Free Salter, Anna C by Fault lines Page A

there be light." If I was God, it would be the first thing I'd say too.
    I went back upstairs to my office and retrieved Willy's note before I left. I put it on the seat of the car and just looked at it a moment before starting the car. Surely, I wasn't thinking of answering it tonight. I was too tired from all the fighting over Camille, too zonked from watching her deteriorate in such a painful way. I wasn't in shape for it.
    I drove home with the note still sitting on the seat. When I did respond to Willy —which wouldn't be tonight —the big issue would be what to say.
    Dealing with Willy wasn't exactly like dealing with anybody else I knew. The closest thing maybe was an antisocial personality disorder—a bully, in short. There were rules for dealing with bullies. You never cowered and you never blustered. And most of all, you never got into a power struggle. Anti-socials would cut off their noses to spite their faces, they would go to jail, they would literally die —or worse, kill you—before they'd lose a power struggle. So, instead, you gave them choices. If you do this, this will happen. If you do that, that will happen. Up to you; not my choice.
    "That's fine," I had said to one who had announced he was going to tear up my office. "Sure, if you choose to, you can tear up my office. No problem. Now, here's the deal. If you tear it up, you go to jail. If you don't tear it up, you don't go to jail. Up to you. If you want to go to jail, you can go to jail. If you don't want to go to jail, then we can sit down and talk about why you're so upset. But you need to understand this: Either way — whether you go to jail tonight or you don't, I am not going to jail." He had sat down.
    It wouldn't work with Willy. I knew in my soul it wouldn't, but what would? Nothing. So you took your best shot.
    This time I didn't hesitate to get out of the car in the dark. Willy wouldn't be waiting. This much I knew about him: He loved foreplay. He wanted to talk, so he'd give me time to answer. I walked from the car to the house feeling safe for the first time since before I had been attacked. I dropped my stuff in the living room and walked out onto the deck.
    The outside lights lit up the small stream below. I hadn't been out on the deck much recently, and I had almost forgotten how the stream looked at night. Water always looks different at night. It comes alive like some nocturnal animal that sleeps during the day. Look at water long enough at night and you would swear the light was coming up from below, braided through the gurgling stream like phosphorous. I'd seen that too. Dipped my oars in real phosphorous, leaving arcs of light as it dripped off the circling oars.
    Somewhere, a thousand miles or so straight south, most of my people were probably sitting out on the water tonight, just like I was. One way or another, most of them live on the water—on the ocean or an inlet or at the least a river. In my family, my little stream wasn't a very big deal in the water department, but I couldn't imagine living without it. I went back in, got some ice tea, came out, and sat down. I felt the day start to slip from my shoulders.
    I sat quietly and let the water from the stream mesmerize me. Water is pretty much all my family has in common. I have all kinds of relatives: bright ones and dumb ones, nice ones and mean ones. I have a Mama that makes barracudas look cuddly, and once upon a time I had a Daddy who'd rather drink than fight. But every single one of us has salt water in our veins.
    I'm the black sheep. Not my cousin Mary Lou, who turned into a total drunk and was picked up by the police passed out in the street outside Hardee's. Mary Lou found God and straightened herself out, and my family decided Mary Lou was a testimony to the healing powers of the Lord. Not my nephew Buddy, who spent a couple of years in a military stockade for something or other—I didn't even want to know what. That was just considered youthful