Shades of Gray by Tim O’Brien Read Free Book Online

Nearing the house, he saw Aunt Ella doing the wash in front of the kitchen. Steam rose from the huge iron cauldron where she was stirring the clothes with a wooden paddle, and her hair hung lank. She wiped the perspiration from her face. Will was glad his mama hadn’t had to work that hard. At home, Lizzy had always done the wash. And Lizzy would have stayed on with them and worked for wages,now that she was free. And Callie and Fred would have, too, if only—
    â€œI was beginning to worry about you, Will,” Aunt Ella said, interrupting his thoughts. “I was afraid you might have gotten lost.”
    â€œYou don’t have to worry, Aunt Ella. I can take care of myself.” Just because he’d grown up in town, there was no reason for everybody to think he couldn’t learn to get along in the country.
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    At dinner that noon, Uncle Jed asked Will, “Have any trouble this morning?”
    â€œAll the traps were empty,” Will answered. Then, because his uncle seemed to be waiting for more, he added grudgingly, “It seemed a lot farther than the other times.”
    His uncle nodded. “First time Enos walked the old trap line alone, he was so sure he’d missed the first turn, he went back. He was almost home again before he realized he just hadn’t gone quite far enough.” Then he asked, “How’d you scrape those elbows?”
    â€œElbows? Oh, I—I fell coming down the hill.”
    â€œGoing too fast, I reckon,” said Uncle Jed.
    Will wondered uneasily if his uncle had guessed what had happened.
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    Working on the fence posts again that afternoon, Will found he was cutting neater slots with the post ax and doing it faster, too. Uncle Jed looked up as Will carried his third completed post toward the growing pile, and Will couldn’t resist holding it up to show him.
    â€œThat’s more like it,” Uncle Jed said. “Doesn’t look so much like it was gnawed by a varmint.”
    Will started to work on the next post, furious with himself for seeming to ask for praise. He had to prove that he could do his share of the work—and do it well—even though his family had had slaves to do all the chores. But beyond that, he didn’t care what his uncle thought of him.
    â€œWe might make a farm boy out of him yet,” Uncle Jed muttered as if to himself. And then more loudly, “Get a light from Ella’s hearth and start the fire in that pit you dug. When it burns down to coals, we can start charring the posts.”
    Will scrambled to his feet, pretending he hadn’t heard his uncle’s compliment. But he was more pleased than he wanted to admit. Why should the opinion of a man he didn’t even like make any difference to him? he wondered. In the hot kitchen he plucked a straw from his aunt’s broom and stooped to light it in the coals that glowed under the heavy iron pot. As he touched his straw to one of the coals, Will had an idea. Tossing the straw into the fire, he found the ash bucket and shoveled it half full of coals. He carried them to the pit and emptied them in, noticing that his uncle was nowhere to be seen. Then from inside the toolshed he heard the unmistakable sound of a whetstone on a blade and knew Uncle Jed had stopped to sharpen a tool.
    Will made another trip for coals, and still his uncle hadn’t returned. He started toward the shed to ask how to go about charring the posts but then thought better of it. His uncle would only say, “How do you think you should do it?”
    Resolutely, Will began arranging the finished posts so that the bottom ends were in the coals. Not sure what to do next,he gave each one a quarter turn, and then another, and another. Suddenly worried that he might be destroying the results of hours of work, he pulled a post from the coals. The bottom eight inches or so were evenly blackened.
    As he lifted the last post from the pit and lay it on the ground, he