The Member of the Wedding by Carson Mccullers Read Free Book Online

you didn't do anything."
    "Nothing?" asked Frankie.
    "No. You just watched the pair of them like they was ghosts. Then, when they talked about the wedding, them ears of yours stiffened out the size of cabbage leaves—"
    Frankie raised her hand to her left ear. "They didn't," she said bitterly. Then after a while she added. "Some day you going to look down and find that big fat tongue of yours pulled out by the roots and laying there before you on the table. Then how do you think you will feel?"
    "Quit talking so rude," said Berenice.
    Frankie scowled down at the splinter in her foot. She finished cutting it out with the knife and said, "That would have hurt anybody else but me." Then she was walking round and round the room again. "I am so scared I didn't make a good impression."
    "What of it?" said Berenice. "I wish Honey and T. T. would come on. You make me nervous."
    Frankie drew up her left shoulder and bit her lower lip. Then suddenly she sat down and banged her forehead on the table.
    "Come on," said Berenice. "Don't act like that"
    But Frankie sat stiff, her face in the crook of her elbow and her fists clenched tight. Her voice had a ragged and strangled sound. "They were so pretty," she was saying. "They must have such a good time. And they went away and left me."
    "Sit up," said Berenice. "Behave yourself."
    "They came and went away," she said. "They went away and left me with this feeling."
    "Hooee!" said Berenice finally. "I bet I know something."
    The kitchen was silent and she tapped four times with her heel: one, two, three—
bang!
Her live eye was dark and teasing and she tapped with her heel, then took up the beating with a dark jazz voice that was like a song.
Frankie got a crush!
Frankie got a crush!
Frankie got a crush!
On the
Wedd
-ing!
    "Quit," said Frankie.
Frankie got a crush!
Frankie got a crush!
    Berenice went on and on, and her voice was jazzed like the heart that beats in your head when you have fever. Frankie was dizzy, and she picked up the knife from the kitchen table.
    "You better quit!"
    Berenice stopped very suddenly. The kitchen was suddenly shrunken and quiet.
    "You lay down that knife."
    "Make me."
    She steadied the end of the handle against her palm and bent the blade slowly. The knife was Umber, sharp, and long.
    "Lay it down, DEVIL!"
    But Frankie stood up and took careful aim. Her eyes were narrowed and the feel of the knife made her hands stop trembling.
    "Just throw it!" said Berenice. "You just!"
    All the house was very quiet. The empty house seemed to be waiting. And then there was the knife whistle in the air and the sound the blade made when it struck. The knife hit the middle of the stairway door and shivered there. She watched the knife until it did not shiver any longer.
    "I am the best knife-thrower in this town," she said.
    Berenice, who stood behind her, did not speak.
    "If they would have a contest I would win."
    Frankie pulled the knife from the door and laid it on the kitchen table. Then she spat on her palm and rubbed her hands together.
    Berenice said finally: "Frances Addams, you going to do that once too often."
    "I never miss outside of a few inches."
    "You know what your father said about knife-throwing in this house."
    "I warned you to quit picking with me."
    "You are not fit to live in a house," said Berenice.
    "I won't be living in this one much longer. I'm going to run away from home."
    "And a good riddance to a big old bad rubbage," said Berenice.
    "You wait and see. I'm leaving town."
    "And where you think you are going?"
    Frankie looked at all the corners of the room, and then said, "I don't know."
    "I do," said Berenice. "You going crazy. That's where you going."
    "No," said Frankie. She stood very still, looking around the
queerly pictured wall, and then she closed her eyes. "I'm going to Winter Hill. I'm going to the wedding. And I swear to Jesus by my two eyes I'm never coming back here any more."
    She had not been sure that she would throw the knife