Read Online Music Makers by Kate Wilhelm - Free Book Online Page A

the fall when I first suggested it.
    “That’s the point. He’ll never manage it again. He can’t.”
    “We’ll see,” she said vaguely. “I’ll bring it up with him.”
    She will never dare bring it up with him. As long as I can remember, the only way she ever dealt with him was by bending whichever way the wind was blowing, do anything or say anything to try to keep the peace. And apparently she’s oblivious that it isn’t working, and never worked. No one could keep the peace with him.
    When we children were all young, she usually tried to deflect his rages from us on to herself, and often it worked, which made me feel guilty. I was the one who tracked in mud, or who failed to take out the garbage, or whatever the particular offense was that time. At the same time I was glad whenever he turned away from me to anyone else.
    Whatever any of us does, money will reach a crisis point before much longer. The house is in disrepair. I’m afraid of the wiring, and the water heater is not going to last much longer. I found a job in the village in September, ten miles away, minimum wage, but a job. In the two weeks I kept it, Mom had to call me home three times. He got his chair mired in rain-softened earth, trying to get out to inspect his trees. Again when she set the brake on his chair and didn’t have enough strength to release it, and he couldn’t either. And he had fallen from his chair and she couldn’t get him back into it. I quit the job before my supervisor fired me outright.
    He didn’t want a Christmas tree, but I put a small one on an end table. Mom’s smile when she saw it made it worth the gamble that crossing him always was. He hated the lights and wouldn’t have them on when he was watching television, and since that was all hours of the day that he was up, the lights were seldom on, only after he went to bed at night, or when he took a nap. He wheeled into the living room that day, found the lights on and knocked the tree off the table, cursing. I was starting dinner, heard the crash, and hurried to see what happened.
    “Clean up that goddamn mess! Get that crap out of here!”
    I walked back to the kitchen. I didn’t touch it the rest of the day, or the next morning, and he was a madman in his fury. When Mom started to pick things up, he turned his wrath onto her. She burst into tears and ran from the room to her own makeshift bedroom in the dining room. After her heart attack, we had moved her bed so she could get some rest, and she had not wanted it moved back. Her refuge.
    “See what you’ve done!” he screamed at me. “You’re trying to kill us! You think you’ll inherit my land, my trees, sell out and make yourself a little fortune. You want to kill her! Clean up that goddamn mess like I told you!”
    Silently I cleaned up the mess. Then I went to see to Mom. She was lying on her bed weeping.
    “Why do you let it happen?” I asked, sitting next to her, stroking her back. “You know he’ll kill you with his temper fits. Or he’ll kill himself. But you don’t have to stand and watch. Walk out. Leave the room, come in her, and close the door.”
    “It’s the stroke,” she said, still weeping. “It changed him. He’ll get better again.”
    “It didn’t change him, Mom. Face it, he’s always had that crazy temper. The only difference is that he didn’t lose it as often before. Now it’s every day. But it’s the same.”
    “No. No. He’ll get better. You’ll see.”
    That night I heard the train whistle. It sounded closer, almost at the end of the driveway. It was fifteen degrees. I read at one time or another that freezing to death isn’t very painful after the first minute or two. It is said that people begin to feel comfortable and simply go to sleep.
    I know why I hear it, I realize suddenly. I yearn to go out and board the train.
    The basketball game is over, and I duck my head and pretend to be reading. He doesn’t speak to me as he wheels himself down the hallway