Winter Run by Robert Ashcom Read Free Book Online Page A

Clarence and he was afraid to insist.
    A month passed and Charlie still was nearly silent. Matthew wondered what else was wrong. Charlie began to come to the little milking barn in the morning and evening. He would sit silent in the corner whilethe milk swished into the bucket. He had always liked milking time. He liked the smell of the cow and the sound of her chewing, Matthew’s breathing, and in the summer the buzz of a wasp. One evening, after they were finished and were walking up the path to the gate, Bat was there, facing them. Charlie was in front. He stopped for a moment and then began to shake. Matthew barely had time to put the bucket down before Charlie whirled around into his arms. “Tell me how it happened! Tell me. Did Leonard hit her? Did he beat her? Tell me.”
    For an instant Matthew didn’t understand. The boy had gone wild. He tried to restrain him. When Charlie yelled out Leonard’s name, Matthew looked up at old Bat and made the connection.
    He grabbed Charlie shoulders. Hard. He put his face close to his. “Charlie! You stop. I can’t tell you nothing if you don’t shut up.” Then louder, “Hush! You hear me?” And shook him. The boy looked at him, at his eyes, with their bloodshot whites and pupils like dark pools. Eyes he had known for what seemed like his whole life. He stopped.
    “Turn around, Charlie! Look at her! What you see!”
    “I see,” he gasped, because Matthew had such a hold on him, “I see a milky-looking eye that’s blind. Blind! How did it happen? Tell me!”
    “Go close. What else you see, Charlie? … What?”
    Charlie peered at the eye. “I see a scar on the milky part where something went into it. What was it?”
    Matthew let him go and the boy turned again toface him.
    “One time when she was a foal,” Matthew said, “she was running in the pasture. You know that growed-up pasture behind old man Waits’s house? It was worse then. But there was grass in it, and the mare needed to eat to raise her foal. There was a lot of black locust in that field. Leonard saw it happen. Saw her slip and run right into a tree with locust stobs sticking out all over it. And drove one right into her eye. And her swinging her head back and forth in pain. Leonard’s daddy wanted to put her down. Said it would just get infected and cost money. But Leonard nursed her back without no veterinary. She growed up and they named her Bat and she been working ever since. That’s all. That’s what happened.”
    There was silence.
    “You never told me.”
    “You never did ask. How can I tell you what you don’t ask?” He paused. “Now Charlie,” said Matthew talking his slowest, “you listen to me. You might go through your whole life and never again meet nobody like Clarence Flint. But if you do, there’s one damn sure thing, you’ll know who he is and shun him. You never did think Leonard was like Clarence, did you?”
    There was silence.
    Then Charlie slowly shook his head. He looked worn out from the tension of the story. The old mule stirred. Charlie turned to look at her. The boy had stopped shaking and even though his back was tohim, Matthew felt him smile. It was a mild evening. Abruptly the old mule flopped her comic ears forward and lowered her head. Charlie walked up to her and stared at her blind, milky eye.
    “That scar always been there,” said Matthew. “You just ain’t ever seen it before. But then again, I reckon you ain’t ever had the need before.”

The Pony
    She came from the Price family’s little hardpan farm, five ridges back from the barn at the Corn House. She was gray, flea-bitten gray, which meant she was white with little black specks scattered over her body. And because of our red-clay soil, what you actually saw varied from light pink in the summer to reddish brown in the winter. The shade of red was governed by rainfall. In times of drought or summer heat, when her coat was short, she was almost her natural color, almost white. In the winter,