Free Our Endless Numbered Days: A Novel by Claire Fuller Page A

if he caught me on the end of his line he would have been disappointed. I watched him for a bit longer, battling with the fish, pulling it in without letting his rod bend too far, allowing it to swim out a little and pulling it in again. A tired and docile trout was dragged through the shallows, while I walked into the woods and sat down in the long grass.
    “Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Einer kleiner flish!” My father shouted like a winner.
    It was as if I were in a cinema, watching the action on a big screen. What would happen next? When would the hero realize the heroine had disappeared? My father prised the hook out of the trout’s mouth and laid the fish on the ground. He had already selected a heavy rock from the bank, and now he picked it up, lifting his arm high in the air, aiming at the fish’s head. I narrowed my eyes in preparation but didn’t look away. Before the rock came slamming down, my father glanced over hisshoulder—to search for me, I supposed. There was a sourness in my chest; I wanted the fish to be beaten and I wanted my father to be shocked that I was no longer on the riverbank. He stood up, letting the rock fall beside the trout. Between the stalks of grass, I could just see the flapping of its tail while it drowned in the summer air. My father went to my scattered clothes and picked up the trousers. He looked underneath them as though I might be hiding there. I put my hand over my mouth to stifle a giggle.
    I saw his lips form a word that may have been “fuck.” Then, looking around, he called, “Peggy? Peggy!”
    I didn’t answer, but sat still like a creature of the forest, a shadow.
    My father gathered up my clothes and held them to his chest. The mud on the trousers marked his shirt with a brown streak; he put them back down and stared desperately out across the water.
    “Peggy!” he shouted again, and he waded in, without even taking off his shoes. I winced for him because of the cold. He strode straight in, up to the top of his thighs, so he could look beyond the bushes which hung out over the water. I worried about how wet his shoes and shorts would be and how angry that would make him later. I was no longer quiet because I was hiding, butbecause I needed to hide. He stood in the water where I had been ten minutes earlier and scanned the banks upstream, shading his eyes against the sun. He turned and stared downstream, cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted with real worry in his voice, “Peggy? Peggy!” and, “Shit!”
    I looked where he looked, but there was nothing to see except the rippling shadows of branches and clouds, and the occasional bubble. He came back to the bank and ran in a short burst against the current, then ran back, all the while looking at the water. He reminded me of a Labrador whose stick has been thrown into the middle of a pond and who hesitates for a second before leaping in. Hopping and tripping, my father pulled off his boots and his shorts, now a darker shade of blue. He yanked his shirt over his head, leaving his clothes in a pile on top of mine. His torso was startlingly white against his brown forearms and calves, as if he were wearing a flesh-coloured tank top. He hesitated on the bank, then strode in again, as though he had dismissed the thought of diving into the shallows. I was really scared, scared he would plunge into the river and not resurface. And then I would be the one running up and down the bank, shouting. I wouldn’t know what to do, where to go for help, how to get home. I wouldn’t know how to swim or catch fish, or what to eat. My mindran on as I watched him. I might be wandering around the forest on my own for years. I would have to sleep in the tent by myself, supposing that I could even put it up, and there would be rustling and howling and small animals scurrying around in the night. Something might be in the woods. That thought made me turn around from my position, hiding in the grass, and look behind me. A mass of trees