Stepping Stones by Steve Gannon Read Free Book Online Page B

and moral; together, they had become an ugly mindless force bent on violence and revenge.
    Rough hands jerked Georgie to his feet.  They bound his wrists behind his back with wire.  He was still dazed but starting to come out of it.
    Abe dragged him to the bar, forcing him to look at Caleb’s body.  “You done this!” he hissed.  “And by God, you’re gonna pay.”
    Confused, Georgie stared down at Caleb, then peered around the demolished room.  Slowly, he understood what had happened.  As he did, I saw despair fill his eyes .
    “It wasn’t your fault, Georgie,” I said.
    Georgie looked down.  “Yes, it was, Seth.  I should have kept my promise to Mama.”
    I moved closer.  “Listen to me,” I said softly so only he could hear .  “They’re going to hur t you, Georgie.  You have to save yourself, like when the boulder rolled on you.”
    “No, Seth,” he said sadly.  “I was wrong to do it.  I’m not gonna do it any more.”
    “Please, Georgie,” I begged.
    “No.”
    I tried to think of something to convince him.  I failed.  And then the time for pleading was over.  For then the men in the bar, that mob of men—my neighbors, my townsfolk, my friends—dragged my brother outside and threw a rope over the old maple by the bridge and put Georgie on Phil Johnson’s mule and hung him.
    I left Pa in the bar and stood in the woods, deep in the shadows.  I saw it happen.  All of it.  I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t.  I kept praying Georgie would save himself, use his power just one more time.  He didn’t, at least not till the very end.  And by then it was too late.
    Nineteen men stood in the moonlight around the maple tree that night, laughing, watching Georgie kick.  Watching him die.
    Nineteen men.
    Hate grew within me, swelling until it was all I could feel.  It flooded through me like a venom , filling me till I thought I would burst.  I could taste it.  I wanted them to die .  And all at once I knew how to do it.  I wasn’t able to solve the puzzle of Ma’s cancer.  No, I couldn’t do it for love.  The hours I’d spent beside her searching for a key to unlock the secret of her disease had been fruitless.  But I did it for hate.  A few minutes of hate and I had the answer.
    In a dim part of my mind I wondered what sort of person I was.  In another, I didn’t care.  I hungered for revenge.  It drove me down to that circle of men.  Unnoticed, I walked among them, pausing beside each.  I didn’t have to touch them; I just needed to be close .  It didn’t take long.  And it was easy.
    I planted the seeds deep, sowing them in their spines, their ribs, the long hollow bones of their legs.  I placed the seeds where they would germinate slowly, then grow and mature and blossom into an agonizing death for each.
    Afterward I returned to the woods, hot bitter tears running down my face.  I cried for Ma.  I cried for Georgie.  I guess I cried for myself, too.
     
    Hours later, after the moon had set and the men were gone, I cut Georgie down.  Using a wheelbarrow from the livery stable, I wheeled him up to the north field.  Then I returned home, got a shovel, and buried Georgie beside the boulder—figuring that rock he’d moved was better than any headstone I could have placed .
    Afterward I sat under the stars, leaning against Georgie’s boulder and thinking about what had happened.  I decided Ma had been telling the truth in that story of hers.  The men in the bar had been afraid of Georgie because he was different, and their fear had turned to hate, and their hate had destroyed him.  I suspected that Ma had changed the ending of her story, though.  I don’t believe there ever was any cleansing rain for that monkey .  I think that tribe of his tore apart their furry green brother and left him to die.  And as Ma had said, that’s just the way things were.
    But if that was the way of the world , why would God burden my brother with a curse like