A Northern Light Read Online Free PDF

delivers. He says all it really means is being able to choose among the worst jobs at the logging camps, the hotels, and the tanneries. Until his people can work anywhere whites work, and speak their minds freely, and write books and get them published, until white men are punished for stringing up black men, no black person will ever really be free.
    I was scared for Weaver sometimes. We had hillbillies in the North Woods, same as they had in Mississippi—ignorant folk just itching to blame their no-account lives on someone else—and Weaver never stepped off the sidewalk or doffed his hat. He'd scrap with anyone who called him nigger, and was never scared for himself. "Go round cringing like a dog, Matt," he said, "and folks will treat you like one. Stand up like a man, and they'll treat you like a man." That was fine for Weaver, but I wondered sometimes, How exactly do you stand up like a man when you're a girl?
    "
The Count of Monte Cristo's
a good book already, isn't it, Mattie? And we're only on the second chapter," Weaver said.
    "It sure is," I replied, bending down by a big clutch of fiddleheads.
    "You writing any more stories yourself?" Minnie asked me.
    "I've no time. No paper, either. I used up every page in my composition book. But I'm reading a lot. And learning my word of the day."
    "You ought to use your words, not collect them. You ought to write with them. That's what they're for," Weaver said.
    "I told you I can't. Don't you listen? And anyway, there's nothing to write about in Eagle Bay. Maybe in Paris, where Mr. Dumas lives—"
    "
Doo-mah.
"
    "What?"
    "
Doo-mah,
not Dumb-ass. Aren't you half French?"
    "...where Mr.
Doo-mahhhh
lives, where they have kings and musketeers, but not here," I said, sounding testier than I wanted to. "Here there's just sugaring and milking and cooking and picking fiddleheads, and who'd want to read about any of that?"
    "You don't have to snap, you snapping turtle," Minnie said.
    "I'm not snapping," I snapped.
    "The stories Miss Wilcox sent to New York weren't about kings or musketeers," Weaver said. "That one about the hermit Alvah Dunning and his Christmas all by himself, that was the best story I ever read."
    "And old Sam Dunnigan wrapping up his poor dead niece and keeping her in the icehouse all winter till she could be buried," Minnie added.
    "And Otis Arnold shooting a man and then drowning himself in Nick's Lake before the sheriff could take him from the woods," Weaver said.
    I shrugged, poking in the leaves.
    "What about the Glenmore?" Minnie asked.
    "I'm not going."
    "What about New York? You hear anything?" Weaver asked.
    "No."
    "Miss Wilcox get anything in the mail?" he pressed.
    "No."
    Weaver poked around some, too, then said, "That letter will come, Matt. I know it will. And in the meantime you can still write, you know. Nothing can stop you from writing if you really want to."
    "It's all right for you, Weaver," I shot back angrily. "Your mamma lets you alone. What if you had three sisters to look after and a father and a big damn farm that's nothing but endless damn work? What about that? You think you'd be writing stories then?" I felt my throat tightening and swallowed a few times to get the lump out. I don't cry much. Pa's got a quick backhand and little patience for sulks or tears.
    Weaver's eyes locked on mine. "It's not work that stops you, is it, Matt? Or time? You've always had plenty of one and none of the other. It's that promise. She shouldn't have made you do it. She had no right."
    Minnie knows when to quit, but Weaver doesn't. He was like a horsefly buzzing around and around, looking for an opening, a tender spot, then biting so hard it hurt.
    "She was dying. You would've done the same for your mother," I said, looking at the ground. I could feel my eyes tearing and I didn't want him to see.
    "God took her life and she took yours."
    "You shut up, Weaver! You don't know anything about it!" I shouted, the tears spilling.
    "You sure have a big mouth,