Free Of Song and Water by Joseph Coulson Page A

boat?”
    â€œSomeday I’ll have a second. Maybe a third.”
    â€œFaya is my only child. Why should I give her up for ‘someday’?”
    â€œI’ve made a considerable sum. More than you hoped for.”
    Faya’s father scratched his leg near the edge of the bandage. “And you can prove this?” he said.
    â€œIf I must.”
    â€œYou realize, of course, that I can’t go with you to the bank.”
    â€œIt’s not in a bank.”
    â€œAre you a fool? I should have for a son-in-law a man who stuffs money in a mattress?”
    â€œThat’s not where I keep it,” he said. “I don’t keep it in the house.”
    â€œAnd where you keep it is safe?”
    â€œSafer than a bank.” He stepped closer to Faya’s father and saw the old man, his red face twitching, shrink in his chair. “I plan to take her,” he said. “She’s packing her bag as we speak. So you can give us your consent, and she’ll stay here until the wedding, or you can refuse me and she’ll leave now.”
    Faya’s father was apoplectic. “You’re impert – ,” he sputtered, reaching for his crutches. “I’ll have you arrested.”

    â€œWe’ll be gone before you can pick up the telephone,” he said, glancing at the bandaged stump. “And it appears that chasing us is out of the question.”
    â€œWe’ll be married,” said Faya, descending the stairs with her suitcase, “before you can find us.”
    â€œFaya, you can’t go. Who’ll care for me? How will I walk?”
    â€œWe’ll hire a nurse,” said Faya.
    â€œYou’re ungrateful,” said her father. “It cuts me. It’s like losing my other foot.”
    â€œSo it may go,” said Faya. “You know what the doctor said.”
    He stood beside Faya and looked down at the footless man. “You have a choice,” he said.
    Faya’s father lifted his short leg and dropped it back on the stool. “This is blackmail,” he said. “I don’t have a choice.”
    â€œOf course you do. It’s very simple. Either the three of us will agree on a wedding day, or Faya and I will marry this afternoon.”
    Faya’s father agreed to two months from that moment, believing that he’d be able to change his daughter’s mind or spirit her away. He was consumed, quite naturally, by a vengeful desire to prevent the marriage. He was also consumed by gangrene.
    Before the nuptials, he lost his other foot. On the prescribed day, bound to a wheelchair, he found himself drugged, fevered, and disintegrating, unable to kick up dust or walk his daughter down the aisle.
    Not long afterward, he put a large sum of money in an envelope and left it on the hall table. Then he died, footless and alone.
    Faya found herself unable to weep. “It’s revenge,” she said. “My father’s curse on our honeymoon.”
    He wrapped his arms around his wife. “Don’t be angry,” he said. “There’s really no point. Most men plan their revenge. What happened to your father was nothing he planned.”

    AT THE apartment, in the silence just after the War, the knocking begins again, but this time he opens the door, his body still sharp, and sees the leather boots dropping water on the mat and the face of the landlord that flinches – a register of surprise, the shock of greeting a soldier as opposed to a woman.
    â€œIs your mother home?” says the landlord.
    â€œAny business you had with her,” he says, “you can now take up with me.”
    The landlord almost smiles. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”
    His military training calls for a quick, but accurate, decision. He observes the distance between the landlord’s hand and shoulder. The arms of the man are thin despite his winter coat.
    Â 
    ALWAYS worried about Peche Island, he sets