Read Online Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson Mccullers - Free Book Online Page A

General's wife was very fat, slow, gushed over, and completely out of things.
    'One thing I came over about this morning,' said Leonora, 'is to find out if Anacleto
     will serve the punch for me.'
    'He will be glad to help you out,' Alison answered for him.
    Anacleto, who was standing in the doorway, did not look so glad about it. He glanced
     reproachfully at Alison and went downstairs to see about luncheon.
    'Susie's two brothers are helping in the kitchen and, my God, how that crowd can eat! I
     never saw anything to equal it. We '
    'By the way,' said Alison, 'is Susie married?'
    'Heavens, no! She won't have anything to do with men. She got caught when she was
     fourteen years old and has never forgotten it. But why?'
    'I just wondered because I was almost sure that I saw someone go into your house by the
     back way late last night and come out again before dawn.'
    'You just imagined it,' said Leonora soothingly. She considered Alison to be quite off
     her head, and did not believe even the simplest remark that she made.
    'Perhaps so.'
    Leonora was bored and ready to go home. Still, she thought that a neighborly visit should
     last at least an hour, so she stuck it out dutifully. She sighed and tried again to look
     somewhat ill. It was her idea, when she was not too carried away with thoughts of food and
     sport, that the tactful topic of conversation in a sickroom was an account of other
     illnesses. Like all very stupid people she had a predilection for the gruesome, which she
     could indulge in or throw off at will. Her repertoire of tragedies was limited for the
     most part to violent sporting accidents.
    'Did I tell you about the thirteen year old girl who came along with us on a fox hunt as
     a whipper in and broke her neck?'
    'Yes, Leonora,' said Alison in a voice of controlled exasperation. 'You have told me of
     every terrible detail five times.'
    'Does it make you nervous?'
    'Extremely.'
    'Hmmm ' said Leonora. She was not at all troubled by this rebuff. Calmly she lighted a
     cigarette. 'Don't ever let anybody tell you that's the way to fox hunt. I know. I've
     hunted both ways. Listen, Alison!' She worked her mouth exaggeratedly and spoke in a
     deliberately encouraging voice as though addressing a small child. 'Do you know how to
     hunt 'possums?'
    Alison nodded shortly and straightened the counterpane. 'You tree them.'
    'On foot,' said Leonora. 'That's the way to hunt a fox. Now this uncle of mine has a
     cabin in the mountains and my brothers and I used to visit him. About six of us would
     start out with our dogs on a cold evening when the sun had set. A colored boy would run
     along behind with a jug of good mellow corn on his back. Sometimes we'd be after a fox all
     night long in the mountains. Gosh, I can't tell you about it. Somehow ' The feeling was
     in Leonora, but she had not the words to express it.
    Then to have one last drink at six o'clock and sit down to breakfast. And, God! everybody
     said this uncle of mine was peculiar, but he sure set a good table. After a hunt we'd come
     in to a table just loaded with fish roe, broiled ham, fried chicken, biscuits the size of
     your hand '
    When Leonora was gone at last, Alison did not know whether to laugh or cry; she did a
     little of both, rather hysterically. Anacleto came up to her and carefully beat out the
     big dent at the foot of the bed where Leonora had been sitting.
    'I am going to divorce the Major, Anacleto,' she said suddenly when she had stopped
     laughing. 'I will inform him of it tonight.'
    From Anacleto's expression she could not tell whether or not this was a surprise to him.
     He waited for a time and then asked: 'Then where shall we go after that, Madame Alison?'
    Through her mind passed a long panorama of plans which she had made dining sleepless
     nights tutoring Latin in some college town, shrimp fishing, hiring Anacleto out to
     drudge while she sat in a boarding house and took in sewing
    But she