Read Online All the Voices Cry by Alice Petersen - Free Book Online

down,” she said. “I think the turnoff’s back there, after the beeches. Before the dumpsters.”
    â€œAre you sure?”
    â€œYes I’m sure.”
    Max made a U-turn, and they drove back past three dumpsters overflowing with Labour Day discards. A tilting pile of tires leaned into the ragweed. Nearby, a useless sled lay in the sun, its slats warped with damp.
    â€œLook, a sled,” said Cammy. “Can I have it?”
    â€œIt’s trash,” said her father.
    â€œBut I could fix it,” Cammy insisted.
    â€œLook we don’t have time to pick up trash for you, as well as for your mother.”
    â€œSorry Daddy.”
    â€œDon’t worry, love,” said Bea. “If we find a cottage to buy we’ll get you a new sled. How about that?”
    The van started up the hill. With a click all the doors locked. Bea didn’t like it. The van was just too much. The
roadside was bright with black-eyed susans, some pure yellow and fine as stars, others rusty as old nails. Day lilies had seeded in the ditches, and tendrils of purple vetch fingered the greenery. They sped past a swampy area spiked with dead trees. A nerve in Bea’s jaw tingled with recognition; she knew this road, she knew these trees. Once upon a time, a boy called Yves had shown her a heron perched high on a skeletal branch in this very swamp. Bea had been ten, spending the summer in a rented cottage with her parents.
    Yves lived in the neighbouring cottage. Together, the children explored the surrounding land. Once he plucked at her sleeve to draw her attention to a young fox chasing flies on the path in front of them. Bea thought that nothing could equal the fox, but she was the first to see the weasel slipping along under the rock fall, its dark body undulating like an animated moustache. One afternoon they watched a pair of catfish herding their young about in the shallows. Yves made gestures indicating that the parents ate their babies. Bea watched the tiny wriggling commas with renewed interest. Another day she showed him a snake, run over and flat as a shoelace. The next, Yves showed her a discarded shoelace, flat and braided as a squashed snake.
    Inside the cottage, Bea’s parents played cards by lamplight and went to bed early. The lamps emitted a soft ball of light, not bright enough to do anything by, except, as she realized now, conceive a second child. Each morning, Bea washed the shadow of soot out of the glass chimneys. At the end of the summer, they beat out carpets, took down flypapers, pulled
the curtains and drove one last time down the bumpy driveway. Bea saw Yves out the back window. Small, he waved from the dock.
    The day of the heron, they had been heading out to swim in the lake at the bottom of the hill, but when Yves reached the end of the driveway, he turned and ran uphill instead, shouting for Bea to follow. Just when she thought that she could run no more, Yves started back down the hill into the dip where the swamp pressed close to the sides of the road. Hot and sweating, they passed into a band of water-cooled air, entering a chilled land, where ghosts dwelt in the sunlight. The yellow daisies shone like stars beside the road and the heron rose up in flight. Yves and Bea flapped their arms and ran on down to swim. She kept her T-shirt on. His strong brown legs glistened when he came out of the water, wet as a salamander.
    Now the road had been sealed. The day lilies still filled the ditches, although hydro workers had cut the tops off the pines to make way for cables. Max kept driving, but the road ended in a driveway leading to a summer camp and a cliff face. Bea knew that already. She had climbed there with Yves, searching for fossils.
    Bea had to put her glasses on to read the words spray-painted onto the rock. She flushed and looked at the map. Petit Hibou, ça m’empêche pas de continuer à t’aimer. Yves.
    â€œFunny name for a girl,” said Max.