The Water Keeper

by Charles Martin

Throughout her history, the state of Florida has been home to some great writers, including some Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winners. Judy Blume, Brad Meltzer, Stuart Woods, Elmore Leonard, James Patterson, Mary Kay Andrews, Carl Hiaasen, Jack Kerouac, and Stephen King. Then there are the giants: Madeleine L’Engle, Ernest Hemingway, Patrick Smith, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Preceding all of them was the abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, who put a human face on slavery with Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

“I

threads holding it together. Fighting images in

She’d waited her whole life. A tortured creature who—despite her crusty exterior and like the rest of the human race—had been and was continually asking two questions: Who am I? And more importantly, whose am I? In my life, in my strange line of work, I’d discovered that we as people can’t answer the first until someone else answers the second. It’s a function of design. Belonging comes before identity. Ownership births purpose. Someone speaks whose we are, and out of that we become who we are. It’s just the way the heart works.

“That we were made to want and give love. That no matter how dark the night, midnight will pass. No darkness, no matter how dark, can hold back the second hand. Whether you like it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you hope it or not, whether you build a wall around your soul and cut out your eyes, wait a few hours and the sun will crack the skyline and the darkness will roll back like a scroll.”

But love is a difficult thing to kill. Actually, it’s the only thing in this universe or any other that you can’t kill. No weapon that has ever been made can put a dent in it. You might punch it, stab it, whip it, and hang it out to dry—you can even drive a spear through it, pierce its very heart. But all you’re going to get is blood and water, because love gives birth to love.