The Double Hook by Sheila Watson Read Free Book Online Page B

God.
2
    Felix Prosper had wakened after his dream. He sat on the steps in the morning light. The hounds lay away from him, their heads coiled under their paws, their backs cramped against the side of the house. The terrier had crept down under the covers. Felix sat by himself. The edge of the step cut into his flesh. He had brought his fiddle with him, but it lay beside him. His eyes looked out on an empty world. His flesh was heavy on his bone, a cumbersome coat folded and creased and sagging at the seams. His hands dropped empty between his knees.
    So one grew old. Haunted by an image of Angel come back filled like a cup with another man’s passion. Haunted by the image of a boy Felix come back in sleep asking: Can your joy be bound by a glass rim? Is death a fishbone in your hand?
    Felix reached for his fiddle. He set it in the soft fold between chin and shoulder. The hounds stirring coiled tighter against the sound. Then something answered in the bushes by the creek. Felix heard branches pushed aside. He looked up. It was Kip. Coming over the rise. Lifting his face windward like an animal.
    His shirt had been torn by the branches. His legs were splashed with creek water. His face was a livid wound.
    Felix put down his fiddle and got up from the step. His hand reached for Kip’s arm.
    What’s happened? he said. Where have you been?
    Walking down the creek, Kip said. Finding my way by the smell of the water. I wanted a man’s girl, he said. I’d seen enough to buy her.
    Fool, Felix said. But he took Kip into the house and shaking the terrier out of the blanket sat Kip on the bed. He lit the fire in the stove and made coffee. He heated some waterand put it in the hand-basin. Then he looked in at Kip silent on the blanket and putting on his cotton cap he walked barefoot out into the dust of the road.
3
    In the cabin by the quarry Angel was getting breakfast. The children sat on the bench by the stove. They were still dressed in the short cotton shirts which they wore in bed. Rolled over on the mattress Theophil smoked, his arm propping his head.
    You’ll burn up the bed, Angel said. Then where will you have to lie about on all day long and all night too?
    It’s my bed, Theophil said.
    He shut his eyes and drew his knees closer to his belly. Then he looked up.
    You used to listen and learn from me, Theophil said. Now you just tell. Right from the squeak of dawn. Telling. Telling. A man would be hard pressed to wedge a word into the silences you leave.
    You said you wanted to take care of us, Angel said. Now you just want attention yourself.
    It’s the way you work on a man, Theophil said. Wearing him out. Forcing everything. I liked the look of you, he said, when you were out of my reach.
    Of course, Angel said. Poor and thin as you are. And having climbed up, she said, you’d spare yourself the trouble of climbing again.
    She pressed a hotcake flat with her knife.
    You needn’t spoil the cakes, he said.
    Who would be riding down the road just at daylight? she asked.
    How would I know? he said. What’s it got to do with you? Is there nothing you can’t let alone?
    It might have been Kip, she said. And then again not. It might have been one of the Potters. There’s trouble already at James Potter’s, she said, and there’ll be more. That Greta’s got a whole case of dynamite under her skirt.
    More like that James has a stick in his britches, Theophil said.
    Angel turned around from the stove. She wiped her hand on her skirt. Then she spat on her finger and held it up as if she were trying to find the direction of the wind.
    Oh-ho, she said.
    Theophil got up from the mattress.
    Get those cakes on the table, he said. Or I’ll oh-ho and ho-oh you till you think twice next time before you make fun of me. You came jumping into my bed over Felix’s back, and you’ve got me squatting nice for another jump.
    Angel jerked the children off the bench where they sat.
    Get into your things, she said. What do you think will