Chapter Eleven

IT’S REAL EARLY in the morning. The creek is flat brown and the swimming hole looks like someone just painted it for us, like God just did it. Down here at the bridge it’s real quiet. Mum, Henry and me are standing in the water, and Henry is talking. Everything’s stopped except us.

‘Do you believe, Alice?’

Mum looks at me. ‘Yeah. I reckon.’

‘Then I baptise you in the name of Father, Son and Spirit.’ And under she goes, with Henry holding her. When she comes up, her dress sticks and her hair is flat. She splutters and laughs a bit.

I stand there, nervous. Think about what Henry told us that night a couple of days back. Yep, it still sounds right. He turns to me. I feel the mud in my toes. I see a bird frozen still in a tree behind Henry, and up by the bridge, Tegwyn hiding to watch. I feel sad a bit.

‘What about you, Ort?’

‘Yeah. I believe it.’

He crosses my hands on my chest and holds me big and strong and I go back like I’m falling out a window, out into the sky forever, and I keep my eyes open under the water and it’s like tea and it all goes up me nose and then I’m rushing up to the surface like out of a dream. And there’s the sky. All over. And it all starts again. That bird calls out and chops off somewhere, and it’s quiet under the sky. And I laugh a bit too.