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8aa22bc
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If Sawtooth could put words to the brambled knot forming in his throat, he would tell her: Girl, don't go. I am marooned in this place without you. What I feel for you is more than love. It's stronger, peninsular. You connect me to the Mainland. You are my leg of land over dark water.
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out-to-sea
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Karen Russell |
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26119f4
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Even as a young man, Sawtooth had a hard time talking to women. Since moving to Out-to-Sea, he's become tight-lipped as an oyster. But he can feel the worlds pearling on his tongue: Girl, you are my moon. You are the tidal pull that keeps time marching forward.
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out-to-sea
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Karen Russell |
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af7f365
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On her last visit, the girl stole one of his family photographs right out of the frame. He thinks this means she is starting to care about him, too. Now whenever he looks at the empty frame, Sawtooth is moved to tears. He has to stare straight up at the ceiling, a loophole that prevents fluid from falling out of the eyes, thus saving a man the embarrassment of crying like a damn fool infant.
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out-to-sea
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Karen Russell |
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706df63
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Sawtooth slumps into his deck chair and stares up at the sky. It's a drunken sky, the stars hiccupping light. Great gusty clouds go spinning past the moon. The bright planets feel like pinpricks to Sawtooth's old eyes.
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out-to-sea
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Karen Russell |
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98e7989
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In the beginning, fifty hours sounded like a bleak ocean of time, more hours than Sawtooth wanted to spend with himself, let alone with another person. Now he the girl to sit and measure time with him, the way the neighbor woman needs her prescription mirror so that she doesn't forget her own face.
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out-to-sea
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Karen Russell |
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499a3fa
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Increasingly, Sawtooth's own memories are a loud bright muddle, like opening the door on a party full of strangers. He lies awake at night, limping down the long corridors of his memory, trying to find the girl's hands, ...
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out-to-sea
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Karen Russell |
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11fbb3a
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He feels flattered by the attention. Most people look anywhere but his lower body. They pretend not to notice when he limps down the docks. It makes it worse, somehow, everyone pretending that he's still whole.
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out-to-sea
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Karen Russell |
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ddee65b
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The girl has a funny way of romanticizing things.
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out-to-sea
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Karen Russell |