The Weather and Women Treat Me Fair by Percival Everett Read Free Book Online Page A

“Trial by ordeal.”
    “No,” Alison said.
    “I’m going to toss him and take a swing.”
    “No,” she said.
    “He’s never been any good at this,” Bill said.
    He tossed the mole up. He planned to miss. He had every intention of setting the mole free, but he wanted this as a theatrical end to the whole affair. He wanted to fan the air in a statement for the power of chance.
    It was a good swing. Dan watched his brother’s face. Bill wore the same expression as when they were teenagers and Dan had pointed a rifle in his direction while hog hunting. Bill had been standing on a dike studying signs when Dan came upon some piglets. The sow appeared behind Bill and chased him up the hill. Dan didn’t know what to do. He raised the gun and tried to draw a bead on the hog. Bill’s face was full of surprise and alarm when he saw the rifle, and he fell to the ground as Dan squeezed off the round. The sow was dead on his legs when Bill finally looked up. Dan was already trying to catch the piglets. “We’ve got to get them or they’ll starve.”
    Alison screamed. Dan recoiled, almost hitting himself on the face with the bat, as wood meeting mole resulted in a dull thwack.
    Bill stepped to his brother’s side and watched with him as the dark ball disappeared over the neighbor’s house. Dan let the bat fall at his feet. Alison ran into the house. Robert quietly led his son away.
    Bill scratched his chin. “There you go.”

Hear That Long Train Moan
     
    “The world perhaps was laid out initially with some sort of temporal consistency, but that was soon gone. Out the window. Maybe there never was any kind of consistency. One can certainly imagine creation coming to certain parts of the globe before others, like the telephone or cable. Look around. Jets stretch their exhaust plumes across the skies over thatch huts, people whose main staple is rice watch napalm disintegrate their jungles, some people beat out conversations on hollow logs while the strata above them is filled with microwave signals.” Virgil Boyd re-lit his pipe and sank into his chair. “That’s why,” he told his friend, “I’ve no problem with the period inconsistency within my model.”
    Morrison Long sipped his gimlet. “I wasn’t finding fault, but making an observation. Let me ask you something, Virgil: Are you all right?”
    “All right? Of course. Never better. Now that I’m retired I have time for my work.” He puffed at his pipe, but drew nothing. “Damn thing won’t stay lit.” Finding the box of matches on the table beside him empty, he patted his pockets and asked if Morrison had any. He did not and so Virgil called out, “Williston!”
    An eight-year-old boy with a large head appeared at the study door. He stood erect and attended to his grandfather.
    “Williston, be a good boy and find granddad some matches.”
    The boy nodded and went away. Virgil Boyd watched him trot across the living room toward the kitchen, skipping over tracks in the foyer and before the hallway.
    “The boy is a menace to my work,” Virgil Boyd said. “Doesn’t understand the seriousness of it all.”
    “He’s a boy,” Morrison Long said.
    “Nor do you appreciate what’s going on in this house.”
    “Of course I do, Virgil. By the way, where is Frannie this evening?”
    “I don’t know. And I care only to the extent that her absence has caused me to be left alone with that boy of hers.” Virgil Boyd went back to the door and looked. “He’s out there in the model now. Heaven knows what destruction he’s causing.” He looked at his cold pipe. “He’s not a bad boy. But he’s curious.”
    “Not a bad thing for a boy to be.”
    “Ha!”
    “It’s an innocent fault.”
    “Innocence will be the downfall of us all. Here he comes.” Virgil Boyd took the matches from Williston and sent him on. “I appreciate his curiosity, but there’s such a thing as discipline.”
    Morrison Long stood and went to the empty fireplace to lean on