Free All Rivers Flow to the Sea by Alison McGhee Page A

and overflowing oceans. There is not enough room in my body to contain all the water overflowing its banks. Will there ever be?

Hello June.
    Goodbye March, when it happened, and goodbye April, when Ivy slept, and goodbye May, when Ivy slept, and hello June, and Ivy sleeps on.
    “‘Be prepared and look ahead,’” I read from the manual. “‘You should sit comfortably, but upright, and keep both hands on the steering wheel. Slumping in the driver’s seat or steering with one hand makes it harder to control your vehicle, and your “relaxed” position can lead to a dangerously relaxed attitude toward driving.’”
    Could you stop reading that damn thing?
Ivy doesn’t say.
    “‘Anticipate mistakes by other drivers and think about what you will do if a mistake does happen. For example, do not always assume that a driver approaching a STOP or YIELD sign on a side road is actually going to stop or yield. It is better to assume the other driver may not stop. Be ready to react.’”
    Give it a rest, Rose!
Ivy doesn’t say.
    “To live in this world, Ivy,” I pretend-read from the book, “you must know how to drive.”
    This world of roads and highways and cars and trucks and stop signs and blinking red lights and yellow lights that mean caution and green lights that mean go and engines that can throw a rod and tires that can go flat and brakes that can fail and air bags that may not inflate and gas stations, the endless ugliness of gas stations with their hoses and their pumps and their stink of gasoline.
    To live in this world, you didn’t always have to know how to drive. Once upon a time, people rode horseback. Once upon a time, the inhabitants of this world walked on foot, carrying their belongings in packs. Once upon a time the inhabitants of Pompeii ran, carrying their children in their arms.
    I close the manual. Let Ivy sleep.
Sleep, sister, sleep.
    “You ever have a dream where you’re falling, Younger?” William T. says from the blue chair. “One of those falling dreams? Jesus Christ, I hate those falling dreams.”
    “Sometimes,” I say. “What brought on that comment?”
    “Nothing in particular.”
    I turn around in my green chair and look at him, bent over the little table, pencil clutched in his big hand, underlining sentences in his bird book. I open the driver’s manual again.
    “‘Sometimes it’s better not to make eye contact with another driver, especially where conflict can occur,’” I read to William T. “‘The other driver may interpret eye contact as a “challenge.”’”
    “That’s true,” William T. says. “God knows I’ve run into enough of that up on Route 12.”
    “‘If confronted by an aggressive driver, stay calm and relaxed. Make every attempt to get out of the way safely. Do not escalate the situation.’”
    “Never escalate,” William T. says. “And never de-escalate, as in a falling dream. Excellent advice.”
    “‘Put your pride in the back seat. Do not challenge an aggressive driver by speeding up or attempting to hold your position in your travel lane.’”
    “Especially if he’s a Statie,” William T. says. “Those troopers take their travel lane position very seriously.”
    “‘No matter how carefully you drive, there is always a chance that you will be involved in a traffic crash. You cannot predict when it may happen.’”
    William T. is silent. He bends over his bird book.
    “William T.,” I say, “when your son died, what did you do?”
    His pencil hovers a fraction of an inch over the page. Searching, searching. For what? He doesn’t look up.
    “I wanted to die too,” he says.
    His pencil keeps hovering. Then I watch it underline a sentence swiftly and surely. Then another one. Another one. The pencil is a speed skater, practicing for the Olympics.
    “But I kept on living,” William T. says. “It’s a weird thing, Younger, how sometimes we think we can’t, but we do. We just keep on living.”
    Ivy and I had an accident. It