My Name's Not Friday Read Online Free PDF

me, uttering slanders against me, my adversaries and foes, they shall stumble and fall.”’
    He puts his saucer down in the dirt and I bow my head so as not to meet his eye, but I carry on paying testament to the Lord in my darkest hour. ‘“One thing I have asked of the Lord, that I shall seek after”’ – I hear them big boots again – ‘“That I may dwell in the House of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.”’
    A hand yanks my collar hard, pulling me upright to my knees before the sack comes back over my head. He ties it around my neck with a piece of cord and everything is dark and muffled like it was before and I’m on my knees whenhe kicks me in the stomach, just like the mule did, kicks me hard when I don’t see it coming. And it hurts like hell.
    He jerks the sack close to his mouth. ‘I won’t have your kind preaching at me. Do you hear me, boy? Did you hear what I said?’
    But I ain’t saying nothing at all. Not any more. I ain’t saying nothing to no one.
    *
    In the evening when he takes me from the mule, he lays me down in the dirt and lifts the sacking from my head. I don’t take much interest in where we are. It seems much like it was before, though there ain’t no trees for shelter.
    He doesn’t speak to me but crouches close and stares, pleased that I’m miserable, like he’s satisfied if he don’t see the life in my eyes. He gives me water from a tin can. Unscrews the lid and tips it up so that I have to move my mouth to the side to stop the steady stream from falling and being wasted in the dirt. It tastes dirty, like he’s got it from a stream and not from a well. I notice he drinks from a different can to me.
    I watch him eat his supper. Mostly I try not to look, but I think he wants me to, cos he makes noises when he eats and if I lift my head he’s always watching me, waiting for me, like he knows what I’m thinking.
    ‘Expect you’re hungry,’ he says eventually. He comes across and crouches down, lifting the last chunk of bread to my mouth, feeding me as though I’m a horse and he’s scared I’ll nip his fingers. I have to hold the bread in my teeth and chew it at the same time, knowing if I drop it he won’t pick it up.
    He stays crouching close. The sun is setting and behind his head the light is fading fast, all tinged at the edges with blues and reds. ‘Where’d you learn your scriptures? Is that from the priest back there?’ I nod. ‘You know a lot of that stuff?’ I nod again. ‘Well, I suggest you forget it. Where you’re going, if you want to pray, you better do it in your head.’
    He smiles coldly. ‘You learn to read?’ I nod. ‘Bet you can write too.’ He’s smiling like he knows everything about me. ‘Well, you better forget that too. When we get to town tomorrow, if I hear a word out of you about knowing how to read, I’ll whip you till you’re dead and then I’ll get back on my mule and have Father Mosely give me your brother by way of a refund.’
    He walks to the mule and returns with a length of rope and a blanket, ties my feet together and then fastens the loose end of the rope around his own ankle so the two of us are twinned, one to the other. ‘That’s so you don’t get any ideas about running away.’ He unfolds the blanket, lies down upon the ground and pulls it across him, keeping his hat on to sleep.
    If he means for me to sleep as well then he’s mistaken, cos I want to kill him for what he just said about Joshua. I want to find a rock and smash his skull in. I want to hold a gun to his head till he cries like a baby, and I never had such wicked thoughts before.
    I’m so angry I start slinging questions like they’re stones. ‘Who are you anyway?’ I don’t even care when he lifts his head. ‘Are you meant to be some sort of devil? Is that it? Well, are you?’
    Oh, how he laughs at me. That man damn near splits his sides, rolling onto his back and kicking his legs so therope that joins us tugs at my ankles.