Follow Me by Joanna Scott Read Free Book Online Page A

oh!” He moaned in glee. He had to take off his glasses and wipe tears from his eyes, he was laughing so hard. He had to
     sit down, he was laughing so hard. He was laughing so hard that Sally began to feel offended.
    “Is it that funny?”
    “Oh, g-g-girlie, no, yes, I d-d-don’t know. I n-n-need a housekeeper.” And then, through his chuckles, he murmured, “Unless
     you w-want to marry me?”
    “Of course not!” she said. “I can’t believe you’d come up with that crazy notion! Why, that’s just cockeyed!”
    What a cockeyed world she’d stepped into, she thought. A cockeyed family, a cockeyed hamlet on a meager river, a cockeyed
     old salamander of a man who dared to imagine that a seventeen-year-old girl would want to be his wife. The sky was too low
     and the ground was too high. No wonder everything kept slipping, glasses were dropped, and nothing made sense. And yet how
     odd it was to feel a growing commitment, as though just by choosing to remain there she would acquire a permanence, with roots
     growing from her feet into the porch.
    “I’m going to take a bath,” she said, using the same familiar kind of announcement she would have used at home with her own
     family. It was strange, she thought, how this old man was starting to seem familiar to her, how strangeness itself was becoming
     ordinary, how she was beginning to imagine that she could fit in here, she could belong.
    “I’ll b-b-be seeing you,” he called after she’d gone inside. She was heading down the hall to her room when she heard him
     say, “Think about wh-what I’m offering. I p-p-pay a good wage.”
    She hesitated, then turned around. She intended to tell him okay, she’d think about his offer, and it sure was kind of him
     to be concerned about her situation. But he was already gone.
    This was rural Pennsylvania in the fall of 1947 — a world of mud, sickly elms, stubbled hayfields, and backyard industries.
     The Tuskee was even dirtier then than now, or at least polluted in a different way, with a film of soot coating the surface
     and cement dust ending up as sludge along the banks. In the village where Georgie and her relatives lived, Fishkill Notch,
     the creek from the spring on Thistle Mountain met the Fishkill Creek. With the headwaters pouring in from the upper slopes,
     the water in Fishkill Notch spread into a deeper channel that on maps is marked as the start of the Tuskee River.
    Hidden between its marshy banks, the river didn’t draw attention to itself as it ran through the village. Anglers cast their
     lines there, but mostly the river flowed on without being noticed by the residents, and without noticing them.
    Georgie’s house was on a side road off of Main Street. Mason’s house, though, was perched on a mound of land close to the
     wedge where the Fishkill bends into the Tuskee. In the spring and fall and after heavy rains, the sound of the river would
     make Sally Werner think that a storm was blowing in and wind was pouring through the trees. Years later, when she heard static
     on the radio or the TV, she’d think of Mason’s house and the Tuskee rushing past.
    She spent one more night at Georgie’s. When Georgie came home from work, she brought a casserole that Swill’s wife had made.
     She already knew about Uncle Mason’s proposal and agreed that it was a good idea, promising Sally that they’d get together
     every weekend. She’d heard they were building a new movie theater over in the next town. She was planning to take Stevie to
     the Saturday matinees, and she hoped Sally would come along with them.
    They ate supper, and Georgie put the boy to bed, ran a bath for herself, and called good night. Sally, who was ready to be
     forthright, asked if they could talk. Georgie came into the living room immediately, as though she’d been standing just around
     the corner waiting for the invitation.
    The two young women stayed up most of the night, sharing Georgie’s cigarettes, sitting on