The Survivor by Paul Almond Read Free Book Online

chastened by my father for their inexcusable lapse of manners when you were here.”
    “Lapse of manners?” They nearly had me killed, he thought to himself. But he didn’t want to pursue that.
    “Well, I am sure, all is forgotten now. They will welcome you as is right and proper. We are all of us duty bound to provide a welcome for any travelling settler.” The term “settler” pleased him. Yes indeed, he was truly a settler, though he hadn’t yet thought of himself as such. But still, she sounded distant. “Oh I see,” he said, “you think of me as just any old settler who must be accorded the welcome laid down by good manners?” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, and let that fall unanswered.
    “And how is your little sister, Eleanor?”
    “Oh, you won’t believe how she has grown!”
    “I’m sure she has.” James turned to study her as they walked on. What a lovely, healthy illustration of a working wife and future mother.
    “But truly,” she asked, “what does bring you to New Carlisle?”
    “Work,” he said, “I must find work.” She gestured ahead. “That’s our house.”
    “How could I forget it?” They went up the steps, crossed the veranda, and entered another unknown.

Chapter Six
    Eleanor Garrett, a tall, rather thin-faced woman with penetrating black eyes and dark greying hair in a bun, was putting a meal on the table, serving from iron cauldrons hung over the open fireplace. Catherine set about helping her with little Eleanor, about ten, sparkling eyes, happy as a kitten, putting big slices of bread into a basket — woven, James was quick to notice, by the Micmac. He could hardly take his eyes from the steaming mound of potatoes, carrots, and turnips that was to be their meal. How hungry he was!
    Will and John entered, and James hastened to greet them, to demonstrate all had been forgotten. John, now eighteen, was inordinately handsome as well as personable, with black hair, dark eyes, and the kind of jaw one saw on statues. Will stood a shade taller than John, lean, almost ascetic, with a flat mouth and thin eyes from squinting in the hard winter sun. His long face gave him the air of a scholar, though he was hardly that: bold rather, almost uncouth. The two brothers could not be more unlike. The youngest, Joseph, about fourteen, was already at the table.
    John gripped James’s hand warmly. In contrast, Will Jr. appeared distant, throwing glances all the while at his sister, who was studiously ignoring them. Did that mean he took himself to be her self-appointed guardian?
    “James!” John said as he put out his hand. “Good to see you again!”
    “Good indeed,” Catherine snorted, “since you both nearly had him killed two years ago.”
    “Oh, I’m sure he’s forgiven and forgotten, haven’t you, James?” John washed his hands under the indoor pump with a bar of homemade soap, and then dried them on the towel.
    “Of course I have, John, no harm done.” James quickly realized that he now must fully adopt this new persona of ‘James’, the name he had used previously. He turned to Will Jr. “And how are the crops coming?”
    “Fair enough,” replied Will curtly, the only one of the three brothers to have a hint of his father’s North Country accent.
    After pleasantries exchanged and much information traded, James brought up the reason for his return, the job hunt. Well aware that on the Garrett farm, the three brothers would be quite sufficient, he added, “Perhaps there might be another farmer, bereft of children, who might like a hand, sir?”
    “A ton of ’em,” William chuckled with the thick North Country brogue James loved, “but none as could pay anything.” He clumped across from his chair by the window and took his seat at the head of the table. James had heard on his previous visit about William’s leg wound received fighting in the Revolutionary War with His Majesty’s Militia some thirty years previously. “Ye’d better not look