Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace by David Adams Richards Read Free Book Online Page A

fifteen years ago the Defoe boy was born with his right ear inside his brain, and his left ear deaf.
    Cindi looked at him, blinking, and tried to think.
    “Was it sticking out?”
    “Was what sticking out?”
    “Its ear?”
    Antony shook his head. “Turned side on in its skull, I heard.”
    He drank his tea as his eyes wandered over the apartment. In the twilight, the apartment empty, the evening light cast on the bar stool in the corner with the poignancy of spring. Some birds complemented it by a twitter or two, and there was a smell of slush in the lane.
    Cindi, like many people when the first warm weather comes, was wearing a sleeveless blouse and now shivered.
    “What does Ivan think of it?” Antony said.
    “I don’t even think he knows,” Cindi said. “I wasn’t sure until a week ago.”
    Then with a voice that startled even himself, Antony said, “Ho, ho – he knows – don’t you kid yourself on that. I was up at the doctor’s the other night, and he was there.”
    “What did he say?” Cindi said nervously, as a person who only wants people to say kind things about them.
    “Dr. Hennessey asked me to speak to Ivan about you, but of course Ivan was all worked up about gettin drunk with me.”
    “Drunk?”
    “Well – I tried to speak to him aboutcha, and being pregnant, and he said, ‘Don’t you worry about her – I need to get some booze and that’s what we should be talking about!’”
    Cindi didn’t speak, and the napkins she had brought in with the tea and cookies added character to her little body.
    “Don’t you worry about Ivan though – I’ll take care of him,” he said suddenly. “I can handle that boy.”
    “I don’t want anything bad to happen to him,” she said. And in spite of herself, she smiled self-importantly.
    “I told them when you announced the wedding,” he said, under his breath. “Clay called me over and said he was going to get you some furniture. I said, ‘Furniture them all you want, but that little girl is going to marry the wrong man.’”
    Cindi stared straight ahead blinking. Then she picked up a cookie and took a nibble.
    She felt sad for everyone suddenly.
    Antony then said that he took responsibility for his son, and when he did he spoke in a resigned way.
    And Cindi was uncomfortable on his behalf.

    On April 30, Adele drove down river to see what was going on.
    She arrived at the apartment just after Ruby came in. Ruby was telling Cindi that her cousin Eugene was home for the summer and she wanted her to see himmore often. She had always said that Dorval Gene and Cindi loved each other. “Everyone knows that,” she would say. She called him “Dorval Gene” because he was from Montreal.
    As far as Ruby was concerned, Cindi should go out. She told her about the horse-hauling at the community centre, next week, and she should go to the dance and have some fun.
    Ruby said what people always said on these occasions as if there never was a personal motive for saying it. When Cindi didn’t know if she would go or not, Ruby asked for Adele’s advice.
    “Well Delly – what do you think?” she said, as she started to comb Cindi’s hair out with a brush, while Cindi kept wincing.
    “I think Cindi can make up her own mind if she wants to go out or not,” Adele said, thinking that this was a very wise answer, and going over to hold Cindi’s head.
    “Well, of course,” Ruby said, “we all know that,” and looked at Adele as if she wasn’t as bright as she had once thought.
    Cindi sat in the chair looking from one to the other.
    Ruby was very pretty. She also had a coarseness, which added to her beauty. She had been captain of the women’s hockey team at the community centre, before she went to university, and she knew how to take care of herself on the ice, to butt end, to spear, and to take a woman out in the corners. She used to sit in a faded T-shirt and jockstrap in the dressing room after a game, with a small diamond earring stud in her