Peyton Place by Grace Metalious Read Free Book Online Page A

again.”
    “They're all alike, those shackowners. Work for a while, drunk for a longer while, work and then drunk again.”
    “They're all right, though. Don't do any harm that I can see. They pay their bills.”
    Seth Buswell, in a rare philosophical mood, said, “I wonder why our woodsman drinks? One would surmise that he hasn't the imagination to invent phantoms for himself from which he must escape. I wonder what he thinks about. Doubtless he has his hopes and dreams the same as all of us, yet it appears that all he ever dwells upon is liquor, sex and food, in that order.”
    “Watch that kind of talk, old feller,” said Dr. Swain. “When you talk like that, the old Dartmouth education shows through.”
    “Sorry,” said Seth elaborately and reverted to the patois of his people, the one hypocrisy which he consciously practiced. It might not be honest, this omitting of r's and dropping of final g's , but his father had made a barrel of money in spite of it, and had gained many votes because of it.
    “Mebbe they're a harmless crew at that, our woodsmen,” said Seth. “Sort of like tame animals.”
    “Except Lucas Cross,” said Dr. Swain. “He's a mean one. There's something about him, something around the eyes, that rubs me the wrong way. He has the look of a jackal.”
    “Lucas is all right, Doc,” said Seth comfortably. “You're seein’ things.”
    “I hope so,” said the doctor. “But I'm afraid not.”
♦ 8 ♦
    Selena Cross lay on the folding cot that served as her bed and which was pushed against the wall on the kitchen side of the one-room Cross shack. She was thirteen years old and well developed for her age, with the curves of hips and breasts already discernible under the too short and often threadbare clothes that she wore. Much of the girl's clothing had been inherited from the more fortunate children of Peyton Place and passed down to Selena through the charity-loving hands of the ladies from the Congregational church. Selena had long dark hair that curled of its own accord in a softly beautiful fashion. Her eyes, too, were dark and slightly slanted, and she had a naturally red, full-lipped mouth over well-shaped, startlingly white teeth. Her skin was clear and of a honey-tan shade which looked as if it had been acquired under the sun but which, on Selena, never faded to sallowness in the long months of the harsh New England winter.
    “Put a pair of gold hoops in her ears,” said Miss Thornton, “and she'd look like everybody's idea of a perfect gypsy.”
    Selena was wise with the wisdom learned of poverty and wretchedness. At thirteen, she saw hopelessness as an old enemy, as persistent and inevitable as death.
    Sometimes, when she looked at Nellie, her mother, she thought, I'll get out. I'll never be like her.
    Nellie Cross was short and flabby with the unhealthy fat that comes from too many potatoes and too much bread. Her hair was thin and tied in a sloppy knot at the back of her not too clean neck, and her hands, perpetually grimy, were rough and knobby knuckled, with broken, dirty fingernails.
    I'll get out, thought Selena. I'll never let myself look like that.
    But hopelessness was always at her elbow, ready to nudge her and say, “Oh, yeah? How will you get out? Where could you go, and who would have you after you got there?”
    If Lucas was away, or at home but sober, Selena would think, optimistically, Oh, I'll manage. One way or another, I'll get out.
    But for the most part it was like tonight. Selena lay in her cot and listened to her older brother Paul snoring in his bed against the opposite wall, and to the adenoidal breathing of her little brother Joey, who slept in a cot like her own. But these sounds could not cover the louder ones which came from the double bed at the other end of the shack. Selena lay still and listened to Lucas and Nellie perform the act of love. Lucas did not speak while thus engaged. He grunted, Selena thought, like a rooting pig, and he breathed