The Truest Pleasure by Robert Morgan Read Free Book Online Page B

at the Lewis place.
    When Tom showed up that Saturday evening I invited him to set on the porch. Pa liked to rest there in the evening and talk until it was dark. Like Locke, Pa loved to talk more than anything else, except to go to preaching. Him and Joe and Locke could make up stories and tell jokes for hours.
    â€œH-h-how are you?” Joe said to Tom.
    â€œHowdy,” Pa said.
    â€œHow do?” Tom said.
    â€œYour pa was named Tom too,” Pa said. “I remember him.”
    â€œHe was named Tom,” Tom said. Tom looked at his shoes, and he looked out at the pines beyond the branch.
    â€œHe was in the Sixty-fourth Infantry as I recollect,” Pa said. “They did some terrible fighting in that battle not too far from Chancellorsville, but after Chancellorsville. I can’t remember what it was called. They got pinned down and the smoke was so thick they couldn’t tell friend from foe.”
    â€œWas that The W-w-wilderness or the Seven Days?” Joe said.
    Tom did not answer. I could not tell if he didn’t know what brigade his pappy had served in, or if he just didn’t want to talk about it. His face turned slightly redder. I figured the thing to do was get him off the porch, for I wanted to be alone with him and talk to him myself.
    And besides, I wanted to touch him. He was the first man I ever felt that way about. It was something about the way he was made. He was so strong and compact. I saw he was made more like a pony than a horse, not tall but powerful and calm in his strength if he didn’t have to talk and explain anything. He wanted to work and do. I could see it was a pain for him to talk to strangers, and tell about hisself. He was comfortable with his strong hands and broad shoulders. I felt if I could touch him I would feel calm too, and things might work out in the future. He had got his suit mended. I reckon it was the only suit he had.
    â€œLet’s walk out to the Sunset Rock,” I said. The sun had gone down but there was a glow in the west, over Chimney Top and the ridge at the head of the river.
    â€œYou-all stay away from twisters, Ginny,” Pa said.
    â€œWe’ll just stay away,” I said, and laughed.
    It was one of those evenings in late summer when you can feel fall in the breeze. The air thrills, like when you touch silver in a drawer. The grass and weeds get cold and damp soon as the sun goes down, and you smell the corn leaves ready to be pulled as fodder and cured. There is the smell of old weeds with dust and dew on them. Even while there is a glow in the west a star comes out like a bright face watching you.
    â€œWhat is the Sunset Rock?” Tom said. We walked out the road behind the log barn.
    â€œIt’s a place on the west side of the pasture hill, where I used to watch the sun go down when I was a girl.” I didn’t tell him I still went out there sometimes after milking, to see the full spread of the western sky when it was gold and red.
    â€œWho named it Sunset Rock?” he said.
    â€œI named it when we was kids,” I said.
    Crickets in the weeds sounded like little silver notes. When we walked by they stopped, but soon as we got past they went on singing. The katydids was starting to make a racket in the trees on the hill and there was a jarfly off in the oaks by the river.
    I made as though I slipped on the wet grass and took Tom’s arm. He put his hand on mine. A shiver went through me. He gripped my hand and waist. Tom had confidence in hisself, in anything to do with his body. I don’t think I had ever touched such certainty. He was at home with hisself in a way I had never seen, at least once he got away from Pa and Joe. He wasn’t all anxious and worried like I was, and he wasn’t trying to think of something witty or wise to say like Pa was. Maybe he thought he wasn’t able to be witty and wise and didn’t even try.
    The trail around the hill come out of pines to