Gap Creek Read Online Free PDF

for the longest time, on watch, so to speak.
    So I kept a lamp burning in the tiny hours as Papa struggled. It was an awful thing to see and listen to, a grown man trying to gethis breath like a child with the croup. I think that’s one reason why the others wanted to get away from him. By late March Papa couldn’t halfway take in any air. He rasped and panted in his throat and coughed like he didn’t have the breath to cough and was going to break open. His face turned red and splotched like people with the hectic do.
    THE NIGHT I’M talking about was windy and late in March. It had rained during the day and then turned off cold. The sarvises and the redbuds was already blooming, but I guess some of their blossoms got blowed away. It was so windy air pushed down the chimney and made the fire flutter and smoke a little. I don’t think the wood smoke helped Papa breathe no better. You could hear wind roaring on the mountain like a thousand waterfalls. Everybody else had gone to bed, and every time a gust shook the house the windows rattled.
    “Papa, would you like me to heat up some water, so you can breathe the steam?” I said.
    “Won’t … do … no … good,” Papa gasped. He had spit up blood earlier and there was a bloodstain in the corner of his mouth.
    “Want me to heat some rocks and put them under the bed?” I said.
    He shook his head. It was like after the long struggle all winter to throw off the weakness in his chest, he had just give up.
    Wind hit the house like the breath had been knocked out of somebody, and I heard something fall in the attic. It was dark except for the lamp on the table by the bed.
    Papa coughed so hard it looked like his eyes was going to pop out. A cough raised his back up and run through his body in waves. As he tried to cough he stared straight up like he was looking a hundred miles away.
    “Would you like some syrup?” I said. “Mama has made somesoothing syrup out of honey and liquor with a little paregoric in it.”
    Papa shook his head, but I got the bottle anyway and poured a tablespoon for him.
    “No … use,” he gasped.
    “You got to quit coughing,” I said. “You’re going to choke.” I held the spoon to his lip and tipped some into his mouth. But he coughed, and the syrup flew back out. I tried again, but he coughed that out too.
    The thing about somebody with chest sickness is they don’t have any lung left to breathe with. Their chest is so eat up there’s nothing to take in and hold air. And the lungs think if they cough they can get rid of the congestion and take in more air. But the coughing don’t do no good. And more coughing just makes it worse.
    Now I was getting scared. The light of the lamp was glaring and everything looked sharp, just like itself, and more like itself than usual. I shuddered with the fear of what was happening.
    What can I do? I thought to myself. I’m powerless to help Papa. I was scared as I bent down over Papa’s bed and tried to make him drink some of the warm water with lemon juice in it. I knowed he was thirsty. He was dried out from coughing and from breathing so hard. He tried to drink, but he had to cough as soon as the liquid touched his throat. The warm water and lemon juice sprayed out on the bed. I had to wipe it off his face and the bed clothes. And then I tried again.
    It hurt to see him so hungry for air, and so parched for liquid, and unable to take either. I held the glass to his lip and he coughed again, and lemonade dribbled on his chin. His lips was chapped, the way sick people’s lips get. They cracked and bled when he coughed. It was hard to tell what was blood coughed up and blood from his lips. It reminded me of Masenier choking when he coughed. It made me sick to watch him.
    Papa had been the strongest kind of man all his life. He had been able to lift two two-hundred-pound bags of fertilizer when he was young. He had once lifted a loaded wagon while his brother fixed the wheel. He could carry a