Read Online The Uninnocent by Bradford Morrow - Free Book Online Page B

What was inside wasn’t a letter from your mother. It was a kind of document, like a pact, I guess you could say, and all written out longhand on this oatmeal paper?”
    The word paper traced an upward arc, transformed itself into a question. Georgia hoped that I might by this detail— oatmeal paper —be prompted into recognition of something she obviously would rather not have to put into words herself.
    I said, “I see.”
    â€œThe handwriting was a child’s.”
    After a long stretch of silence upstairs, Cutts continued with his noisemaking.
    I asked Georgia, “Would you care for some sherry? I think I could do with a little myself.” I opened the cabinet door, got out two of Mama’s crystal vine-stemmed glasses and the Taylor amontillado that was her favorite, so pale, so tobacco-yellow and strong, and brought them to the table, where, after clearing a space, I set them down. I could hear Cutts banging around at the westernmost corner of the attic, then he went silent again. I knew exactly which barrel-topped trunk he was picking through now. It would take him half an hour to dissect its contents even if, as I suspected, he didn’t bother to replace what he’d removed.
    â€œIt had to be years old, I knew,” Georgia went on, taking a sip of the amontillado. “The way it almost came into pieces along where it was creased. Anyway, it was a pact—”
    The stillness from Cutts’s periphery unnerved me more than I thought it might, but I reassured myself, steeled myself, thinking, Go on, let it happen, whatever happens, let him come down now, let him do us all the —
    â€œâ€”between Cutts and your brother and—”
    â€œDesmond?”
    â€œYes, and some other names, too. They’d made this treaty, I guess you could call it. It was, well—but, Jenny, I can’t. What I want to ask is, is it true?”
    She had put the question to the reflective, circular surface of sherry, stationary on the table before her.
    I thought, What a lovely woman. Worry can sometimes be so becoming in a person .
    That attic where everything was lost. And Father at the time downstairs, sedated. Dr. Farley had gone home, having put his syringe, his morphine, his instruments, back into that black scratched and bubbled leather bag of his. Mama and me the doctor had left to stand by the bed to prop and reprop pillows, smooth the coverlet, gaze into his eyes runny and vacant as an old horse’s. Dad not knowing where he was, pushing up with his hands outstretched as if something on the ceiling threatened him, pushing and pushing it away. The deathly farrago of sounds he made so upset his poor wife, my mother, that she had to leave the room not to burst into tears in front of him. The light in the room, color of a peach. Eisenhower making a speech in his simple way on the scratchy radio. Kitchen smells, roast beef and gravy. Early evening. August. Back when.
    â€œDesmond?” Mama hollered. “Dessie? Cutts?” Then she returned to the room, sat down on the bed, its springs complaining. “Go, would you, Jenny, and find those brothers of yours.”
    I ran outside into the twilight and down the street toward the places where I knew they might be hanging out. Not in the playground park. The druggist’s was empty, its row of stools with mottled vinyl aligned kind of sad somehow before the long counter, Coke taps, pie racks, ketchup bottles, the stainless-steel malted cup—
    Not here … I know where they are .
    â€”and the movie posters I loved to stare at while I sat up to the counter drinking my cherry soda, especially the one for Lifeboat , Tallulah Bankhead and all those desperate men and women huddled together, waves licking the prow of their doomed boat, and as I stared into an image I myself would easily slip inside, so that it was I who held the red pony’s reins in The Red Pony . As I ran like the wind back along the