Martin and John Read Online Free PDF

caught off guard, and I wondered then why I had approached him at all. His blank expression prompted me to point at the sign he was making, but I couldn’t think what to say, so I read it yet again: “Blue wet-paint columns.” Hadn’t someone told him what he was writing? He examined the paper as if he’d never seen it before. “No,” he said, “these’re dry. It’s the support posts that’re wet.” “No, your signs—” I started, but he interrupted me with a wave of his hand and stood up. “Don’t tell me no, man. Those”—he pointed at the signs—“are dry. Andthese”—he pointed to a column—“are wet.” He looked at me for a moment, and I thought I read a hint of fear in his eyes. He blinked suddenly, then walked to a column and smacked his palm against it, and then he slapped the hand on a sign. “Check it out,” he said. “Wet.” The imprint glistened under the heading “blue wet-paint columns” and I stared at it blankly for a moment. I tried again. “Look, it’s just that your signs say—” “I
know
what they say,” he cut me off again. “I been writing them all night. All night!” He raised his voice on the last words, and he raised his left hand as well, and then he shoved them both in my face. I started to dodge the blow, but his hand stopped a few inches from me and only then did I see red ink on his hand, smeared from heel to pinky. “I know what I’m writing,” he said quietly. “I got the words under my skin.” Under his skin, I thought. Like a disease, I thought, and then I remembered why I was in the station. It was always like that for me: just when I was trying to concentrate on one thing, something else came along and distracted me. The man’s cheeks quivered just under his eyes: he was afraid, and I knew why. He realized I was aware of his lie, but that didn’t bother him as much as the idea that I’d call him on it, that I’d cut through the story he’d been telling everyone, and probably himself. His sign, its bold handprint and lipstick letters, caught my eye. I looked at it for a moment, and then I stepped backward. The man dropped his hand. “Aw, hey, man,” he said, “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry.” I smiled, then I turned to leave. I didn’tsee any point in saying anything, but he called after me: “Hey, you can read them, can’t you?” I looked back and nodded. “Yeah,” I said, “I figured out what you meant.”
    SOMETIMES, ALONE IN Kansas, I loved my father so much that I would push chairs against the walls lest he trip over one and crack his skull, and other times I hated him and I knew that, somehow, he was responsible for what had happened to my mother. On those days I stole things from his room—T-shirts, pens embossed with his company’s name—and I destroyed them in the prairie. I never understood why I did this, because I didn’t know how I felt about myself: every time I tried to think about myself I ended up thinking about them. I resented them, both of them, but especially my father’s constant attempt to re-create my mother’s presence in the house by wearing her apron, cooking her food, or using me as her stand-in. I began to deny his attempts to remember her, but each denial only prompted him to try harder. He took to coddling things she’d owned, an old blanket, a picture of her, a piece of jewelry she’d once worn. After he went to sleep I would take these objects to the attic and pack them in boxes, and seal the boxes tightly with tape. Eventually there were no more objects and he came for me. It was inevitable, I suppose; all these things had done was remind him of her, and what more tangible reminder existed than me? He followed me to my room one night, still wearing her apron, and when I sat onthe bed he sat down heavily beside me. He stank of beer, and I tried to ignore him. I fell backward on the bed, and then I lifted my legs up and over him, and for an embarrassing