Read Online Gap Creek by Robert Morgan - Free Book Online Page B

thought of saying, but I didn’t. As Hank rocked faster the bedposts scooted on the floor a little. What he was doing hurt a little, but it felt good too. A sweet hurt, a hot sweetness.
    “Oh,” I said. And I thought, You’ll have to stop this. We can’t go on like this, for I was getting short of breath. And Hank was getting short of breath. Stop that, I thought. Or maybe it was: Don’t stop. Don’t stop now. Don’t stop.
    All the colors started running through my head in the dark. Purples and greens and yellows and blacks. They blended into each other and poured over each other. And the colors was like milk, so soft and warm and pouring over and into each other. And the colors was swelled, bigger than I had ever thought they could be. The colors was melodies, like shaped note singing.
    Now quit this, I thought. We’ve got to stop or we’ll wake up old man Pendergast. We’ll wake up the chickens in the henhouse and we’ll wake up the horse and the hog in the pen. We’ll even wake up the stars over the mountains, and the birds roosting under the eaves of the barn. But the colors poured on behind my eyes, the purples and blues, the salty colors like orange and yellow. Yellow is salty as butter and popcorn. Yellow was swelled up and buttery. And there was a golden brown that was saltiest of all.
    And I felt a sneeze coming down there. It was the best feeling, of a sneeze coming right out of my middle and swelling through me to get rid of what I was holding back. And I sneezed quick, and again. It was the sweetest cachoo, and cachoo, so deep and full it hurt too.
    Hank was shoving too and pushing with his feet against the foot of the bed like he was running while laying down or dancing while laying down. And there was a wrench of boards and a squeal of nails pulling out. We fell and slammed onto the floor. It sounded like the house had fell down, but I knowed what had happened, even though it was dark and I couldn’t see. That old bed had pulled apart and the footboard had fell away. The springs and mattress had slid onto the floor.
    I was laying on the floor, and I knowed Mr. Pendergast must have woke up beneath us. But I giggled a little and Hank put his head on my neck and giggled too. We was both tired out, and it felt good just to lay still. I listened to see if Mr. Pendergast was moving around below. But all I could hear was my own breathing, and Hank’s breathing. And then something crashed, and I could tell it was the headboard of the bed falling over on the floor.
    “Lord a mercy,” I said in the dark. I thought I heard somebody laughing below, but I couldn’t be sure. It might have been a screech owl off in the woods, or wind in the eaves.
    MY FIRST TROUBLE with Mr. Pendergast come the next morning when I fixed his breakfast. Hank got up early to go to the mill at Eaton where he was helping to tend the brick kilns. I fixed him some biscuits and butter and jelly to take in his lunch pail. After he was gone I went ahead and boiled a saucepan of water to fix Mr. Pendergast’s poached egg. Hank had said a poached egg was just a slightly boiled egg. Rosie would know how to do it.
    When the water was bubbling and rolling I put an egg in for what I figured was a minute. But I didn’t have an egg timer or clock with a sweep hand. So I just had to guess. And then when I took the egg out of the water and put it on the table beside Mr. Pendergast’s plate, he had still not come out of the bedroom. I kept waiting and finally eat my own breakfast of grits and gravy and drunk a cup of coffee. I finished and still Mr. Pendergast had not appeared. I got up and heated more water to wash the dishes, and after I had finished washing and drying the plates there was still no sign of him. I put the biscuits back in the oven and soon the grits was cold and getting a skin. Could Mr. Pendergast have died in the night? A chill went through me down to my tailbone. Had he heard the bed fall down in the night and was too