Blackbird House Read Online Free PDF Page B

advisable.   He needed it that way.   Sometimes he got a stomachache, and when he vomited, he spat out the halibut’s teeth.   Those teeth had gone right through him, it seemed.   He could feel them, cold, silvery things.
    He must have looked frightening as he forged the metal harness, covered with soot, hot as the devil, because Ruth Blackbird Hill ran away, and she didn’t come to fetch the dinner he placed on the stair though the food was better than the night before, cornbread with wild onions this time, and greens poured over with gravy All the same, the following morning the plate was clean and resting on the table.   Every morsel had been eaten.
    Ruth Blackbird Hill didn’t cook and she didn’t clean, but she kept on watching him through the window that was made of bumpy glass.   Lysander didn’t look up, didn’t let on that he knew she was staring, and then, one day, she was standing in the doorway to the shed.   She was wearing a pair of his old britches and a white shirt, but he could see through the smoke that she had on those red shoes.
    “How did you lose your leg?”   Ruth asked.
    He had expected nearly anything but that question.   It was rude; no one asked things like that.
    “A fish bit it off,” he said.
    Ruth laughed and said, “No.”
    He could feel the heat from the iron he was working on in his hands, his arms, his head.
    “You don’t believe me?”   He showed her the chain he wore around his neck, strung with halibut teeth.   “I coughed these up one by one.”
    “No,” Ruth said again, but her voice was quieter, as though she was thinking it over.   She walked right up to him, and Lysander felt something inside him quicken.   He had absolutely no idea of what she might do.
    Ruth Blackbird Hill put her left hand in the fire, and she would have kept it there if he hadn’t grabbed her arm and pulled her back.
    “See?”   she said to him.   Her skin felt cool, and she smelled like grass.   “There are things I’m afraid of, too.”
    People in town forgot about Ruth; they didn’t think about how she was living out at the farm any more than they remembered how she’d been camped on the beach for weeks without anyone’s offering help until Susan and Easter could no longer tolerate her situation.   Those two women probably should have minded their own business as well, but they were too kindhearted for that, and too smart to tell their husbands what part they had played in Ruth Blackbird Hill’s living at Lysander’s farm.   In truth, they had nearly forgotten about her themselves.   Then, one day Easter West found a pail of milk at her back door.   As it turned out, Susan Crosby discovered the very same thing on her porch cool, green milk that tasted so sweet, and was so filling, that after a single cup a person wouldn’t want another drop to drink all day.   Susan chose to go about her business, but Easter was a more curious individual.   She couldn’t stop wondering about Ruth.   That night, Easter dreamed of blackbirds, and of her husband, who was out in the Middle Banks fishing for mackerel.   When she woke she had a terrible thirst for more fresh milk.   She went out to the farm that day, just to have a look around.
    There was Ruth in the field, riding that old horse Domino, teaching him to jump over a barrel while the cows gazed on, disinterested.   When she saw Easter, Ruth left the horse and came to meet her at the gate.   That past night, Ruth herself had dreamed of tea, and of needles and thread set to work, and of a woman who was raising three sons alone while her husband was off to sea.   She had been expecting Easter, and had a pail of milk waiting under the shade of an oak tree.   The milk was greener than ever, and sweeter than ever, too; Easter West drank two tin cups full before she realized that Ruth Blackbird Hill was crying.
    It was near the end of summer.   Everything was blooming and fresh, but it wouldn’t last long.
    “What is