Give Up the Body Read Online Free PDF

Frew kept his eyes on his drink. His sullenness told me nothing; I suspected it was his natural expression.
    Hilton made a motion with his hands, “Can I offer you a drink, Miss O’Hara?”
    He had torn the silence and I was grateful to him. I said, too gushingly, “Yes, please!”
    He went to the bar, and when Frew made no attempt to move, gently and quite firmly shouldered him aside. Frew sidled two steps without lifting his eyes. Hilton seemed unaware of the rude young man. He said to me, “Soda or ginger ale?”
    “Soda,” I told him. I watched him mix the drink. His hands were short and strong looking, with broad, spatulate fingers; and he handled the liquor and mix in a decisive way. It was a funny way for me to think of it, I know, but it seemed to fit my impression of Hilton. His movements were as precise as his speech, and he achieved his purpose as deftly.
    He mixed two highballs and handed one to me. “Mr. Delhart is inspecting the fish. He should be in soon now.”
    Stupidly, I said, “What fish?”
    Mrs. Willow came sweetly to life and stopped stabbing her ball of yarn with the knitting needle. “Oh, don’t you know about the fish farm? It will make a lovely story for your paper.”
    A
lovely
story! “I haven’t heard a thing,” I admitted.
    “It’s awfully interesting,” Daisy gushed at me.
    Frew grunted something to the bottom of his glass and turned to mix himself another drink. Pink Titus Willow was bobbing his head. In agreement with the sentiments of the family, I presumed.
    I blessed the fish farm, whatever it might be. It had, at least, livened up the party. Hilton began to explain it to me.
    “You’ve seen the ponds, Miss O’Hara?” I said I had. He said, “Mr. Delhart has been reading about fish farming and I suggested that he might conduct an experiment and if it proved successful here in Oregon other local people could take it up. Naturally, it’s only a hobby with Mr. Delhart, but farmers can find it quite a source of extra income.”
    He gilded Delhart in such a lovely, academic way. I smiled my interest and sipped at my drink.
    Hilton went on: “Mr. Delhart rebuilt the two ponds. He threw a small dam across the creek that joins them so they are entirely independent of one another. There’s a screened outlet in the pond close to the house and it drains into the lower pond whenever the water level rises too high. Then he put a good-sized concrete dam at the far end of the lower pond and fixed it so that the overflow drains into the little creek that leads from it to the river below.”
    I had a rather good picture of the set-up in my mind. I had seen the ponds before. They were fed by a spring near the house and before Delhart had fixed them were tree-cluttered swampy spots. He had had the trees removed and the depressions deepened. A narrow neck connected the two ponds, draining the water from one into the other. He had thrown a very ornate bridge of unpeeled poles across at this point. Below, the lower pond had a rather steep-sided, brushy ravine that ran about fifty feet from the dam into the Teneskium. When I had seen it, the dam was an earth fill.
    I nursed my drink and listened to Hilton pour out statistics. My memory had held mazes of such material before and I knew I would have no trouble holding onto this information. At the same time, I watched the Willow family nod judicially or smile sweetly here and there during Hilton’s recital.
    When Hilton stopped, Daisy squealed, “It’s such fun to fish in the ponds. The trout and bass simply snap at my hook. Arthur caught a beauty yesterday. Didn’t you, Arthur?”
    Frew looked up and grunted again. He broke down long enough to say, “Four pound bass. Good fighter too.”
    I said, “It’s very interesting.” I looked straight at Hilton. “Was this the story Mr. Delhart had for me?”
    I had said the wrong thing. The fish farming had kept the group free of that oppressive silence that was so noticeable. But as soon