Read Online Tampico (James A. Michener Fiction Series) by Toby Olson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Toby Olson
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and had to throw up at the side of the road. And when they reached Wilmore his father told him to go back, it was okay, he could walk around town for a while and get some air. Then he could hitch a ride. There’d be no problem.
And there wasn’t. He caught a ride in a new Buick convertible, a man in a dark suit. They couldn’t talk in the wind, but the air was fresh and his stomach settled, and when the man let him off he was only a mile’s walk from home and was feeling better. When he got up to the porch and looked through the screen there was no one there, and though it was getting on toward dusk and shadows washed over the sink and table, there were no pots on the stove and no lights. He sat in the kitchen for a few minutes, then decided he could do the candling, get it done before dark.
“It was almost dark and a damp breeze had come up, and there was a mist moving in the branches of the highest trees. I remember clouds in the sky, coming in low over the coop, and a drop of rain or two hitting my forehead as I approached it. I could hear the chickens clucking, a few of them, and maybe I saw the shadow of one moving in the screening, jumping down from a perch.
“They were on the floor together, off in a corner on blankets, and the chickens were watching them. I had the door half open, and I must have heard something, her voice possibly, or seen the chicken light at the end of its cord where she held it, wavering. I stopped there, just inches before the door’s squeak, and heard the muffled grind of grain under the blanket where his heels shuffled and a tapping that was the long electrical cord striking the floor as she bucked over him, riding him, facing me, but not seeing me. I could see the top of his head, her arm extended, hand gripping his shoulder, while the other one brought the light out under her chin, then back into her breast, her face in the light, then out of it, eyes rolling, hair ribbons brushing her cheeks.
“She was fully dressed, in one of her Sunday dresses, a high collar, and a long full skirt that spread out over him, the hem just under his chin, covering his arms and shoulders, even his legs, and she was sitting up straight upon him, the way she always said to sit at the table, something proper, modest even, away to be sitting for company, had there ever been any, not arrogantly, but self-contained, sitting in stillness until spoken to, as she had when she was a girl.
“But she was rocking, a movement under the fabric in her hips that I’d never seen before, not in anyone, like a child rocking on a wooden horse at a carnival, but not so insouciant, a rocking that was motivated, but not in her mind somehow. And yet above her hips she was not rocking, and her face had her mind elsewhere, in the way she often looked out the window as she was beating batter for a cake, as if she were gazing over a fence into a neighbor’s yard, her eyes focusing on desired objects and postures and events, then rolling back and moving on. Then the rocking stopped. The chicken light was at her chin, and I saw her eyes focus on me, come to a realization, then fill with hate. I couldn’t look in those eyes, and I turned away from her then, from him too, though he’d been nothing, and let the door slide silently shut behind me.
“It was three days later that she fell to the floor at the kitchen sink and died there, a heart attack. We’d not spoken nor looked in each other’s eyes since the night I’d caught her in the coop, and though Adam was gone I suspect she knew a time would come when we’d have to do those things, as if he were still present, and couldn’t continue to live in the knowledge of that necessity. She was thirty-four years old.
“But I haven’t spoken about my father enough, but for his place up on the hill under that old tree. He was a good man and an upright one, who had come on hard times, but unlike my mother was unbroken by them. I knew early on that I’d been conceived out of
And there wasn’t. He caught a ride in a new Buick convertible, a man in a dark suit. They couldn’t talk in the wind, but the air was fresh and his stomach settled, and when the man let him off he was only a mile’s walk from home and was feeling better. When he got up to the porch and looked through the screen there was no one there, and though it was getting on toward dusk and shadows washed over the sink and table, there were no pots on the stove and no lights. He sat in the kitchen for a few minutes, then decided he could do the candling, get it done before dark.
“It was almost dark and a damp breeze had come up, and there was a mist moving in the branches of the highest trees. I remember clouds in the sky, coming in low over the coop, and a drop of rain or two hitting my forehead as I approached it. I could hear the chickens clucking, a few of them, and maybe I saw the shadow of one moving in the screening, jumping down from a perch.
“They were on the floor together, off in a corner on blankets, and the chickens were watching them. I had the door half open, and I must have heard something, her voice possibly, or seen the chicken light at the end of its cord where she held it, wavering. I stopped there, just inches before the door’s squeak, and heard the muffled grind of grain under the blanket where his heels shuffled and a tapping that was the long electrical cord striking the floor as she bucked over him, riding him, facing me, but not seeing me. I could see the top of his head, her arm extended, hand gripping his shoulder, while the other one brought the light out under her chin, then back into her breast, her face in the light, then out of it, eyes rolling, hair ribbons brushing her cheeks.
“She was fully dressed, in one of her Sunday dresses, a high collar, and a long full skirt that spread out over him, the hem just under his chin, covering his arms and shoulders, even his legs, and she was sitting up straight upon him, the way she always said to sit at the table, something proper, modest even, away to be sitting for company, had there ever been any, not arrogantly, but self-contained, sitting in stillness until spoken to, as she had when she was a girl.
“But she was rocking, a movement under the fabric in her hips that I’d never seen before, not in anyone, like a child rocking on a wooden horse at a carnival, but not so insouciant, a rocking that was motivated, but not in her mind somehow. And yet above her hips she was not rocking, and her face had her mind elsewhere, in the way she often looked out the window as she was beating batter for a cake, as if she were gazing over a fence into a neighbor’s yard, her eyes focusing on desired objects and postures and events, then rolling back and moving on. Then the rocking stopped. The chicken light was at her chin, and I saw her eyes focus on me, come to a realization, then fill with hate. I couldn’t look in those eyes, and I turned away from her then, from him too, though he’d been nothing, and let the door slide silently shut behind me.
“It was three days later that she fell to the floor at the kitchen sink and died there, a heart attack. We’d not spoken nor looked in each other’s eyes since the night I’d caught her in the coop, and though Adam was gone I suspect she knew a time would come when we’d have to do those things, as if he were still present, and couldn’t continue to live in the knowledge of that necessity. She was thirty-four years old.
“But I haven’t spoken about my father enough, but for his place up on the hill under that old tree. He was a good man and an upright one, who had come on hard times, but unlike my mother was unbroken by them. I knew early on that I’d been conceived out of
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