Carrie Read Online Free PDF Page B

and shattered, and it wasn't glass at all. It was a big chunk of ice. I was going to turn around and tell Mom, and that's when they started to fall all at once, in a shower.
    â€œThey were falling on the Whites' roof, on the back and front lawn, on the outside door to their cellar. That was a sheet-tin bulkhead, and when the first one hit it made a huge
bong
noise, like a church bell. My mother and I both screamed. We were clutching each other like a couple of girls in a thunderstorm.
    â€œThen it stopped. There was no sound at all from their house. You could see the water from the melting ice trickling down their slate shingles in the sunshine. A great big hunk of ice was stuck in the angle of the roof and their little chimney. The light on it was so bright that my eyes hurt to look at it.
    â€œMy mother started to ask me if it was over, and then Margaret screamed. The sound came to us very clearly. In a way it was worse than before, because there was terror in this one. Then there were clanging, banging sounds, as if she was throwing every pot and pan in the house at the girl.
    â€œThe back door slammed open and slammed closed. No one came out. More screams. Mom said for me to call the police but I couldn't move. I was stuck to the spot. Mr. Kirk and his wife Virginia came out on their lawn to look. The Smiths, too. Pretty soon everyone on the street that was home had come out, even old Mrs. Warwick from up the block, and she was deaf in one ear.
    â€œThings started to crash and tinkle and break. Bottles, glasses, I don't know what all. And then the side window broke open and the kitchen table fell halfway through. With God as my witness. It was a big mahogany thing and it took the screen with it and it must have weighed three hundred pounds. How could a woman—even a big woman—throw that?”
    I ask her if she is implying something.
    â€œI'm only
telling
you,” she insists, suddenly distraught. “I'm not asking you to believe—”
    She seems to catch her breath and then goes on flatly:
    â€œThere was nothing for maybe five minutes. Water was dripping out of the gutters over there. And there was ice all over the Whites' lawn. It was melting fast.”
    She gives a short, chopping laugh and butts her cigarette.
    â€œWhy not? It
was
August.”
    She wanders aimlessly back toward the sofa, then veers away. “Then the stones. Right out of the blue, blue sky. Whistling and screaming like bombs. My mother cried out, ‘What, in the name of God!’ and put her hands over her head. But I couldn't move. I watched it all and I couldn't move. It didn't matter anyway. They only fell on the Whites' property.
    â€œOne of them hit a downspout and knocked it onto the lawn. Others punched holes right through the roof and into the attic. The roof made a big cracking sound each time one hit, and puffs of dust would squirt up. The ones that hit the ground made everything vibrate. You could feel them hitting in your feet.
    â€œOur china was tinkling and the fancy Welsh dresser was shaking and Mom's teacup fell on the floor and broke.
    â€œThey made big pits in the Whites' back lawn when they struck. Craters. Mrs. White hired a junkman from across town to cart them away, and Jerry Smith from up the street paid him a buck to let him chip a piece off one. He took it to B.U. and they looked at it and said it was ordinary granite.
    â€œOne of the last ones hit a little table they had in their back yard and smashed it to pieces.
    â€œBut nothing, nothing that wasn't on their property was hit.”
    She stops and turns from the window to look at me, and her face is haggard from remembering all that. One hand plays forgetfully with her casually stylish shag haircut. “Not much of it got into the local paper. By the time Billy Harris came around—he reported the Chamberlain news—she had already gotten the roof fixed, and when people told him the stones had gone right through