half a grapefruit

rose wrote the entrance, she went across the bridge, she went to high school.

there were four large clean windows along the wall. there were new fluorescent lights. theclass was health and guidance, a new idea. boys and girls mixed until after christmas, when theygot on to family life. the teacher was young and optimistic. she wore a dashing red suit thatflared out over the hips. she went up and down, up and down the rows, making everybody saywhat they had for breakfast, to see if they were keeping canada’s food rules.

differences soon became evident, between town and country. “fried potatoes.”

“bread and corn syrup.”

“tea and porridge.”

“tea and bread.”

“tea and fried eggs and cottage roll.”

“raisin pie.”

there was some laughing, the teacher making ineffectual scolding faces. she was getting to thetown side of the room. a rough sort of segregation was maintained, voluntarily, in the classroom.

over here people claimed to have eaten toast and marmalade, bacon and eggs, corn flakes, evenwaffles and syrup. orange juice, said a few.

rose had stuck herself on to the back of a town row. west hanratty was not represented, exceptby her. she was wanting badly to align herself with towners, against her place of origin, to attachherself to those waffle-eating coffee-drinking aloof and knowledgeable possessors of breakfastnooks.

“half a grapefruit,” she said boldly. nobody else had thought of it.

as a matter of fact flo would have thought eating grapefruit for breakfast as bad as drinkingchampagne. they didn’t even sell them in the store. they didn’t go in much for fresh fruit. a fewspotty bananas, small unpromising oranges. flo believed, as many country people did, thatanything not well-cooked was bad for the stomach. for breakfast they too had tea and porridge.

puffed rice in the summertime. the first morning the puffed rice, light as pollen, came spillinginto the bowl, was as festive, as encouraging a time as the first day walking on the hard roadwithout rubbers or the first day the door could be left open in the lovely, brief time between frostand flies.

rose was pleased with herself for thinking of the grapefruit and with the way she had said it, inso bold, yet natural, a voice. her voice could go dry altogether in school, her heart could roll itselfup into a thumping ball and lodge in her throat, sweat could plaster her blouse to her arms, in spiteof mum. her nerves were calamitous.

she was walking home across the bridge a few days later, and she heard someone calling. nother name but she knew it was meant for her, so she softened her steps on the boards, and listened.

the voices were underneath her, it seemed, though she could look down through the cracks andsee nothing but fast-running water. somebody must be hidden down by the pilings. the voiceswere wistful, so delicately disguised she could not tell if they were boys’ or girls’.

“half-a-grapefruit!”

she would hear that called, now and again, for years, called out from an alley or a dark window.

she would never let on she heard, but would soon have to touch her face, wipe the moisture awayfrom her upper lip. we sweat for our pretensions.

it could have been worse. disgrace was the easiest thing to come by. high school life washazardous, in that harsh clean light, and nothing was ever forgotten. rose could have been the girlwho lost the kotex. that was probably a country girl, carrying the kotex in her pocket or in theback of her notebook, for use later in the day. anybody who lived at a distance might have donethat. rose herself had done it. there was a kotex dispenser in the girls’ washroom but it wasalways empty, would swallow your dimes but disgorge nothing in return. there was the famouspact made by two country girls to seek out the janitor at lunchtime, ask him to fill it. no use.

“which one of you is the one that needs it?” he said. they fled. they said his room under thestairs had an old grimy couch in it, and a cat’s skeleton. they swore to it.

that kotex must have fallen on the floor, maybe in the cloakroom, then been picked up andsmuggled somehow into the trophy case in the main hall. there it came to public notice. foldingand carrying had spoiled its fresh look, rubbed its surface, so that it was possible to imagine it hadbeen warmed against the body. a great scandal. in morning assembly, the principal madereference to a disgusting object. he vowed to discover, expose, flog and expel, the culprit who hadput it on view. every girl in the school was denying knowledge of it. theories abounded. rosewas afraid that she might be a leading candidate for ownership, so was relieved whenresponsibility was fixed on a big sullen country girl named muriel mason, who wore slub rayonhousedresses to school, and had b.o.

“you got the rag on today, muriel?” boys would say to her now, would call after her.

“if i was muriel mason i would want to kill myself,” rose heard a senior girl say to another onthe stairs. “i would kill myself.” she spoke not pityingly but impatiently.

every day when rose got home she would tell flo about what went on in school. flo enjoyedthe episode of the kotex, would ask about fresh developments. half-a-grapefruit she never got tohear about. rose would not have told her anything in which she did not play a superior, anonlooker’s part. pitfalls were for others, flo and rose agreed. the change in rose, once she leftthe scene, crossed the bridge, changed herself into chronicler, was remarkable. no nerves anymore. a loud skeptical voice, some hip-swinging in a red and yellow plaid skirt, more than a hintof swaggering.

flo and rose had switched roles. now rose was the one bringing stories home, flo was the onewho knew the names of the characters and was waiting to hear.

horse nicholson, del fairbridge, runt chesterton. florence dodie, shirley pickering, rubycarruthers. flo waited daily for news of them. she called them jokers.

“well, what did those jokers get up to today?”

they would sit in the kitchen, the door wide open to the store in case any customers came in,and to the stairs in case her father called. he was in bed. flo made coffee or she told rose to get acouple of cokes out of the cooler.

this is the sort of story rose brought home:

ruby carruthers was a slutty sort of girl, a red-head with a bad squint. (one of the greatdifferences between then and now, at least in the country, and places like west hanratty, was thatsquints and walleyes were let alone, teeth overlapped or protruded any way they liked.) rubycarruthers worked for bryants the hardware people; she did housework for her board and stayedin the house when they went away, as they often did, to the horse races or the hockey games or toflorida. one time when she was there alone three boys went over to see her. del fairbridge, horsenicholson, runt chesterton.

“to see what they could get,” flo put in. she looked at the ceiling and told rose to keep hervoice down. her father would not tolerate this sort of story.

del fairbridge was a good-looking boy, conceited, and not very clever. he said he would gointo the house and persuade ruby with no trouble at all, and if he could get her to do it with allthree of them, he would. what he did not know was that horse nicholson had already arrangedwith ruby to meet him under the veranda.

“spiders in there, likely,” said flo. “i guess they don’t care.” while del was wandering aroundthe dark house looking for her, ruby was under the veranda with horse, and runt who was in onthe whole plan was sitting on the veranda steps keeping watch, no doubt listening attentively to thebumping and the breathing.

presently horse came out and said he was going into the house to find del, not to enlighten himbut to see how the joke was working, this being the most important part of the proceedings, as faras horse was concerned. he found del eating marshmallows in the pantry and saying rubycarruthers wasn’t fit to piss on, he could do better any day, and he was going home.

meanwhile runt had crawled under the veranda and got to work on ruby.

“jesus murphy!” said flo.

then horse came out and runt and ruby could hear him over head, walking on the veranda.

said ruby, who is that? and runt said, oh, that’s only horse nicholson. then who the hell areyou? said ruby.

jesus murphy!

rose did not bother with the rest of the story, which was that ruby got into a bad mood, sat onthe veranda steps with the dirt from underneath all over her clothes and in her hair, refused tosmoke a cigarette or share a package of cupcakes (now probably rather squashed) that runt hadswiped from the grocery store where he worked after school. they teased her to tell them whatwas the matter and at last she said, “i think i got a right to know who i’m doing it with.”

“she’ll get what she deserves,” said flo philosophically. other people thought so too. it was thefashion, if you picked up any of ruby’s things, by mistake, particularly her gym suit or runningshoes, to go and wash your hands, so you wouldn’t risk getting v.d.

upstairs rose’s father was having a coughing fit. these fits were desperate, but they hadbecome used to them. flo got up and went to the bottom of the stairs. she listened there until thefit was over.

“that medicine doesn’t help him one iota,” she said. “that doctor couldn’t put a band-aid onstraight.” to the end, she blamed all rose’s father’s troubles on medicines, doctors.

“if you ever got up to any of that with a boy it would be the end of you,” she said. “i mean it.”

rose flushed with rage and said she would die first. “i hope so,” flo said.

here is the sort of story flo told rose:

when her mother died, flo was twelve, and her father gave her away. he gave her to a well-to-do farming family who were to work her for her board and send her to school. but most of thetime they did not send her. there was too much work to be done. they were hard people.

“if you were picking apples and there was one left on the tree you would have to go back andpick over every tree in the entire orchard.

the same when you were out picking up stones in the field. leave one and you had to do thewhole field again.”

the wife was the sister of a bishop. she was always careful of her skin, rubbing it with hindshoney and almond. she took a high tone with everybody and was sarcastic and believed that shehad married down.

“but she was good-looking,” said flo, “and she give me one thing. it was a long pair of satingloves, they were a light brown color. fawn. they were lovely. i never meant to lose them but idid.”

flo had to take the men’s dinner to them in the far field. the husband opened it up and said,“why is there no pie in this dinner?”

“if you want any pie you can make it yourself,” said flo, in the exact words and tone of hermistress when they were packing the dinner. it was not surprising that she could imitate thatwoman so well; she was always doing it, even practicing at the mirror. it was surprising she let itout then.

the husband was amazed, but recognized the imitation. he marched flo back to the house anddemanded of his wife if that was what she had said. he was a big man, and very bad-tempered.

no, it is not true, said the bishop’s sister, that girl is nothing but a troublemaker and a liar. shefaced him down, and when she got flo alone she hit her such a clout that flo was knocked acrossthe room into a cupboard. her scalp was cut. it healed in time without stitches (the bishop’s sisterdidn’t get the doctor, she didn’t want talk) and flo had the scar still.

she never went back to school after that.

just before she was fourteen she ran away. she lied about her age and got a job in the glovefactory, in hanratty. but the bishop’s sister found out where she was, and every once in a whilewould come to see her. we forgive you, flo. you ran away and left us but we still think of you asour flo and our friend. you are welcome to come out and spend a day with us. wouldn’t you likea day in the country? it’s not very healthy in the glove factory, for a young person. you need theair. why don’t you come and see us? why don’t you come today?

and every time flo accepted this invitation it would turn out that there was a big fruitpreserving or chili sauce making in progress, or they were wallpapering or spring-cleaning, or thethreshers were coming. all she ever got to see of the country was where she threw the dishwaterover the fence. she never could understand why she went or why she stayed. it was a long way, toturn around and walk back to town. and they were such a helpless outfit on their own. thebishop’s sister put her preserving jars away dirty. when you brought them up from the cellar therewould be bits of mold growing in them, clots of fuzzy rotten fruit on the bottom. how could youhelp but be sorry for people like that?

when the bishop’s sister was in the hospital, dying, it happened that flo was in there too. shewas in for her gall bladder operation, which rose could just remember. the bishop’s sister heardthat flo was there and wanted to see her. so flo let herself be hoisted into a wheel chair andwheeled down the hall, and as soon as she laid eyes on the woman in the bed—the tall, smooth-skinned woman all bony and spotted now, drugged and cancerous—she began an overwhelmingnosebleed, the first and last she ever suffered in her life. the red blood was whipping out of her,she said, like streamers.

she had the nurses running for help up and down the hall. it seemed as if nothing could stop it.

when she lifted her head it shot right on the sick woman’s bed, when she lowered her head itstreamed down on the floor. they had to put her in ice packs, finally. she never got to say good-bye to the woman in the bed.

“i never did say good-bye to her.”

“would you want to?”

“well yes,” said flo. “oh yes. i would.”

rose brought a pile of books home every night. latin, algebra, ancient and medieval history,french, geography. the merchant of venice, a tale of two cities, shorter poems, macbeth. floexpressed hostility to them as she did toward all books. the hostility seemed to increase with abook’s weight and size, the darkness and gloominess of its binding and the length and difficulty ofthe words in its title. shorter poems enraged her, because she opened it and found a poem that wasfive pages long.

she made rubble out of the titles. rose believed she deliberately mispronounced. ode came outodd and ulysses had a long shh in it, as if the hero was drunk.

rose’s father had to come downstairs to go to the bathroom. he hung on to the banister andmoved slowly but without halting. he wore a brown wool bathrobe with a tasseled tie. roseavoided looking at his face. this was not particularly because of the alterations his sickness mighthave made, but because of the bad opinion of herself she was afraid she would find written there.

it was for him she brought the books, no doubt about it, to show off to him. and he did look atthem, he could not walk past any book in the world without picking it up and looking at its title.

but all he said was, “look out you don’t get too smart for your own good.”

rose believed he said that to please flo, in case she might be listening. she was in the store atthe time. but rose imagined that no matter where flo was now, he would speak as if she might belistening. he was anxious to please flo, to anticipate her objections. he had made a decision, itseemed. safety lay with flo.

rose never answered him back. when he spoke she automatically bowed her head, tightenedher lips in an expression that was secretive, but carefully not disrespectful. she was circumspect.

but all her need for flaunting, her high hopes of herself, her gaudy ambitions, were not hiddenfrom him. he knew them all, and rose was ashamed, just to be in the same room with him. shefelt that she disgraced him, had disgraced him somehow from the time she was born, and woulddisgrace him still more thoroughly in the future. but she was not repenting. she knew her ownstubbornness; she did not mean to change.

flo was his idea of what a woman ought to be. rose knew that, and indeed he often said it. awoman ought to be energetic, practical, clever at making and saving; she ought to be shrewd, goodat bargaining and bossing and seeing through people’s pretensions. at the same time she should benaive intellectually, childlike, contemptuous of maps and long words and anything in books, fullof charming jumbled notions, superstitions, traditional beliefs.

“women’s minds are different,” he said to rose during one of the calm, even friendly periods,when she was a bit younger. perhaps he forgot that rose was, or would be, a woman herself.

“they believe what they have to believe. you can’t follow their thought.” he was saying this inconnection with a belief of flo’s, that wearing rubbers in the house would make you go blind.

“but they can manage life some ways, that’s their talent, it’s not in their heads, there’s somethingthey are smarter at than a man.”

so part of rose’s disgrace was that she was female but mistakenly so, would not turn out to bethe right kind of woman. but there was more to it. the real problem was that she combined andcarried on what he must have thought of as the worst qualities in himself. all the things he hadbeaten down, successfully submerged, in himself, had surfaced again in her, and she was showingno will to combat them. she mooned and daydreamed, she was vain and eager to show off; herwhole life was in her head. she had not inherited the thing he took pride in, and counted on—hisskill with his hands, his thoroughness and conscientiousness at any work; in fact she wasunusually clumsy, slapdash, ready to cut corners. the sight of her slopping around with her handsin the dishpan, her thoughts a thousand miles away, her rump already bigger than flo’s, her hairwild and bushy; the sight of the large and indolent and self-absorbed fact of her, seemed to fill himwith irritation, with melancholy, almost with disgust.

all of which rose knew. until he had passed through the room she was holding herself still, shewas looking at herself through his eyes. she too could hate the space she occupied. but the minutehe was gone she recovered. she went back into her thoughts or to the mirror, where she was oftenbusy these days, piling all her hair up on top of her head, turning part way to see the line of herbust, or pulling the skin to see how she would look with a slant, a very slight, provocative slant, toher eyes.

she knew perfectly well, too, that he had another set of feelings about her. she knew he feltpride in her as well as this nearly uncontrollable irritation and apprehension; the truth was, thefinal truth was, that he would not have her otherwise and willed her as she was. or one part of himdid. naturally he had to keep denying this. out of humility, he had to, and perversity. perversehumility. and he had to seem to be in sufficient agreement with flo.

rose did not really think this through, or want to. she was as uneasy as he was, about the waytheir chords struck together.

when rose came home from school flo said to her, “well, it’s a good thing you got here. youhave to stay in the store.”

her father was going to london, to the veterans’ hospital. “why?”

“don’t ask me. the doctor said.”

“is he worse?”

“i don’t know. i don’t know anything. that do-nothing doctor doesn’t think so. he came thismorning and looked him over and he says he’s going. we’re lucky, we got billy pope to run himdown.”

billy pope was a cousin of flo’s who worked in the butcher shop. he used to actually live at theslaughterhouse, in two rooms with cement floors, smelling naturally of tripe and entrails and livepig. but he must have had a home-loving nature; he grew geraniums in old tobacco cans, on thethick cement windowsills. now he had the little apartment over the shop, and had saved his moneyand bought a car, an oldsmobile. this was shortly after the war, when new cars made a specialsensation. when he came to visit he kept wandering to the window and taking a look at it, sayingsomething to call attention, such as, “she’s light on the hay but you don’t get the fertilizer out ofher.”

flo was proud of him and the car.

“see, billy pope’s got a big back seat, if your father needs to lay down.” “flo!”

rose’s father was calling her. when he was in bed at first he very seldom called her, and thendiscreetly, apologetically even. but he had got past that, called her often, made up reasons, shesaid, to get her upstairs.

“how does he think he’ll get along without me down there?” she said. “he can’t let me alonefive minutes.” she seemed proud of this, although often she would make him wait; sometimes shewould go to the bottom of the stairs and force him to call down further details about why heneeded her. she told people in the store that he wouldn’t let her alone for five minutes, and howshe had to change his sheets twice a day. that was true. his sheets became soaked with sweat.

late at night she or rose, or both of them, would be out at the washing machine in the woodshed.

sometimes, rose saw, her father’s underwear was stained. she would not want to look, but floheld it up, waved it almost under rose’s nose, cried out, “lookit that again!” and made cluckingnoises that were a burlesque of disapproval.

rose hated her at these times, hated her father as well; his sickness; the poverty or frugality thatmade it unthinkable for them to send things to the laundry; the way there was not a thing in theirlives they were protected from. flo was there to see to that.

rose stayed in the store. no one came in. it was a gritty, windy day, past the usual timefor snow, though there hadn’t been any. she could hear flo moving around upstairs, scolding andencouraging, getting her father dressed, probably, packing his suitcase, looking for things. rosehad her school books on the counter and to shut out the household noises she was reading a storyin her english book. it was a story by katherine mansfield, called the garden party. there werepoor people in that story. they lived along the lane at the bottom of the garden. they were viewedwith compassion. all very well. but rose was angry in a way that the story did not mean her tobe. she could not really understand what she was angry about, but it had something to do with thefact that she was sure katherine mansfield was never obliged to look at stained underwear; herrelatives might be cruel and frivolous but their accents would be agreeable; her compassion wasfloating on clouds of good fortune, deplored by herself, no doubt, but despised by rose. rose wasgetting to be a prig about poverty, and would stay that way for a long time.

she heard billy pope come into the kitchen and shout out cheerfully, “well, i guess yezwondered where i was.”

katherine mansfield had no relatives who said yez.

rose had finished the story. she picked up macbeth. she had memorized some speeches fromit. she memorized things from shakespeare, and poems, other than the things they had tomemorize, for school. she didn’t imagine herself as an actress, playing lady macbeth on a stage,when she said them. she imagined herself being her, being lady macbeth.

“i come on foot,” billy pope was shouting up the stairs. “i had to take her in.” he assumedeveryone would know he meant the car. “i don’t know what it is. i can’t idle her, she stalls on me.

i didn’t want to go down to the city with anything running not right. rose home?”

billy pope had been fond of rose ever since she was a little girl. he used to give her a dime,and say, “save up and buy yourself some corsets.” that was when she was flat and thin. his joke.

he came into the store.

“well rose, you bein a good girl?”

she barely spoke to him.

“you goin at your schoolbooks? you want to be a schoolteacher?” “i might.” she had nointention of being a schoolteacher. but it was surprising how people would let you alone, once youadmitted to that ambition.

“this is a sad day for you folks here,” said billy pope in a lower voice. rose lifted her head andlooked at him coldly.

“i mean, your dad goin down to the hospital. they’ll fix him up, though. they got all theequipment down there. they got the good doctors.”

“i doubt it,” rose said. she hated that too, the way people hinted at things and then withdrew,that slyness. death and sex were what they did that about.

“they’ll fix him and get him back by spring.”

“not if he has lung cancer,” rose said firmly. she had never said that before and certainly flohad not said it.

billy pope looked as miserable and ashamed for her as if she had said something very dirty.

“now that isn’t no way for you to talk. you don’t talk that way. he’s going to be comingdownstairs and he could of heard you.”

there is no denying the situation gave rose pleasure, at times. a severe pleasure, when she wasnot too mixed up in it, washing the sheets or listening to a coughing fit. she dramatized her ownpart in it, saw herself clear-eyed and unsurprised, refusing all deceptions, young in years but old inbitter experience of life. in such a spirit she had said lung cancer.

billy pope phoned the garage. it turned out that the car would not be fixed until suppertime.

rather than set out then, billy pope would stay overnight, sleeping on the kitchen couch. he androse’s father would go down to the hospital in the morning.

“there don’t need to be any great hurry, i’m not going to jump for him,” said flo, meaning thedoctor. she had come into the store to get a can of salmon, to make a loaf. although she was notgoing anywhere and had not planned to, she had put on stockings, and a clean blouse and skirt.

she and billy pope kept up a loud conversation in the kitchen while she got supper. rose sat onthe high stool and recited in her head, looking out the front window at west hanratty, the dustscudding along the street, the dry puddle-holes.

come to my woman’s breasts,

and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers!

a jolt it would give them, if she yelled that into the kitchen.

at six o’clock she locked the store. when she went into the kitchen she was surprised to see herfather there. she hadn’t heard him. he hadn’t been either talking or coughing. he was dressed inhis good suit, which was an unusual color—a dark oily sort of green. perhaps it had been cheap.

“look at him all dressed up,” flo said. “he thinks he looks smart. he’s so pleased with himselfhe wouldn’t go back to bed.”

rose’s father smiled unnaturally, obediently.

“how do you feel now?” flo said.

“i feel all right.”

“you haven’t had a coughing spell, anyway.” her father’s face was newly shaved, smooth anddelicate, like the animals they had once carved at school out of yellow laundry soap.

“maybe i ought to get up and stay up.”

“that’s the ticket,” billy pope said boisterously. “no more laziness.

get up and stay up. get back to work.”

there was a bottle of whiskey on the table. billy pope had brought it. the men drank it out oflittle glasses that had once held cream cheese. they topped it up with half an inch or so of water.

brian, rose’s half brother, had come in from playing somewhere; noisy, muddy, with the coldsmell of outdoors around him.

just as he came in rose said, “can i have some?” nodding at the whiskey bottle.

“girls don’t drink that,” billy pope said.

“give you some and we’d have brian whining after some,” said flo. “can i have some?” saidbrian, whining, and flo laughed uproar- iously, sliding her own glass behind the bread box. “seethere?”

“there used to be people around in the old days that did cures,” said billy pope at thesupper table. “but you don’t hear about none of them no more.”

“too bad we can’t get hold of one of them right now,” said rose’s father, getting hold of andconquering a coughing fit.

“there was the one faith healer i used to hear my dad talk about,” said billy pope. “he had away of talkin, he talked like the bible. so this deaf fellow went to him and he seen him and hecured him of his deafness. then he says to him, ‘durst hear?’”

“dost hear?” rose suggested. she had drained flo’s glass while getting out the bread forsupper, and felt more kindly disposed toward all her relatives.

“that’s it. dost hear? and the fellow said yes, he did. so the faith healer says then, dostbelieve? now maybe the fellow didn’t understand what he meant. and he says what in? so thefaith healer he got mad, and he took away the fellow’s hearing like that, and he went home deaf ashe come.”

flo said that out where she lived when she was little, there was a woman who had second sight.

buggies, and later on, cars, would be parked to the end of her lane on sundays. that was the daypeople came from a distance to consult with her. mostly they came to consult her about things thatwere lost.

“didn’t they want to get in touch with their relations?” rose’s father said, egging flo on as heliked to when she was telling a story. “i thought she could put you in touch with the dead.”

“well, most of them seen enough of their relations when they was alive.”

it was rings and wills and livestock they wanted to know about; where had things disappearedto?

“one fellow i knew went to her and he had lost his wallet. he was a man that worked on therailway line. and she says to him, well, do you remember it was about a week ago you wereworking along the tracks and you come along near an orchard and you thought you would like anapple? so you hopped over the fence and it was right then you dropped your wallet, right then andthere in the long grass. but a dog came along, she says, a dog picked it up and dropped it a waysfurther along the fence, and that’s where you’ll find it. well, he’d forgot all about the orchard andclimbing that fence and he was so amazed at her, he gave her a dollar. and he went and found hiswallet in the very place she described. this is true, i knew him. but the money was all chewed up,it was all chewed up in shreds, and when he found that he was so mad he said he wished he nevergive her so much!”

“now, you never went to her,” said rose’s father. “you wouldn’t put your faith in the like ofthat?” when he talked to flo he often spoke in country phrases, and adopted the country habit ofteasing, saying the opposite of what’s true, or believed to be true.

“no, i never went actually to ask her anything,” flo said. “but one time i went. i had to go overthere and get some green onions. my mother was sick and suffering with her nerves and thiswoman sent word over, that she had some green onions was good for nerves. it wasn’t nerves atall it was cancer, so what good they did i don’t know.”

flo’s voice climbed and hurried on, embarrassed that she had let that out.

“i had to go and get them. she had them pulled and washed and tied up for me, and she says,don’t go yet, come on in the kitchen and see what i got for you. well, i didn’t know what, but idasn’t not do it. i thought she was a witch. we all did. we all did, at school. so i sat down in thekitchen and she went in the pantry and brought out a big chocolate cake and she cut a piece andgive it to me. i had to sit and eat it. she sat there and watched me eat. all i can remember abouther is her hands. they were great big red hands with big veins sticking up on them, and she’d beflopping and twisting them all the time in her lap. i often thought since, she ought to eat the greenonions herself, she didn’t have so good nerves either.

“then i tasted a funny taste. in the cake. it was peculiar. i dasn’t stop eating though. i ate andate and when i finished it all up i said thank-you and i tell you i got out of there. i walked all theway down the lane because i figured she was watching me but when i got to the road i started torun. but i was still scared she was following after me, like invisible or something, and she mightread what was in my mind and pick me up and pound my brains out on the gravel. when i gothome i just flung open the door and hollered poison! that’s what i was thinking. i thought shemade me eat a poisoned cake.

“all it was was moldy. that’s what my mother said. the damp in her house and she would gofor days without no visitors to eat it, in spite of the crowds she collected other times. she couldhave a cake sitting around too long a while.

“but i didn’t think so. no. i thought i had ate poison and i was doomed. i went and sat in thissort of place i had in a corner of the granary. nobody knew i had it. i kept all kinds of junk inthere. i kept some chips of broken china and some velvet flowers. i remember them, they were offa hat that had got rained on. so i just sat there, and i waited.”

billy pope was laughing at her. “did they come and haul you out?” “i forget. i don’t think so.

they would’ve had a hard time finding me, i was in behind all the feed bags. no. i don’t know. iguess what happened in the end was i got tired out waiting and come out by myself.”

“and lived to tell the tale,” said rose’s father, swallowing the last word as he was overcome bya prolonged coughing fit. flo said he shouldn’t stay up any longer but he said he would just liedown on the kitchen couch, which he did. flo and rose cleared the table and washed the dishes,then for something to do they all—flo and billy pope and brian and rose—sat around the tableand played euchre. her father dozed. rose thought of flo sitting in a corner of the granary withthe bits of china and the wilted velvet flowers and whatever else was precious to her, waiting, in agradually reduced state of terror, it must have been, and exaltation, and desire, to see how deathwould slice the day.

her father was waiting. his shed was locked, his books would not be opened again, by him, andtomorrow was the last day he would wear shoes. they were all used to this idea, and in some waysthey would be more disturbed if his death did not take place, than if it did. no one could ask whathe thought about it. he would have treated such an inquiry as an impertinence, a piece ofdramatizing, an indulgence. rose believed he would have. she believed he was prepared forwestminster hospital, the old soldiers’ hospital, prepared for its masculine gloom, its yellowingcurtains pulled around the bed, its spotty basins. and for what followed. she understood that hewould never be with her more than at the present moment. the surprise to come was that hewouldn’t be with her less.

drinking coffee, wandering around the blind green halls of the new high school, at thecentennial year reunion—she hadn’t come for that, had bumped into it accidentally, so to speak,when she came home to see what was to be done about flo—rose met people who said, “did youknow ruby carruthers was dead? they took off the one breast and then the other but it was allthrough her, she died.”

and people who said, “i saw your picture in a magazine, what was the name of that magazine, ihave it at home.”

the new high school had an auto mechanics shop for training auto mechanics and a beautyparlor for training beauty parlor operators; a library; an auditorium; a gymnasium; a whirlingfountain arrangement for washing your hands in the ladies’ room. also a functioning dispenserof kotex.

del fairbridge had become an undertaker.

runt chesterton had become an accountant.

horse nicholson had made a lot of money as a contractor and had left that to go into politics.

he had made a speech saying that what they needed was a lot more god in the classroom and a lotless french.