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

announced.
    “Law, you’ve growed into a beanpole,” said Mama to Betsy Lou.
    “Welcome to our fair city, and I hope you don’t get polio,” Betsy Lou said to me.
    “Watch what you’re saying!” cried her mother. “You’ll scare Peggy Jo.”
    “I imagine it’ll be worse this summer than last,” said Mama, looking worried.
    “If we’re stuck here without a car, you won’t be any place to catch polio,” Aunt Mozelle said, smiling at me.
    “Polio spreads at swimming pools,” Betsy Lou said.
    “Then I’m not going to any swimming pool,” I announced flatly.
    Aunt Mozelle fussed around in her splendid kitchen, making dinner. I sat at the table, listening to Mama and her sister talk, in a gentle, flowing way, exchanging news, each stopping now and then to smile at the other in disbelief, or to look at me with pride. I couldn’t take my eyes off my aunt, because she looked so much like my mother. She was older and heavier, but they had the same wide smile, the same unaffected laughter. They had similar sharp tips on their upper lips, which they filled in with bright red lipstick.
    Mama said, “Boone sure is lucky. He’s still young and ain’t crippled and has a good job.”
    “Knock on wood,” said Aunt Mozelle, rapping the door facing.
    —
    They had arranged for me to have a playmate, a girl my age who lived in the neighborhood. At home, in the summertime, I did not play with anyone, for the girls I knew at school lived too far away. Suddenly I found myself watching a chubby girl in a lilac piqué playsuit zoom up and down the sidewalk on roller skates.
    “Come on,” she said. “It’s not hard.”
    “I’m coming.” Betsy Lou had let me have her old skates, but I had trouble fastening them on my Weather-Bird sandals. I had never been on skates. At home there was no sidewalk. I decided to try skating on one foot, like a kid on a scooter, but the skate came loose.
    “Put both of them on,” said the girl, laughing at me.
    Her name was Sharon Belletieri. She had to spell it for me. She said my name over and over until it sounded absurd. “Peggy Peggy Peggy Peggy Peggy.” She made my name sound like “piggy.”
    “Don’t you have a permanent?” she asked.
    “No,” I said, touching my pigtails. “My hair’s in plaits ’cause it’s summer.”
    “Har? Oh, you mean
hair
? Like air?” She waved at the air. She was standing there, perfectly balanced on her skates. She pronounced“hair” with two syllables.
Hayer
. I said something like a cross between
herr
and
harr
.
    Sharon turned and whizzed down the sidewalk, then skidded to a stop at the corner, twisted around, and faced me.
    “Are you going to skate or not?” she asked.
    —
    My uncle smoked Old Golds, and he seemed to have excess nervous energy. He was always jumping up from his chair to get something, or to look outside at the thermometer. He had found his name in a newspaper ad recently and had won a free pint of Cunningham’s ice cream. My aunt declared that that made him somewhat famous. When I came back that day with the skates, he was sitting on the porch fanning himself with a newspaper. There was a heat wave, he said.
    “What did you think of Sharon Belletieri?” he asked.
    “She talks funny,” I said, sitting down beside him.
    “Folks up here all talk funny. I’ve noticed that too.”
    Uncle Boone had been a clerk in the war. He told me about the time he had spent in the Pacific theater, sailing around on a battleship, looking for Japs.
    “Me and some buddies went to a Pacific island where there was a tribe of people with little tails,” he said.
    “Don’t believe a word he says,” said my aunt, who had been listening.
    “It’s true,” said Uncle Boone. “Cross my heart and hope to die.” He solemnly crossed his hands on his chest, then looked at his watch and said abruptly to me, “What do you think of Gorgeous George?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “How about Howdy Doody?”
    “Who’s Howdy