Read Online The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder - Free Book Online Page B

the world you needed—like money or anything like that—I could get it. I could do anything.”
    â€œI know it. I know that.” He put his hand in his pocket and brought out five dollars. “Sophie, the night Papa started off on the train he sent me his gold watch. Yesterday I sold it to Mr. Carey for forty dollars. I gave thirty dollars to Mama, and I saved five dollars for myself and five dollars for you. I don’t think Mama’s thinking very clear about money these days. You do the shopping, so you keep that five dollars secret until sometime you may need it.”
    At the same time and without an additional word he gave her his greatest treasure—three Kangaheela arrowheads of green quartz, of chrysoprase.
    â€œWell, I better get started.”
    â€œRoger, is Papa going to write us?”
    â€œThat’s what I keep thinking about. I don’t see how he can without getting us into more trouble, and himself too. You know he’s not a citizen any more. After a while—maybe after years—he’ll find a way. I think it’s best just not to think about him for a while. What we’ve got to do is live, that’s all.”
    Sophia nodded, then whispered, “Roger, what are you going to do? I mean: be?” Her question meant what kind of great man was he to be and Roger knew it.
    â€œI don’t know yet, Sophie.” He looked at her with a faint smile and nodded.
    He did not kiss her. He took her elbows in his hands and pressed them hard. “Now you go in the house and find some way of keeping Mama out of the kitchen while I pick up my coat and go out by the chicken run.”
    â€œRoger, I’m sorry. Roger, I’m sorry, but you’ve got to say goodbye to Mama. You’re the only man we’ve got in the house now.”
    Roger swallowed and squared his shoulders. “All right, Sophie, I will.”
    â€œShe’s in the sitting room sewing, like it was evening.”
    Roger went up the stairs the back way, pretending that he had forgotten something. He descended into the front hall and entered the sitting room.
    â€œWell, Mama, I’d better be going.”
    His mother rose uncertainly. She knew how he—and all Ashleys—hated to be kissed, hated birthdays and Christmas, and all occasions that strove to bring the unspoken to the surface. Her shortness of breath returned. Her words were barely audible. Beata Kellerman of Hoboken, New Jersey, reverted to the language of her childhood.
    â€œGott behüte dich, mein Sohn!”
    â€œGoodbye, Mama!”
    He left the house. For the first and only time in her life, Beata Ashley fainted.
    Something had hovered unspoken behind the conversation between Sophia and her brother on the croquet court.
    People who couldn’t pay their taxes went to the poorhouse. The poorhouse at Goshen, fourteen miles from Coaltown, hung like a great black cloud over the lives of many in Kangaheela and Grimble counties. To go to jail was far less shameful than to go to Goshen. Yet the guests at Goshen enjoyed amenities hitherto unknown to them. The meals were regular and nourishing. The sheets on the beds were changed twice a month. The view from the great verandahs was uplifting. There was no coal dust in the air. The women were set to sewing for the state’s hospitals, the men worked in the dairy and vegetable gardens and in winter made furniture. It is true that there was a persistent smell of cabbage in the corridors, but the smell of cabbage is not repellent to those who have spent a lifetime in indigence. Some congenial hours might have been arrived at in Goshen, but there were no smiles and no kindness; the burden of shame was too crushing. The institution was a limbo five days a week; on visitors’ days it was hell. “Are you all right, Grandma?” “Do they make you comfortable, Uncle Joe?” We are enchained and we enchain one another. To go to Goshen meant that your