Read Online Book of the Dead by John Skipp, Craig Spector (Ed.) - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Skipp, Craig Spector (Ed.)
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sort of blur.
It’s like being lost in a heavy fog, Maddie thought sometimes. Only instead of looking for the road, or a house, or the village, or just some landmark like that lightning-struck pine in the Altons’ woodlot, I am looking for the wheel. If I can ever find the wheel, maybe I can tell myself to squat and lean my shoulder to it.
At last she found her wheel; it turned out to be Jack Pace. Women marry their fathers and men their mothers, some say, and while such a broad statement can hardly be true all of the time, it was true in Maddie’s case. Her father had been looked upon by his peers with fear and admiration—“Don’t fool with George Sullivan, chummy,” they’d say. “He’s one hefty son of a bitch and he’d just as soon knock the nose off your face as fart downwind.”
It was true at home, too. He’d been domineering and sometimes physically abusive… but he’d also known things to want and work for, like the Ford pickup, the chain saw, or those two acres that bounded their place on the left. Pop Cook’s land. George Sullivan had been known to refer to Pop Cook (out of his cups as well as in them) as one stinky old bastid, but there was some good hardwood left on those two acres. Pop didn’t know it because he had gone to living on the mainland when his arthritis really got going and crippled him up bad, and George let it be known on the island that what that bastid Pop Cook didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him none, and furthermore, he would kill the man or woman that let light into the darkness of Pop’s ignorance. No one did, and eventually the Sullivans got the land. And the wood, of course. The hardwood was logged off for the two wood stoves that heated the house in three years, but the land would remain. That was what George said and they believed him, believed in him, and they worked, all three of them. He said you got to put your shoulder to this wheel and push the bitch, you got to push ha’ad because she don’t move easy. So that was what they did.
In those days Maddy’s mother had kept a roadside stand, and there were always plenty of tourists who bought the vegetables she grew—the ones George told her to grow, of course, and even though they were never exactly what her mother called “the Gotrocks family,” they made out. Even in years when lobstering was bad, they made out.
Jack Pace could be domineering when Maddie’s indecision finally forced him to be, and she suspected that, loving as he was in their courtship, he might get around to the physical part—the twisted arm when supper was cold, the occasional slap or downright paddling—in time; when the bloom was off the rose, so as to speak. She saw the similarities… but she loved him. And needed him.
“I’m not going to be a lobsterman all my life, Maddie,” he told her the week before they married, and she believed him. A year before, when he had asked her out for the first time (she’d had no trouble coping then, either—had said yes almost before all the words could get out of his mouth, and she had blushed to the roots of her hair at the sound of her own naked eagerness), he would have said, “I ain’t going to be a lobsterman all my life.” A small change… but all the difference in the world. He had been going to night school three evenings a week, taking the ferry over and back. He would be dog tired after a day of pulling pots, but he’d go just the same, pausing only long enough to shower off the powerful smells of lobster and brine and to gulp two No Doz with hot coffee. After a while, when she saw he really meant to stick to it, Maddie began putting up hot soup for him to drink on the ferry ride over. Otherwise, he would have had no supper at all.
She remembered agonizing over the canned soups in the store—there were so many ! Would he want tomato? Some people didn’t like tomato soup. In fact, some people hated tomato soup, even if you made it with milk instead of water. Vegetable soup?
It’s like being lost in a heavy fog, Maddie thought sometimes. Only instead of looking for the road, or a house, or the village, or just some landmark like that lightning-struck pine in the Altons’ woodlot, I am looking for the wheel. If I can ever find the wheel, maybe I can tell myself to squat and lean my shoulder to it.
At last she found her wheel; it turned out to be Jack Pace. Women marry their fathers and men their mothers, some say, and while such a broad statement can hardly be true all of the time, it was true in Maddie’s case. Her father had been looked upon by his peers with fear and admiration—“Don’t fool with George Sullivan, chummy,” they’d say. “He’s one hefty son of a bitch and he’d just as soon knock the nose off your face as fart downwind.”
It was true at home, too. He’d been domineering and sometimes physically abusive… but he’d also known things to want and work for, like the Ford pickup, the chain saw, or those two acres that bounded their place on the left. Pop Cook’s land. George Sullivan had been known to refer to Pop Cook (out of his cups as well as in them) as one stinky old bastid, but there was some good hardwood left on those two acres. Pop didn’t know it because he had gone to living on the mainland when his arthritis really got going and crippled him up bad, and George let it be known on the island that what that bastid Pop Cook didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him none, and furthermore, he would kill the man or woman that let light into the darkness of Pop’s ignorance. No one did, and eventually the Sullivans got the land. And the wood, of course. The hardwood was logged off for the two wood stoves that heated the house in three years, but the land would remain. That was what George said and they believed him, believed in him, and they worked, all three of them. He said you got to put your shoulder to this wheel and push the bitch, you got to push ha’ad because she don’t move easy. So that was what they did.
In those days Maddy’s mother had kept a roadside stand, and there were always plenty of tourists who bought the vegetables she grew—the ones George told her to grow, of course, and even though they were never exactly what her mother called “the Gotrocks family,” they made out. Even in years when lobstering was bad, they made out.
Jack Pace could be domineering when Maddie’s indecision finally forced him to be, and she suspected that, loving as he was in their courtship, he might get around to the physical part—the twisted arm when supper was cold, the occasional slap or downright paddling—in time; when the bloom was off the rose, so as to speak. She saw the similarities… but she loved him. And needed him.
“I’m not going to be a lobsterman all my life, Maddie,” he told her the week before they married, and she believed him. A year before, when he had asked her out for the first time (she’d had no trouble coping then, either—had said yes almost before all the words could get out of his mouth, and she had blushed to the roots of her hair at the sound of her own naked eagerness), he would have said, “I ain’t going to be a lobsterman all my life.” A small change… but all the difference in the world. He had been going to night school three evenings a week, taking the ferry over and back. He would be dog tired after a day of pulling pots, but he’d go just the same, pausing only long enough to shower off the powerful smells of lobster and brine and to gulp two No Doz with hot coffee. After a while, when she saw he really meant to stick to it, Maddie began putting up hot soup for him to drink on the ferry ride over. Otherwise, he would have had no supper at all.
She remembered agonizing over the canned soups in the store—there were so many ! Would he want tomato? Some people didn’t like tomato soup. In fact, some people hated tomato soup, even if you made it with milk instead of water. Vegetable soup?
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