Read Online Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You by Alice Munro - Free Book Online Page A

never meant to scare you. I knocked but you were getting the ice out, you didn’t hear me.”
    I couldn’t see what he looked like, he was dark the way somebody is pressed up against a screen door with the bright daylight behind them. I only knew he wasn’t from around here.
    “I’m from the plane over there. My name is Chris Watters and what I was wondering was if I could use that pump.”
    There was a pump in the yard. That was the way the people used to get their water. Now I noticed he was carrying a pail.
    “You’re welcome,” I said. “I can get it from the tap and save you pumping.” I guess I wanted him to know we had piped water, didn’t pump ourselves.
    “I don’t mind the exercise.” He didn’t move, though, and finally he said, “Were you going to a dance?”
    Seeing a stranger there had made me entirely forget how I was dressed.
    “Or is that the way ladies around here generally get dressed up in the afternoon?”
    I didn’t know how to joke back then. I was too embarrassed.
    “You live here? Are you the lady of the house?”
    “I’m the hired girl.”
    Some people change when they find that out, their whole way of looking at you and speaking to you changes, but his didn’t.
    “Well, I just wanted to tell you you look very nice. I was so surprised when I looked in the door and saw you. Just because you looked so nice and beautiful.”
    I wasn’t even old enough then to realize how out of the common it is, for a man to say something like that to a woman, or somebody he is treating like a woman. For a man to say a word like beautiful . I wasn’t old enough to realize or to say anything back, or in fact to do anything but wish he would go away. Not that I didn’t like him, but just that it upset me so, having him look at me, and me trying to think of something to say.
    He must have understood. He said good-bye, and thanked me, and went and started filling his pail from the pump. I stood behind the Venetian blinds in the dining room, watching him. When he had gone, I went into the bedroom and took the dress off and put it back in the same place. I dressed in my own clothes and took my hair down and washed my face, wiping it on Kleenex, which I threw in the wastebasket.

    The Peebles asked me what kind of man he was. Young, middle-aged, short, tall? I couldn’t say.
    “Good-looking?” Dr. Peebles teased me.
    I couldn’t think a thing but that he would be coming to get his water again, he would be talking to Dr. or Mrs. Peebles, making friends with them, and he would mention seeing me that first afternoon, dressed up. Why not mention it? He would think it was funny. And no idea of the trouble it would get me into.
    After supper the Peebles drove into town to go to a movie. She wanted to go somewhere with her hair fresh done. I sat in my bright kitchen wondering what to do, knowing I would never sleep. Mrs. Peebles might not fire me, when she found out, but it would give her a different feeling about me altogether. This was the first place I ever worked but I already had picked up things about the way people feel when you are working for them. They like to think you aren’t curious. Not just that you aren’t dishonest, that isn’t enough. They like to feel you don’t notice things, that you don’t think or wonder about anything but what they liked to eat and how they like things ironed, and so on. I don’t mean they weren’t kind to me, because they were. They had me eat my meals with them (to tell the truth I expected to, I didn’t know there were families who don’t) and sometimes they took me along in the car. But all the same.
    I went up and checked on the children being asleep and then I went out. I had to do it. I crossed the road and went in the old fairgrounds gate. The plane looked unnatural sitting there, and shining with the moon. Off at the far side of the fairgrounds, where the bush was taking over, I saw his tent.
    He was sitting outside it smoking a cigarette. He saw