The Boys in the Trees by Mary Swan Read Free Book Online Page A

Emden. On the big factory, the office block on the square, on the pharmacy and the jeweler’s shop. In the newspaper. My fathersays Mr. Marl also started with nothing, says that is proof that anything is possible here, says this is our new beginning. He goes into the world each day, in a shirt we keep white and mended, in the boots he polishes himself. He returns from the world to the house, and the house is different when he does, when he is there. Just different. There are things he doesn’t know, because we don’t tell him, or because he doesn’t see.
    In the evenings my father sits in the armchair, the one with the stain no amount of scrubbing can remove, and while my mother sews he reads the paper out loud and the clock of our new life ticks and ticks. He reads the whole paper, even the deaths and marriages, and sometimes he will stop and say,
Another one gone, Lil, but plenty left for you. John Dawes, from church
, he said once.
Now there’s a fine young man. Or Alec Lyon, steady and hardworking, and he’ll inherit the mill
. As if all I had to do was decide, as if I would ever have a life like that, a normal life. He says things like that, and yet he was happy with the word, Dr. Robinson’s word, and if he was happy with the word, that must mean he thought something needed to be explained. Maybe he sees more than he thinks, or more than he lets himself say. I know that my father loves me, but I don’t know if he knows anything about me. I don’t think he’s ever held my hand in the street; I don’t remember ever walking with him, just the two of us, alone.
    When my father came back he had bought the nails after all and the sound of the hammer blows echoed, the chickens running in mad circles to the farthest corner of the yard. When he came in he rolled his shirtsleeves down and walked around the downstairs rooms, touching things but not picking them up, not even reallylooking at them. My mother asked would I wash some windows and I
pumped the bucket as full as I could carry, gathered the rags. But my father stopped me at the foot of the stair, said he needed a piece of music for the Sunday school, a piece by Bach that Miss Alice had, and would I go and fetch it now. I didn’t say, but I wondered why he needed it then, with my hair wrapped up, my sleeves already rolled. I wondered why Rachel couldn’t bring it, why he couldn’t ask Rachel when she came home at noontime. He held the door open and watched me on my way, the first time he’d been still all morning. On the porch chair there was a package, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. A small package, strangely shaped, like a lumpy letter
L,
and I wondered why he hadn’t brought it inside
.
    Rachel was born late, not like me, and my mother said that was why she had such a mass of dark hair. She sometimes meets my father after his work, and they walk through the town together. She can recite the kings and wars of England, all their dates, and she draws the trees arching over the river, draws our white house, draws Mr. Allen’s store on the corner, with its square sign, with its baskets of pears in front. She holds out her hand under the table and takes my meat, sits on the end of my bed when I’m too weary to rise. I watch her from the upstairs window when she goes to school; there’s a point where she disappears, the angle of Mr. Allen’s store, and I feel my heart thump until I see her again, stepping up to Miss Alice’s front door. Every day the same.
    Rachel is twelve now and women’s things will happen to her, but it won’t be like me. One night in my bed the leaping boy put his mouth to my ear and whispered,
Beware
. And I sat straightup and realized that he had been gone, they had all been gone, and I had no idea how long. I thought of my mother, the waiting in her shoulders, and that’s why I minded. The only thing I have to give her.
    Rachel’s friends told her that Will Toller has a crooked arm because his mother was frightened