One-Eyed Cat by Paula Fox Read Free Book Online Page A

wall of the stable appeared before him; he saw a flicker of movement, or moonlight wavering, or breeze-bent wild grass, something that drew the gun to it and made his finger press the trigger. He shook his head and it disappeared. He wished Uncle Hilary hadn’t come.
    Papa had said—take your mind away from it. It had gotten into his mind. He could tell Papa what he had done. After all, Papa wouldn’t strap him the way he’d heard Billy Gaskell’s father strapped him for the slightest thing. No, Papa would only look grave, disappointed. But he’d forgive him.
    Ned put his head under the pillow. At some point, he fell asleep.
    For four more Sundays the heat held. The flowers arranged around the pulpit wilted in an hour. Old Mr. Deems, dazed by the heat, snored so loudly the sound of it cut like a buzz saw through the hymns. And on the way home from church, the wind that blew through the windows of the Packard felt as though it had come straight from an oven.
    When Ned ate his early Sunday supper on the porch, the sky flared like fire, and the monastery bells, ringing for vespers, seemed to be working their way through hot tar.
    He went up to visit his mother. A palmetto fan lay on her tray and she was drooped over it. He fanned her for a few minutes. She smiled her gratitude. “A person can imagine anything except weather,” she murmured.
    The river was ink-blue and looked as unmoving as water in a basin.
    â€œAre you all right, Neddy?” Her question took him by surprise. She had spoken urgently, and although her words were ordinary, they pierced him as if they’d flown straight to the painful place in his mind.
    â€œI have to write a poem about autumn,” he said hurriedly. “It’s supposed to be for tomorrow and I haven’t done it yet.”
    She rested her head against the back of the wheelchair and looked at him silently.
    â€œWell, what I thought was that I’d write about the gypsies Papa and I saw today, just where the Waterville road is, two caravans”—he paused for a moment, staring at the interest that had come into her eyes as plain to see as a light going on—“and lots of thin black dogs running around, and children, and the women all dressed in bright clothes. Papa says they usually come in October.”
    â€œThat’s a wonderful idea, Ned,” she said. “Gypsies in the fall.”
    He did have a homework assignment but he didn’t have to hand it in for a week, and it wasn’t a poem but a nature description. He’d been able to trick his mother. It made him feel a little sick.
    A lie was so tidy, like a small box you could make with nails and thin pieces of wood and glue. But the truth lay sprawled all over the place like the mess up in the attic. At the thought of the attic, of the unfinished room and what lay in it, he felt as though a giant hand had been clapped over his mouth.
    His mother was staring at him. He suddenly knew she was trying to read his face, and he felt a strange burst of relief. He hadn’t quite convinced her; in a way he couldn’t understand, that made him feel safer.
    The next morning, the last Monday in October, started off hot, but Ned felt something different in the air. Perhaps it was the absolute stillness of the leaves and the blades of grass—a kind of waiting.
    Ned, and the children he walked home with most afternoons, crossed the hot asphalt of the state road quickly, then drifted apart as they went up the steep curving dirt road. Ned glanced longingly at the stone house, so cool and mysterious-looking. Billy Gaskell, who was Ned’s age but taller and heavier than he, began to pick up pebbles and fling them ahead. They sent up puffs of smoke where they landed, and Evelyn Kimball, whose shoelaces were often untied and whose hair never looked combed, shrieked as though she were being pinched each time Billy flung a pebble. But Janet Hoffman, thin as the long pigtail