shouted as he ran toward them. “Get out of Prague!”
    The sky dropped as if drawn to the smoke from the paintings.
    Rockefeller reached forward. But at the crack of thunder, Pavel leapt and threw his back against the trunk. Tee held on as the tree shuddered. He heard the hiss of the fire as water washed down the bark. He looked for Katka. For an instant, he thought of Pavel’s art, but it was black with ash, irrecoverable.
    Katka shouted from her branch. Even in the chaos, Tee sensed she had more to say. He wished he could wait for her, forget the wind and the rain and the height. He wanted to listen without reservation. But he had lost his hold. Pavel and Rockefeller stood out like airbags, ten, eight, six feet below. Tee slammed into someone’s shoulder, and they collapsed together, in a heap. Tee’s ribs clanged like a bell. They lay on the grass, and the rain plunged into their eyes, tiny divers aiming for mistaken pools.

IV
    The next day, Katka called to thank Tee for climbing after her. They met in a café in Karlín, an out-of-the-way basement