Day after we arrived was a Saturday, as it happens. And I took the time to explore these woods and the river—there’s a bridge down that way if you ever fancy the walk, least there was in my day—and that afternoon I was taking a wander when I saw her again. The daughter. Her with the eyes.
She was sitting on the bank in a yellow dress just one shade too summery for the weather, ’cause there was a nip in the air though it hadn’t fully turned yet. Her hair was down, all chestnut-brown and wavy. And she was throwing rocks at frogs.
“What you doing?” I asked her.
“Throwing rocks at frogs,” she replied.
“Why?”
She looked up at me. Some things get foggy, but I remember the look on her face like it was a week last Thursday. Like she didn’t know whether to laugh or spit. “It’s very rude, you know, sneaking up on a person when they’re throwing rocks at frogs.”
“I weren’t sneaking.”
“Wasn’t.”
“Right, I weren’t.”
“No, I mean you wasn’t sneaking. I mean I wasn’t sneaking. I mean—look, who are you?”
I didn’t know what to make of that. “I’m an evacuee.”
“I know that, bumblewit. I mean what’s your name?”
I didn’t know what a bumblewit was neither, but I thought I could work it out. “Doris.”
“Really? How peculiar.”
“What’s wrong with Doris?”
“She’s a nymph. You don’t look like a nymph.”
I weren’t sure what to make of that. “What do nymphs look like then?”
“Touché.”
I weren’t sure what to make of that, neither.
“You don’t know what that means, do you?”
“No.”
She laughed, then. And I remember that, too. Remember how it sounded there by the river. Like water itself running over me and through me. “Don’t know much, do you?”
“Guess not.”
“It’s French,” the girl explained. “It meansyou got me. I have no idea what a nymph should look like, I only know you aren’tone.”
She’d distracted me. I tried to stop her distracting me. “Why you throwing rocks at frogs?”
“I like to see them jump.”
“Ain’t that a bit cruel?”
Most girls, I reckon, wouldn’t have smiled at that, but she did. She smiled at me. “Daddy says it’s a cruel world, and I think he’s probably right.”
“My old man says you shouldn’t pick on anything smaller than you.”
She thought about that. But she didn’t like it. “Really? It seems a lot safer than picking on things that are bigger than you.”
