El Paso: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

next set of china and brought in bowls of steaming artichokes, the boys had no idea what to do with the strange vegetable. Alexa drew the boys’ attention by plucking off an artichoke leaf and putting it in her mouth, pretending to eat the entire thing. The boys followed suit.
    As Shaughnessy wound up a story about elk hunting in Alaska, Beatie looked over to her new charge and his friend. Both had stuffed whole leaves of artichokes in their mouths and were chewing, almost red-faced, their cheeks bulging desperately, while Alexa sat with a beatific smirk on her face.
    “Oh, I’m sorry, boys!” Beatie cried. “Let me show you how this is done.” She demonstrated the method of artichoke-eating to the boys, who stopped chewing and were watching her intently. Mick finally put his hand to his mouth and removed the huge wad of the ’choke.
    “No!” Alexa cried exuberantly. “Same way in, same way out. Use your spoon.”
    “I didn’t put it in with a spoon,” Mick said sullenly. “I put in with my fingers, like you showed us.”
    Beatie immediately got up from her chair. “All right, Alexa!” she said sternly, storming toward her daughter. Beatie’s footsteps pounded around the edges of the rug. Knowing what was about to happen, Alexa clouded up as if she were going to cry. “Go to your room. I warned you!” Beatie seized Alexa by the arm and was towing her, whimpering, out of the dining room.
    “Now, Mother,” Shaughnessy declared after things had gotten quiet again. “I suppose someone’s got to administer a little discipline in this household.”
    The boys looked at each other. Mick smiled bravely.
    “She ought to come eat where we do,” he said. “They don’t even give us a knife.”
    At this, Shaughnessy roared, “Yes, my word, yes! Maybe she should at that! Here,” he said, “I will carve up the pig myself. I take pride on being the finest pig-cutter west of the Hebrides! Do you boys like pig?”
    At these reassuring words the feeling of embarrassment that had overcome the boys suddenly blew away as flakes of ash from a hearth. Arthur looked at Mick, who was grinning, studying the pig. It was one thing he had no doubt he knew how to eat.

    FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME IN ARTHUR’S LIFE , the entire world spread out around him like a gift, one he was determined not to lose. Never even to let from his sight. He was enrolled in a day school and, as the years passed, his new situation settled on him mostly in ease. Arthur received a generous allowance of a dollar a week that was raised to two dollars when he turned twelve, and not only kept up his butterfly collection but also, at his father’s suggestion, took up collecting coins and stamps as well. The elder Shaughnessy taught him how to sail on small boats in Newport, and on vacations in Maine they saw bears and moose along the roads.
    Still, Arthur hadn’t made any really close friendships with the other boys of the day school. They seemed different, and though they didn’t tease or make fun of him for where he came from, they always seemed apart and let Arthur alone. He kept in touch with Mick Martin, though, and every so often Mick would stay over for a weekend at the Shaughnessy house in Boston and sometimes even be invited down to their place at Newport. Mick was Arthur’s lone tie with his past and both his father and Beatie thought it best to let him deal with this in his own way. And so the years slipped by and Arthur grew up, a happy boy, if a little shy.
    Then came the ordeal at Groton.
    As soon as young Arthur had arrived from the orphanage into the Shaughnessy family, the Colonel began to pull strings to get him into the Groton School, just as the Colonel’s own father had pulled strings to get him into Harvard. When the time came, at age fourteen, Arthur was packed off, with the Colonel’s tales of boarding school grandeur ringing in his ears. Arthur, however, had reservations, not the least of which was that only five years earlier