Read Online Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier - Free Book Online

clock strikes the half hour.
    Sally nodded and said, Uh-huh, and that seemed to close the topic.
    They moved on to other matters, Ada listening with interest as Esco and Sally listed the old signs they had noted of a hard winter coming. Grey squirrels rattling in hickory trees, frantic to hoard more and more nuts. Wax thick on the wild crabapples. Wide bands of black on caterpillars. Yarrow crushed between the hands smelling sharp as falling snow. Hawthorns loaded with red haws burning bright as blood.
    —Other signs too, Esco said. Bad ones.
    He had been keeping a tally of omens and portents from around the county. A mule was said to have given birth near Catalooch, a pig to have been born with human hands at Balsam. A man at Cove Creek claimed to have slaughtered a sheep, and among its internals no heart was found. Hunters on Big Laurel swore that an owl made utterments like those of a human,and though they found no agreement on its message, all confirmed that as the owl spoke, there appeared to be two moons in the sky. For three years running there had been uncommon raving of wolves in the winter, weak harvest of grain in summer. They all pointed to evil times. Esco’s thinking was that though they had so far been isolated from the general meanness of the war, its cess might soon spill through the low gaps and pour in to foul them all.
    There was a pause, and then Sally said, Have you set on a course yet?
    —No, Ada said.
    —You’re not yet ready to return home? Sally asked.
    —Home? Ada said, momentarily confused, for she had felt all summer that she had none.
    —Charleston, Sally said.
    —No. I’m not yet ready, Ada said.
    —Have you heard from Charleston?
    —Not yet, Ada said. But I suspect that the letter I just picked up from Mr. Peek may clarify the matter of funds. It appears to be from my father’s solicitor.
    —Pull it out and see what it says, Esco said.
    —I cannot bring myself to look. And, in truth, all it will tell me is whether I have money to live. It will not tell me where I might find myself a year farther on or what I might be doing with myself. Those are the questions that worry me most.
    Esco rubbed his hands together and grinned. I might be the only man in the county that can help you there, he said. It’s claimed that if you take a mirror and look backwards into a well, you’ll see your future down in the water.
    So in short order Ada found herself bent backward over the mossy well lip, canted in a pose with little to recommend it in the way of dignity or comfort, back arched, hips forward, legs spraddled for balance. She held a hand mirror above her face, angled to catch the surface of the water below.
    Ada had agreed to the well-viewing as a variety of experiment in local custom and as a tonic for her gloom. Her thoughts had been broody and morbid and excessively retrospective for so long that she welcomed the chance to run counter to that flow, to cast forward and think about the future, even though she expected to see nothing but water at the bottom of the well.
    She shifted her feet to find better grip on the packed dirt of the yard and then tried to look into the mirror. The white sky above was skimmedover with backlit haze, bright as a pearl or as a silver mirror itself. The dark foliage of oaks all around the edges framed the sky, duplicating the wooden frame of the mirror into which Ada peered, examining its picture of the well depths behind her to see what might lie ahead in her life. The bright round of well water at the end of the black shaft was another mirror. It cast back the shine of sky and was furred around the edges here and there with sprigs of fern growing between stones.
    Ada tried to focus her attention on the hand mirror, but the bright sky beyond kept drawing her eye away. She was dazzled by light and shade, by the confusing duplication of reflections and of frames. All coming from too many directions for the mind to take account of. The various images bounced