Do Not Pass Go Read Online Free PDF Page A

mining camp and went to mechanic school. And he wouldn’t go hunting with his father anymore. Dad let Deet make up his own mind about hunting, but Deet had shaken his head no when Grandpa wanted to take him out for spruce hens the first time. He didn’t want to kill things either. “You’re making an old woman out of this boy,” Grandpa snarled at Dad, “just like you.”
    The stove gleamed and a shining teakettle sat in itsplace on the back burner. On the wall by the stove was a framed picture of hands, just hands, no face, no arms, just hands, praying. Deet had always disliked that picture. It gave him the creeps.
    What was the point of praying, anyway? If this god was all-powerful, all-knowing, he knew about someone’s troubles already, didn’t he? Once Deet had asked Grandpa about this. Grandpa’s eyes had snapped blue sparks. “You know,” he said, “you can go to hell for asking questions like that just as sure as you can from stealing.” Well, if he was a good god, he wouldn’t have to be asked to do a good thing for someone, would he? He’d just
do
it. Mom said the good thing about Deet was that he’d do stuff without being asked. She said it was twice as good to have a favor if you didn’t have to ask for it. Shouldn’t this god be like that? Should he have to be begged?
    Like those prayer things organized for someone in the hospital. “We all prayed for you to get well.” Like god kept a tally.
Okay. Three hundred and seventy-five prayers. I guess I can heal him now.
Or what about,
Only two hundred prayers. Not enough. Let him die.
    Deet didn’t believe in god at all, because everything people said about god was so silly. Illogical. Another way he was different from everyone he knew.
    The curtains hung stiffly at the window, and the braided rug sat where it always sat, precisely in front of the rocker.
    His grandfather sat in the rocker as he usually sat, and he gave Deet a critical look before he folded the newspaper and stood up. The look, Deet was sure, indicated that he thought Deet should have been there earlier.
    â€œI just got off the bus,” he said in answer to that look. His grandfather grunted.
    Even though he wasn’t really Deet’s grandfather, he never seemed to make any distinction between Deet and the girls. He always treated Deet the same as the girls, but it was not as if there was a lot of enthusiasm over any of them.
    Grandma kept pictures on the bookcase in the dark living room: Dad at eight or nine, looking no different from his grown-up self; pictures of the girls as babies; a picture of Mom and Dad and Deet before the girlswere born. There was a picture from the mine, the year they had such a big clean-up, Grandpa posing proudly with the gold pan full of nuggets and gold dust.
    Grandpa’s parents had brought him from Finland when he was just a baby. Deet had read that the Finns had been invaded by hordes from Mongolia, and that was why some Finns had slanted eyes and broad cheekbones. Grandpa certainly would have approved of Genghis Khan, who was not an old woman.
    â€œHave something to eat first, if you want, and then I want you to help me with the propane bottles.” Those bottles were hundred pounders, and Grandpa had handled them all by himself for as long as Deet had been around. Now he was asking Deet for help. Deet looked quickly into Grandpa’s face, but it was stony, no answers there.
    â€œI’m not hungry,” said Deet. He put his boots back on and went out with Grandpa to carry the five bottles into the woodshed.

FOUR

    The night it happened was a cold, hard night, thirty below. Ice fog covered everything, but by the light from the kitchen window Deet could see frost crusted on the trees by the house, bowing the branches with its weight.
    He was doing his homework at the kitchen table. He usually did his homework in his room, but when the weather turned cold