Page 12 of Good Dirt

Tumbling

2019

E bby, still sitting in the river, can see from the look on Henry’s face that he’s finally recognized her. Henry stops and stares, mouth open, then reaches down to help her out of the water. The clasp of his hand is disconcertingly familiar. She feels a ridge of skin on the inside of his thumb, still calloused from carrying his camera everywhere. She used to feel that ridge when he touched her chin or ran his hand along the inside of her leg. She used to dab a bit of lotion into her palm and rub it into that ridge.

Ebby pushes her other hand into the silt of the riverbank in an effort to raise her body fully out of the water. The smell of the mud on her clothes as she staggers makes Ebby think of the musk of clay behind Granny Freeman’s house. Her dad’s mom would like the soil around here. Good dirt, she would say. There is a town, not far away, that is famous for its clay. Ebby has been planning to visit, maybe buy a souvenir for her grandmother. Granny says clay runs in their family’s blood, but Ebby’s father sees it differently.

Ebby’s dad likes to say it’s the sea that courses through his veins, that he inherited a yen for the water from the sailors in his family. His father was descended from men who had worked in shipping and whaling until they’d found more gainful, and less dangerous, ways to thrive. This is why he was meant to live within walking distance of the shore, he says. Because of them.

But Granny and Gramps Freeman, like her mother’s parents, have always lived inland, where the nearest body of water is a shallow brook. Where the snow drifts against the banks of trees behind their house just so. Where they mutter about deer and turkeys raiding their vegetable garden but are slow to chase them away. They hesitate, instead, at the kitchen window to watch.

“Go on, now,” Granny will eventually say to whichever creature she spots munching on her plants. She’ll rap on the windowpane to get its attention. “You’ve had enough.”

Granny Freeman has a soft, steady way of talking. The thought of her grandmother’s voice, now, helps Ebby to calm her heart, which has been thumping so hard she wonders if Henry has heard it.

When they were alone, Henry used to rest his head on Ebby’s chest, right over her heart.

Henry used to say, I’m listening.

Ebby used to believe that. She used to think that Henry had understood something about her. She used to think her presence in his life was necessary. Surely, this man who is standing in front of her now is not the same person. She thinks of Gramps Freeman, who used to warn her and her brother that most people don’t recognize another person’s true value. But Gramps never warned them about this part. Gramps didn’t warn Ebby that she herself might not realize it when that lack of recognition was happening to her.

“Ebony Freeman,” Henry says, in that drawn-out way that Ebby used to love. “What the heck are you doing here?” Ebby is relieved to note that she now despises the sound of her name on Henry’s tongue. Though his presence still makes her face burn hot.