Gap Creek Read Online Free PDF Page B

deer out of the woods after shooting it. Now his chest was sunk in and pitiful. His arms was wasted, though his hands was still big and rough. It broke my heart to look at him.
    There is a smell that lung sickness gives people. It’s the smell of blood and congestion and fever. It’s the smell of blood mixed with air that hangs over a bed and fills a sickroom. It’s the smell of old blood, and blood that is fresh and already old. It’s the smell of a festering wound.
    Papa raised off the pillow trying to get his breath. He gasped like he was trying to swallow the whole world to get some air in his mouth, since there was no room in his lungs. He was sweating with effort to suck in more air.
    “Lord,” I said without even thinking, “please let Papa get his breath. I can’t bear to watch him die.”
    Papa gulped two more times and his head fell back on the pillow, like he had got some air into his chest, like he was relaxing a little. His body settled down under the quilts like somebody getting ready to go to sleep. He had fell off so much he didn’t look like a grown man in the bed. He resembled a bent old woman.
    “Lord, let Papa get some rest,” I prayed. I never had been one to pray a lot on my own, but I found myself saying the words without even thinking.
    I tried to think if there was anything else I could do for Papa. Surely if I thought hard enough, I could find something helpful. All I wanted was for Papa to make it through till daylight. I knowed that most people die between midnight and dawn. I went to put another log on the fire, one of the logs Lou and me had cut and drug throughthe ice. The wood was too green to burn perfect, and that made the fire smoke a little. I had a few sticks of old pine, which I’d brought in for kindling, and I throwed them on the fire too.
    When the new log caught it popped like a cap pistol and hissed as if there was a snake in the wood. Then it popped again. And I seen this green flame rising out of the log, and realized it must be fruit wood. It was a persimmon tree, not an oak, we had cut up. No wonder the wood was so hard, harder than oak. There was some blue in the flames too, but mostly it was bright green. Now I have never believed in ghosts and portents more than other people. I usually don’t even listen when people are telling ghost stories. But Mama had told me a long time ago, and Grandma had told her, that a green fire in a fireplace means something is ending and something else is beginning. A green flame is a sign, like a green shoot in spring, or the green light that takes over the sky sometimes after a storm.
    I watched the green flame prance and strut and spread its wings. The fire twisted and beckoned as if it meant for me to follow. The fire spread on the wood like fingers on a keyboard. The log popped and hissed and then started to whine. And the wood begun to moan, like somebody that was grieved. I listened for a little bit to the mournfulness and then I shuddered and turned away. I didn’t have time for such stuff.
    And that’s when I knowed I couldn’t stand to watch Papa die. I had been there when Masenier died, and I had seen it all because I had to, because I had to help Papa carry him down to the doctor’s house. And now Papa was dying, and I was the one forced to watch him.
    “I won’t do it,” I said out loud and stomped my foot on the floorboards. I guess I was as much scared as angry. I had had to clean up Papa and I had had to set up with him, and I had had to wait up with him instead of sleeping. And I had sawed down and hauled in and split the very logs that was keeping the house warm and burningthe green portent. Everything that was hard fell to me, and everything nobody else wanted to do fell to me.
    “I won’t do it,” I said again and stomped to the window. Wind shook the frame and trees roared on the mountain like giant animals.
    “What won’t you do?” somebody said. It was Mama standing in the doorway holding a