A Garden of Earthly Delights Read Online Free PDF Page B

Dusty and hot and the baby had cried in a thin rasping way like a sick cat. The foreman told Pearl to keep that baby in the cabin out of the sun so she'd done so, and one day had a premonition and ran a half-mile out of the tomato field and there was the baby sleeping and fretting in her cardboard box on the bed, and peering right in at her a rat sniffing at the baby's face! Pearl screamed so hard, the rat was out of there in a shot. When Carleton came in, there was Pearl just standing over the box, blinking and biting at her fingers. The baby was awake now, and crying. All Pearl could say was how stiff and pink the rat's tail had been. And its whiskers, so stiff. Carleton tried to suggest there had not been any rat, that was what you did with a high-strung female, but Pearl never forgot.
    What Carleton knew of rats, they bred faster than rabbits and they had to tear and chew and grind their teeth because their teeth were growing continuously and would grow into their jaws if they didn't wear them down. Carleton shook his head, wondering. IfGod made things, He made them strange. It was proof that God was different from man because man would have made things sensible.
    All this time Carleton Walpole was a young man. Seemed like being young just went on and on forever. Hard to believe you'd ever get
old.
(One day Carleton had word that his father, Carleton, Sr., was dead. Another day, that the farm had been sold piecemeal. Another day, the First Bank & Trust of Breathitt had shut its doors, gone bankrupt so none of its customers could collect a penny of their savings. After that Carleton never telephoned any relatives, sick to hear pity in their voices.) Young as he was, and one of the best farmworkers you could ask for, yet there was ever a crop of men younger and more willing. In taverns he fought them, bare-fisted or wrestling or both, except if Carleton was too drunk and had to be shielded by his friends. Wherever it was, he wouldn't recall afterward except they'd crossed the Mississippi River that day, he'd swung at some mush-mouthed southerner with a fox face that wanted breaking, and the guy shoved Carleton back stumbling against his friends saying, “Shit, I ain't gonna hit no old man. Hold that old drunk off me.”

3
    Florida.
On the day of that night that forever afterward he would think
I have blood on my hands, Jesus has shook me off
there was little Clara he loved like crazy, his best girl, his little-doll-girl coming up behind him and so carefully placing her cool just-washed hands over his eyes whispering, “Dad-dy got a head-ache?”
    And he'd placed his big callused hands over hers and pretended he was a blind man saying he was blind as a bat, and knocking things over until Clara's giggling was becoming scared, and Pearl grunted at them what sounded like
Damn fools
and slammed down plates on the table for supper.
    Five years after
Aw-kan-saw.
Five years and six days: Clara's fifth birthday, her daddy was mortified he'd forgotten.
    Making up for it later, as Carleton Walpole would do.
    Christ, was he tired! Hunched at the table spooning whatever itwas into his mouth. Couldn't chew too well on the left side of his mouth anymore. Couldn't sit for long on any chair except if it had a pillow, goddamned hemorrhoids driving him crazy. The kids were bickering, Mike was banging his elbows on the table and Pearl was sullen and silent meaning getting ready to explode. Sharleen, his ten-year-old, was passing saucepans and platters. “Honey, thanks. Now set it down.” Steaming mashed potatoes, his favorite kind of potatoes. Never minded the lumps in them, it was a kind of chewing he could do, and enjoy. Pearl objected as Carleton brought a jug of hard cider to the table, not on the table but set on the floor at his feet. “Hell with you. A man has got to live.” Carleton wasn't sure if he'd said this aloud, but it struck him as funny like a wisecrack on the radio.
    “Dad-dy forgot to wash!”—they were laughing at