A Beauty Read Online Free PDF

Knutson said, “I can’t imagine what she’ll do next.” But she could. They all could when they thought about it. They fell silent and imagined her grainy, flickery, all sleepy-eyed and music-laden, like someone who had forgotten who she was or didn’t care, a girl slipping like a length of live silk from the arms of one man to another, looking sadder and sadder as she went on. None of the girls said a thing about it. None of them admitted they yearned to be her, physically yearned, the blood thrumming through their bodies at the very thought.

    In the Lincoln, he reached his arm out and she slid over the leather seat to nestle close to him. “Bill Longmore,” he said, glancing down at her. “Pleased to meet you.”
    “Elena Huhtala,” she said.
El
-ena
Hooh
-ta-la was the way she pronounced it, with the accent on the first syllables and making a lot more of the
h
’s than he would ever be able to do.
    The stars weren’t out yet although the sky was clear. The air was as warm as bathwater flowing over their skin. She never said she was hungry and he didn’t have food on his mind. He stayed outside while she went into the house. That was her idea; she said she wouldn’t be long and she wasn’t. She came out with one small bag, an old black leather thing, the size and style of a doctor’s bag, and threw it in the back. He gave her a last look at what she was leaving behind, sweeping the big headlights in a full circle so the homestead flashed by, the puny windbreak poplars, the unpainted farmhouse, the weed-riddled, drought-starved garden, the empty barn, the granaries that held no grain, and the dugout that had dried to crackled, khaki-coloured mud.
    When they got to the road, he stopped the car and turned to her. “So,
El
ena
Huh
tala,” he said, exaggerating her pronunciation, “Where do you want to go?”
    She didn’t comment, just gave him a look that seemed to say he wasn’t as tall as she’d first thought. “Anywhere,” was what she said.

    Nils Larson got drunk for the first time in his life that night, but he was such a nice young man drink didn’t affect him much. He only made some rash statements about following Elena and bringing her back where she belonged, and then forgot why he was alive and stared stupidly at nothing for a while and then passed out.
    Peter Gustafson told the boys more details about Mr. Huhtala’s final days in the cellar of his own home with his daughter walking around above him while he yelled and swore and banged on the trap door. Quite a few people older than Peter, but no wiser, cobbled inventive stories together from the few discernible facts they could garner, and went around saying they’d heard she’d as good as confessed on the way to the dance. Their speculations were so enjoyable, they didn’t ask Henrik or Maria Gustafson to verify them. They were just entertaining themselves, saying you could believe anything of her after the brazen way she’d waltzed out the door with that fellow’s arm around her.
    Aggie Lindquist decided that whatever Mr. Huhtala had done with himself, Elena was better off without him. On her own, now, she didn’t have to care what she did. A father’s what ties you down, Aggie thought. Without one, you’d be free. And then she had to stop thinking because Henrik Gustafson asked her to dance, feeling sorry for her, she figured – she’d known him since she was five – but as it turned out that wasn’t the reason.
    “Little Agatha,” he said in a hot gust into her ear while they stomped out some tune or other. None of the music was memorable now, and everything irritated her, even though you could say she’d got her wish, what with Elena Huhtala going off with the stranger and thereby escaping the expected.
    “I hate my name,” she said.
    “Oh you must not,” Mr. Gustafson said. His yellow beard puffed up against her chin and that was irritating, too, all dry and scratchy. “It’s a good name,” he said. “Why,