Dark Water Rising: Chapters 1–7

Open windows funneled dust and straw into my face, and all around me, sweaty children whined their discomfort. Mamas dug into bundles for crackers and cheese, bread and jam—anything to distract their little varmints from the sticky heat.

Just thinking of it got my dander up. Why God couldn’t have sent that child just one big sister instead of three brothers was beyond my understanding.

At just ten, his new height had become a sore spot with Matt, sparking some ornery mischief.

The train sped toward a spindly trestle strung across Galveston Bay and rumbled onto a fragile network of pilings and rails.

I’d likely end up spending years poring over books and cadavers, and the rest of my life shut up inside a small white room, patching up boils and broken arms.

The air inside the car turned sluggish and stifling, driving everyone toward the doors like cattle to water troughs, but there was little relief.

The air inside the car turned sluggish and stifling, driving everyone toward the doors like cattle to water troughs, but there was little relief.

The air inside the car turned sluggish and stifling, driving everyone toward the doors like cattle to water troughs, but there was little relief.

The close, noisy throng mingled around the station platform, blocking the breeze that swept in from the Gulf of Mexico, making it all but impossible to find Uncle Nate.

While my uncle pointed out markets and dry-goods stores, churches and opera houses, I was taking in the ornate cast-iron storefronts.

I saw tapestries of raised and recessed bricks, and stucco surfaces that sculpted the island’s strong sun into light-and-shadow effects I’d never seen the likes of before.

“Because of the Great Conflagration of 1885,” he said. “That fire left forty blocks of the city in ashes and destroyed more than four hundred homes. After that, Galveston outlawed wood shingles. Slate has worked pretty well so far.”

We turned west at the monument, down an esplanade of palms and oleanders, live oak and Mexican dagger.

Behind trimmed jungles of fig, orange, and magnolia trees, I saw bay windows and cupolas, scrolled and spindled trim, wraparound porches and decorative iron gates, and all of it beat inside me like my own heart.

I jumped down, already taking in the house, the large veranda draped in vines, and the barn out back.

She gave him a wide-eyed solemn nod, and Papa just grinned and shook his head.

Ben always did have a light about him, something clean and simple that no amount of bad seemed to touch. If anyone should be a doctor, it was him.
And now that I was thinking on it, Lucas just might have a smattering of that, too.

As the sun slid toward the west, I noticed more and more people promenading along the streets.

Some strolled as if they had no destination in mind, but most poured south toward the beach, with an eager, almost impatient gait.

His freckled face puckered in exasperation.

We passed the Garten Verein with its croquet greens and tennis courts, its clubhouse and bowling alleys, and the bright, octagon-shaped dancing pavilion tiered like a massive wedding cake.

Voices rose and fell on the wind, and I turned east toward what must’ve been ten blocks of ramshackle buildings.

“That’s the Midway,” Ben said, pulling me in for a closer look.
The air sizzled with frying clams and frankfurters, and rang with shouts from swimmers and cries from excited gulls. Merchants hawked seashells and saltwater taffy, kewpie dolls and satin pillows, and bellowed invitations to “step right up.”

Electric light spilled across the grounds, gilding leaves and blossoms and ladies’ white lace gowns.

The clapboard siding was bare of paint, but the windows were neatly shuttered and the gables embellished with spindled woodwork, all of which looked in good repair.

He’d already told us about Fort Crockett, with its brand-new artillery emplacements, which lay just south of us, close to the shoreline.

While they were gone, a woman named Virginia Mason came to welcome us with fresh baked bread and a bundle of jasmine cut from the trellis in her yard.

Mama and Papa had always considered hired help to be an extravagance when they had three strapping boys to help with the heavy work.

All day Saturday, Mama had us doing things that would’ve made any man my age balk, dangling the chance to see the Labor Day parade in front of us like it was Christmas morning.

Seagulls glided overhead till their beady eyes spotted some discarded scrap. Then dozens would appear from nowhere, thieving from one another and starting a fracas of calls.

They’d all been built from one plan but cleverly changed in some way. A side gable here or a front gable there, a different window or door.

Arched porch lintels with cutout railings on one, turned posts with Victorian balustrades on another.

“You weren’t trying to hornswoggle the boss, were you?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Hornswoggle?”
“Yeah, about knowing how to build a staircase.”

But I still had a good walk ahead of me, so I didn’t dally.

He swished the pot, gauging its contents.

Clouds of dust billowed into open windows, and when Matt came up victorious, he reared back to throw the ball to Jacob.

She patted at the moisture beading on her own forehead and neck, then laughed at the sullied cloth.

He stood on the gallery, looking out over the gulf, his face furrowed with an edgy bewilderment.

The north breeze had done nothing to lessen the heat, as I’d hoped. In fact, it grew even sultrier, sitting heavy on my brow and in my chest, weighing me down till every breath was an effort.

The north wind blew great plumes of steam over her bow, and I watched till she became a dark spot on the horizon, all but lost in the wide green gulf.