Read Online If You Could See Me Now by Peter Straub - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Peter Straub
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threading through bags of cement and Qwik-Ferm. I stepped over a stack of equipment catalogs. Beyond them a row of things like skinny dwarf mummies leaned against the wall. After a second I knew they were rifles and shotguns in soft cases. Shell boxes were stacked up at one end of the row. Like most farmers, Duane did not find it necessary to put his guns on display. Then I saw what I was looking for. Leaning against the wall, just as Duane had described it, was an old white paneled door, a perfect flat surface for a desk. It had odd doorknobs, but they could easily be taken off. Perhaps Duane would want them—as I got closer to the door, I saw that the knobs were glass, thousand-sided. Beside the door were stacked two trestles, Duane’s sawbucks, like insects in the act of copulation. And beside these was a case of empty Coke bottles, the old eight-ounce variety. The top had been ripped off to expose the open, sucking mouths of the bottles.
I thought of calling for Alison Updahl’s help, but decided not to. It had been a morning of mistakes, and I did not wish to commit another and upset the delicate peace between us. So I took the trestles up first and put them on the grass outside Duane’s back door, and then went back down for what would be my desktop.
The long heavy wooden rectangle was far more awkward to handle, but I managed to get it up the stairs without knocking down a shotgun or dislodging an ax or shattering the oldcello-hipped Coke bottles. After I had muscled it up the steep wooden steps, I was sorry I had not called for Alison’s help, for my chest leaped and pounded as though a trout were dying in it. My torn hand ached. I slid the door across the linoleum, crumpling several small hooked rugs, and then banged the screen door open with my elbow and wrestled the door outside and down the concrete steps. I was sweating and breathing hard. Mopping my forehead with my sleeve, I propped the door against the trestles and looked at it in dismay. Spider webs, dust and insects made scurrying lacy patterns over the white paint.
The solution, a garden hose, lay at my feet. I twisted the knob set into the base of the house and played the hose over the door until all the filth had been sluiced away. I was tempted to run it over myself. My hands were black and my shirt was ruined, and sweat poured out of my scalp. But I merely held my hands one after the other in the jet of cold water, wetting the bandage as little as possible. Application of magical substance.
Cold water!
I dropped the still-spurting hose and went across Duane’s patchy lawn in the direction of the barn. When I looked to the right I could see my cousin’s head and upper body grinding along atop the invisible tractor, as if he were floated by a perverse, bumpy wind. I went over the gravel and dust of the drive. The dog began to curse me with big windy arrogant curses. I reached the tank and plunged my good hand into the greenish water and closed it over a beer bottle to which clung my bloody handkerchief. This I threw into the weeds. I extracted the dripping bottle. I had just twisted off the cap and begun to pour into me the tingling liquid when I saw the blond-fringed face of the Tin Woodsmanstaring at me from the kitchen window. She winked. Suddenly we were grinning at each other, and I felt the snarl of emotion which the day had caused in me begin to loosen. It was as though I had found an ally. Really, it could not have been easy for a high-spirited girl to have my cousin Duane for a father.
THREE
A fter I had stripped it of the knobs and set it up in the empty upstairs bedroom of my grandmother’s house, the desk looked sturdy and serviceable, a present-day echo of all the desks I have known and used. The room itself, small, white and pine-floored, was a perfect place for literary work, since the bare walls offered vistas for contemplation and the single window which faced the barn and the path to Duane’s house, opportunity for
I thought of calling for Alison Updahl’s help, but decided not to. It had been a morning of mistakes, and I did not wish to commit another and upset the delicate peace between us. So I took the trestles up first and put them on the grass outside Duane’s back door, and then went back down for what would be my desktop.
The long heavy wooden rectangle was far more awkward to handle, but I managed to get it up the stairs without knocking down a shotgun or dislodging an ax or shattering the oldcello-hipped Coke bottles. After I had muscled it up the steep wooden steps, I was sorry I had not called for Alison’s help, for my chest leaped and pounded as though a trout were dying in it. My torn hand ached. I slid the door across the linoleum, crumpling several small hooked rugs, and then banged the screen door open with my elbow and wrestled the door outside and down the concrete steps. I was sweating and breathing hard. Mopping my forehead with my sleeve, I propped the door against the trestles and looked at it in dismay. Spider webs, dust and insects made scurrying lacy patterns over the white paint.
The solution, a garden hose, lay at my feet. I twisted the knob set into the base of the house and played the hose over the door until all the filth had been sluiced away. I was tempted to run it over myself. My hands were black and my shirt was ruined, and sweat poured out of my scalp. But I merely held my hands one after the other in the jet of cold water, wetting the bandage as little as possible. Application of magical substance.
Cold water!
I dropped the still-spurting hose and went across Duane’s patchy lawn in the direction of the barn. When I looked to the right I could see my cousin’s head and upper body grinding along atop the invisible tractor, as if he were floated by a perverse, bumpy wind. I went over the gravel and dust of the drive. The dog began to curse me with big windy arrogant curses. I reached the tank and plunged my good hand into the greenish water and closed it over a beer bottle to which clung my bloody handkerchief. This I threw into the weeds. I extracted the dripping bottle. I had just twisted off the cap and begun to pour into me the tingling liquid when I saw the blond-fringed face of the Tin Woodsmanstaring at me from the kitchen window. She winked. Suddenly we were grinning at each other, and I felt the snarl of emotion which the day had caused in me begin to loosen. It was as though I had found an ally. Really, it could not have been easy for a high-spirited girl to have my cousin Duane for a father.
THREE
A fter I had stripped it of the knobs and set it up in the empty upstairs bedroom of my grandmother’s house, the desk looked sturdy and serviceable, a present-day echo of all the desks I have known and used. The room itself, small, white and pine-floored, was a perfect place for literary work, since the bare walls offered vistas for contemplation and the single window which faced the barn and the path to Duane’s house, opportunity for
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