Shiloh and Other Stories by Bobbie Ann Mason Read Free Book Online

sleep for thinking about Detroit. Mama had tried in vain to show me how high the buildings were, pointing at the straight horizon beyond the cornfields. I had the impression that they towered halfway to the moon.
    “Don’t let the Polacks get you,” my father had warned when we left. He had to stay home to milk the cows. My two-year-old brother, Johnny, stayed behind with him.
    My aunt and uncle met us in a taxi at the bus station, and beforeI got a good look at them, they had engulfed me in their arms.
    “I wouldn’t have knowed you, Peggy Jo,” my uncle said. “You was just a little squirt the last time I saw you.”
    “Don’t this beat all?” said Aunt Mozelle. “Boone here could have built us a car by now—and us coming in a taxi.”
    “We’ve still got that old plug, but it gets us to town,” said Mama.
    “How could I build a car?” said Uncle Boone. “All I know is bumpers.”
    “That’s what he does,” my aunt said to me. “He puts on bumpers.”
    “We’ll get a car someday soon,” Uncle Boone said to his wife.
    My uncle was a thin, delicate man with a receding hairline. His speckled skin made me think of the fragile shells of sparrow eggs. My aunt, on the other hand, was stout and tanned, with thick, dark hair draped like wings over her ears. I gazed at my aunt and uncle, trying to match them with the photograph my mother had shown me.
    “Peggy’s all worked up over seeing the tall buildings,” said Mama as we climbed into the taxi. “The cat’s got her tongue.”
    “It has
not
!”
    “I’m afraid we’ve got bad news,” said Aunt Mozelle. “The city buses is on strike and there’s no way to get into Detroit.”
    “Don’t say it!” cried Mama. “After we come all this way.”
    “It’s trouble with the unions,” said Boone. “But they might start up before y’all go back.” He patted my knee and said, “Don’t worry, littlun.”
    “The unions is full of reds,” Aunt Mozelle whispered to my mother.
    “Would it be safe to go?” Mama asked.
    “We needn’t worry,” said Aunt Mozelle.
    From the window of the squat yellow taxi, driven by a froglike man who grunted, I scrutinized the strange and vast neighborhoods we were passing through. I had never seen so many houses, all laid out in neat rows. The houses were new, and their pastel colors seemed peaceful and alluring. The skyscrapers were still as remote to me as the castles in fairy tales, butthese houses were real, and they were nestled next to each other in a thrilling intimacy. I knew at once where I wanted to live when I grew up—in a place like this, with neighbors.
    My relatives’ house, on a treeless new street, had venetian blinds and glossy hardwood floors. The living room carpet had giant pink roses that made me think you could play hopscotch on them. The guest room had knotty-pine paneling and a sweet-smelling cedar closet. Aunt Mozelle had put His and Her towels in our room. They had dogs on them and were pleasurably soft. At home, all of our washrags came out of detergent boxes, and our towels were faded and thin. The house was grand. And I had never seen my mother sparkling so. When she saw the kitchen, she whirled around happily, like a young girl, forgetting her dizziness on the bus. Aunt Mozelle had a toaster, a Mixmaster, an electric stove, and a large electric clock shaped like a rooster. On the wall, copper-bottomed pans gleamed in a row like golden-eyed cats lined up on a fence.
    “Ain’t it the berries?” my mother said to me. “Didn’t I tell you?”
    “Sometimes I have to pinch myself,” said my aunt.
    Just then, the front door slammed and a tall girl with a ponytail bounded into the house, saying “Hey!” in an offhand manner.
    “Corn!” I said timidly, which seemed to perplex her, for she stared at me as though I were some odd sort of pet allowed into the house. This was my cousin Betsy Lou, in bluejeans rolled up halfway to her knees.
    “Our kinfolks is here,” Aunt Mozelle