The Folded Leaf by William Maxwell Read Free Book Online Page B

the door to the sewing room all opened off this upstairs hall. And there was a horsehair sofa where he sat sometimes in his nightgown, when there was company and he wanted to listen to what was going on downstairs. The sofa scratched his legs. There was also a bookcase in the upstairs hall, with his books in it, and a desk, and over the desk was a picture of a boy with a bow and arrow and a gas jet that was left burning all night.The bathroom was at the end of a long corridor and up one step. When you got to the end of the corridor you turned right if you wanted to go into the bathroom, and left if you wanted to go into the back hall, where the clothes hamper was, and the door to the maid’s room, and the back stairs. The back stairs used to frighten him even in the daytime, and at night he never dared look to the left, as he reached the end of the corridor.
    About the bathroom he was confused. Sometimes the washbowl was in one place and sometimes it was in another. The tub was large and had claws for feet, he was sure. But was it at the far end of the room, under the window? Or was that where the toilet was?
    He gave up trying to establish the arrangement of the bathroom and thought instead of the butler’s pantry, which he had completely forgotten before. It was between the dining room and the kitchen. The butler’s pantry was where the door to the cellar stairs was. You opened this door and the stairs went down to the furnace room, which was dark and full of cobwebs. And there was no railing.
    There was also a door that opened off the kitchen, and another stairs which led to the cellar where his mother kept all kinds of fruit in jars on open shelves.
    The discovery of these two sets of stairs, both of which he had totally forgotten, pleased Lymie. He thought about them for a minute or two and then suddenly the house went out of his mind, leaving no trace. He was back in his own bed, and it was the utter absolute silence that kept him from sleeping.

11
    M rs. Latham was still awake when Spud came in. She called to him softly from her bedroom. “Is that you, son?” It couldn’t have been anyone else and it was really another question altogether that she was asking him. When he answered, the sound of his voice satisfied her apparently. “Turn out the light in the hall,” she said. “And sleep well.”
    “Same to you,” Spud said.
    With his tongue he touched the cut on the inside of his cheek. There was a slight taste in his mouth which was blood. His shirt was torn all the way down his back. His hair was full of dirt and leaves. He was glad his mother hadn’t waited up for him. It would upset her if she knew he had been fighting.
    He tried not to make a sound going through Helen’s room but he miscalculated the position of a small rocking chair and fell over it. Picking himself up he was as conscious of his sister’s irritation as if she had spoken out loud, but there was no sound from the bed, not even the creaking of springs.
    When Spud got his clothes off he was too tired to do anything but crawl in between the covers. Too tired and too happy. For the first time the room seemed his. It was a nice room, better than he had thought. It had all these windows.
The blond boy began to give way, to defend himself. Foot by foot they fought their way across the open space in the shrubbery, their breathing and the impact of their fists the only sound, their bodies the whole field of vision. When the blond boy, stepping backward, tripped and lost his balance, Spud fell on top of him.
Carlson, his name was: Verne Carlson. So he must have been a Swede. He was not especially different from a lot of guys in Wisconsin. Guys like Logan Anderson or Bob Trask, who think they are alot tougher than they really are. But on the other hand (Spud yawned) not bad when you get to know them.
    The night sky was split wide open by a flash of lightning and then another paler one. If it rained it would probably get the window sill and the