Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson Mccullers Read Free Book Online

need me,' he said shortly.
    They heard him start down the stairs slowly, then quicken to a skip. On the last steps he
     must have tried something altogether too ambitious, for there was a sudden thud. When the
     Major reached the head of the stairs, Anacleto was picking himself up with brave dignity.
    'Did he hurt himself?' Alison asked tensely.
    Anacleto looked up at the Major with angry tears in his eyes. 'I'm all right, Madame
     Alison,' he called.
    The Major leaned forward and said slowly and soundlessly, working his mouth so that
     Anacleto could read the words, 'I wish you had bro ken your neck.'
    Anacleto smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and limped into the dining room. When the Major
     went back to his wife, he found her reading. She did not look up at him, so he crossed the
     hall to his own room and slammed the door. His room was small, rather untidy, and the only
     ornaments in it were the cups he had won at horse shows. On the Major's bedside table
     there was an open book a very recondite and literary book. The place was marked with a
     matchstick. The Major turned over forty pages or so, a reasonable evening's reading, and
     marked the new place with the match again. Then from under a pile of shirts in his bureau
     drawer he took a pulp magazine called Scientification. He settled himself comfortably in
     the bed and began reading of a wild, interplanetary superwar.
    Across the hall from him, his wife had put down her book and was lying in a half sitting
     position. Her face was stiff with pain and her dark, glittering eyes looked restlessly
     around the walls of the room. She was trying to make plans. She would divorce Morris,
     certainly. But how would she go about it? And above all how could she and Anacleto manage
     to make a living? She always had been contemptuous of women without children who accepted
     alimony, and her last shred of pride depended on the fact that she would not, could not,
     live on his money after she had left him. But what would they do she and Anacleto? She
     had taught Latin in a girls' school the year before she married, but with her health as it
     was that would now be out of the question. A bookshop somewhere? It would have to be
     something that Anacleto could keep going when she was ill. Could the two of them possibly
     manage a prawn boat? Once she had talked to some shrimp fishermen on the coast. It had
     been a blue and gold seaside day and they had told her many things. She and Anacleto would
     stay out at sea all day with their nets lowered and there would be only the cold salt air,
     the ocean and the sun Alison turned her head restlessly on the pillow. But what frippery!
    It had been a shock, eight months ago, when she had learned about her husband. She and
     Lieutenant Weincheck and Anacleto had made a trip to the city with the intention of
     staying two days and nights for a concert and a play. But on the second day she was
     feverish and they decided to go back home. Late in the afternoon Anacleto had let her out
     at the front door and driven the car back to the garage. She had stopped on the front walk
     to look at some bulbs. It was almost dark and there was a light in her husband's room. The
     front door was locked and as she was standing there she saw Leonora's coat on the chest in
     the hall. And she had thought to herself how strange it was that if the Pendertons were
     there the front door should be locked. Then it occurred to her that they were mixing
     drinks in the kitchen while Morris had his bath. And she went around to the back. But then
     before she entered the house Anacleto rushed down the steps with such a horrified little
     face! He had whispered that they must go into town ten miles away as they had forgotten
     something. And when, rather dazed, she started up the steps he had caught her by the arm
     and said in a flat, frightened voice: 'You must not go in there now, Madame Alison.'
    With what a shock it had come