Machine Dreams by Jayne Anne Phillips Read Free Book Online Page B

jams, and meat jerky. The leper constructed a rabbit trap and used it with some success.
    He got through the cold weather but wouldn’t talk anymore in the spring. I came with the trays every day again; he would only look out and pull away. Ava was concerned and walked out with me. She had dressed as though on a social call and stood talking in front of the shack.
Mr. Li Sung? I know you are listening. Won’t you come out?
He never answered, so we hid in the woods to watch for him. He looked just the same, though shabbier, peering from the door. Then he walked out and stood beside the tray. He stood for a full five minutes, looking down the ridge like he was trying to see trace of us in the distance.
    Ava insisted I keep talking to him even if he didn’t talk back. I felt damn stupid standing in front of that shack every day and yelling. I had nothing to say and was in a hurry to get to school, so I would call out whatever was on the tray, tell him the weather according to the almanac, and say the date. Since I never saw him, I started being afraid of seeing him.
    In May he didn’t pick up the tray at all, and Ava sent word to the railroad doctor. He found Li Sung dead in his cot. Heart attack, the doctor said, but I doubt he examined the body very close. Some men from Raynell, Eban among them, went out to put an end to the whole thing. They wore kerchieves over their faces, dug a grave, filled a casket with quicklime, and raked the leper into it. They covered the casket with lime and dirt. The shack was doused with kerosene and burned, and the ashes covered with lime. The men camped out there the whole day to be sure no one stumbled onto the contaminated ground unawares. It was the first time Eban had seen the leper or the leper’s house. He wouldn’t say anything when he came back home, though some of the other men talked around the town. They said it gave Eban a start to see his long-worn clothes sewn onthose blankets, the sleeves of the shirts and the trouser legs spread out like one body on top of another and another.
    Bess and Clayton let me come to Bellington when I was thirteen so I could go to high school there in the town. Bess seemed a lot older when I saw her again, and I called her Aunt. Clayton probably didn’t want me at first, but I became an older brother to their kids. Katie Sue was a pretty little girl and Chuck was moody like Clayton, thin as a rail—they were just tykes. The town looked like a big city to me. It was prosperous in 1924: several lumber mills were going, and the Methodists had started a college. Most people had automobiles, and the streets were paved with bricks.
    That first day, Clayton took me for a ride in his Studebaker, up Quality Hill past the Jonas house, and he stopped to talk to the Doc. That old house is a wreck now, broken up into cheap apartments, but it was pretty then—a big white elephant on the hill back from the street. All those round cupolas in white shingle and a circular drive planted with boxwood. The drive went right up past the front porch under a latticed arch. There was Doc Jonas in his white rocker, and there was Reb, with green eyes like a snake’s. Fourteen, and drove his father’s car like a bat from hell. Brand-new Pierce Arrow coupe. You could see yourself in the running board. Reb tended that car like it was living, and thought of it every minute. His father said he was love-struck.
    In those days most people didn’t bother to get a license, just bought a car and drove. Cars were like toys; nobody thought they were dangerous except people who couldn’t afford them. There had been a few wrecks in the town, but no one ever killed or hurt bad. Streets were wide. Seldom more than a few cars on any one at a time, and nobody went very fast by today’s standards. Reb and me would tow the mark in town anyway, because everyone was looking.
    But after dusk you could get outside the city limits and go like the wind—not meet a soul. Road between here and