Pride Read Online Free PDF Page A

its way off, too.
    About that same time is also when I found Mr. Harding. Mr. Harding lived at 7048 Clover Lane, the same side of the street we live on, next to the areaway. Mr. Harding used to have a good job selling Four Roses whiskey. He was a salesman and sold Four Roses to bars and restaurants, but he lost his job when the Depression came.
    My mother said he lost it because he drank too much. Every bar or restaurant would give him a drink when he came in, and then he’d get drunk and couldn’t sell anything. Four Roses wanted him to sell whiskey but not drink it, I guess.
    Anyway, Mr. Harding was on relief like about half the people in our neighborhood but he never looked for work. His wife got a job as a waitress at a bar up on Westchester Pike called the Sail Inn. Dad said you sailed in and staggered out. She ran away with the bartender there, at least that’s what the kids in the neighborhood say.
    One Saturday morning, early, I was meandering down the alley looking for things on trash day. Even with everybody so poor, there is always something worthwhile in the trash. If you wait until it gets to the dump, most of the best stuff’s already been picked over by the guys on the truck, so you need to go out before seven and look before they come.
    It was the beginning of that summer when we were building those last porches, but we didn’t work early Saturday mornings because that’s the day when Dad and Mom sleep late.
    One morning I found a perfectly good Sunbeam toaster worth twelve dollars new. My dad fixed it in about an hour. It’s the kind that makes a ticking sound like a clock while it’s toasting the bread, then pops up the toast when it’s finished.
    I also found an old portable Victrola in a black leather case like a suitcase. It’s one of those ones you wind up. Dad fixed that, too, and I keep it in the cellar to play sometimes in the evenings when I’ve finished homework or in summer when it’s too hot outside. I play old records Aunt Sophia gave me. They have great titles like “Just Like Washington Crossed the Delaware, General Pershing Will Cross the Rhine,” and “It’s the Japanese Sandman.”
    So I’m going down the alley rummaging through trashcans and sometimes peeking into a garage when I look into Mr. Harding’s garage and see him sitting all alone in his car in the garage. He looks blue and fat but I just think he’s drunk, maybe drove home, then fell asleep in his car before he could get out and go upstairs.
    I go on down the alley and then back up the other side. When I get to Mr. Harding’s garage, I peek in and he’s still there. It doesn’t look as if he’s even moved. I’m still thinking he’s only drunk when I go into the garage. But then I see his eyes are open, staring through the windshield, and his tongue is purple and swollen, sticking out of his mouth. His thick hands are wrapped tight on the steering wheel.
    I’m sure he’s dead when I see the vacuum-cleaner hose attached to the tail pipe and going in the back window. It’s the first dead person I’ve ever seen except for my grandmother, my mother’s mother, and Aunt Emmaline. But they were different, in white coffins, and with flowers all around.
    I run out of the garage, leaving the two comic books and a torn-in-half Little Orphan Annie Big Little Book I’d found on the Greenwood side at the end of the alley. I run home trying not to cry and trying at the same time to get my breath. I’ve never fainted but I think I’m almost doing it.
    As I go in the cellar door, I first begin thinking how I’m going to tell Mom; and how I can keep from telling Laurel. I stand there and think of waiting till Dad comes home and telling him, I also think of going across the street, at the corner, on the other side of Clover Lane, and telling Mr. Fitzgerald. He’s a policeman. But then I think how it might be a