The Watery Part of the World by Michael Parker

her head and let loose a string of oaths, her cue to cower among her skirts on the floor.
    She hid her head in her arms and could see nothing, though this did not keep her stomach from clinching nor calm her quickened breath.
    â€œLeast you’ve got good enough sense not to touch her.”
    â€œShe’s already touched,” said Whaley. “Just taking my turn sheltering her.”
    â€œWho asked you to take a turn?”
    â€œNobody asked. But everyone else on this island has done his share.”
    â€œYou’re not everybody else. The rest of them contribute. You don’t do a damn thing but feed your face and grow your beard.”
    Whaley said nothing to this.
    â€œWhat is that you’re building across the dune?”
    â€œShe was sleeping beneath an oak. She’d of died had I not took her in.”
    Theo heard a yawn so protracted she thought it exaggerated. Then Daniels said, “I believe I will have me a dram.”
    â€œAfraid I’m out.”
    â€œYou ought to be more afraid. Man lets you live on his propertyfor nine years and you won’t offer him a sociable drink when he stops in.”
    More silence on Whaley’s part. Theo worried her ragged breathing was thunderous, that Daniels would feel her fear and know she was not touched, that she heard and understood every nuance of this conversation even through her nearly hysterical fear that Whaley, by sheltering her, had committed himself to certain death.
    â€œYou touch her, you’re dead.”
    â€œI’ve never once even thought of it.”
    â€œI never asked if you
thought
of it. Not the kind of thing a man gives a lot of thought to.”
    â€œSome men might.”
    â€œYou’re not one of them.”
    Even through her fear, Theo understood from what was said that these men were more than passably acquainted, though it was impossible for her to concentrate on much more than breathing, and pretending that the intake and expulsion of air was something akin to a prayer:
Please don’t let him kill Whaley. All I have.
    â€œNo one else wants to harbor her,” Daniels was saying. “The wives are all complaining. As if I’m not keeping them and their brood and their sorry husbands alive.”
    â€œUngrateful bunch,” said Whaley.
    An intolerably long pause. “You’d think a man’s tongue might get a little less sharp if he went months without speaking to another.”
    â€œOr a might more sharp, depending on the man.”
    â€œStill having that argument?”
    â€œWhich?”
    â€œWhat kind of man you are?”
    â€œI’ve near decided.”
    â€œI’m sure you have. No mystery what side you put yourself on either. You want to build her a shelter, might as well do it right. Come up tomorrow, get what you need. We’ll not be there, but you know your way around. Take a nail more than you need and I’ll be back for more than a friendly dram.”
    â€œWhen did I ever take even my fair share?” said Whaley, but the door had slammed shut before he opened his mouth to speak. She watched Whaley latch the door, cross the tiny room, and pull a jar from a pile of wood. He drank deeply from it. She could smell it from where she lay by the fire. She had not yet seen him drink. On this island she’d seen much harm done from men drinking in the dark. His drinking made her all the more tense, for he’d lied to Daniels about the whiskey and he seemed to be fueling something raw and fresh with each sip.
    She huddled, still shaking a little, by the fire. So much had transpired in Daniels’s visit that she did not understand, and yet she gleaned enough to know that there was something between these men, a vestige of a bond that, however tenuous or threatened by Whaley’s taking her in, might well work to her advantage. Daniels invited Whaley to his compound. For supplies. Andshe’d knelt by the fire convinced that Whaley was