Some of Your Blood Read Online Free PDF

times as big. The father came in and looked at the stuff as George put it away out of sight. “Ware ya gat dat?” he wanted to know.
    George for once in his life turned and looked the father straight in the eye. “Swiped it, off the Acme store delivery wagon,” and it was the truth. If the father yelled or hit out or said nothing or flew to the moon, just then he did not care.
    The father stood for a long time quiet and then made a funny little smile. He said, “Mabbe ya amoont ta schomthing yat, boy.” And you know that made the boy George feel better than anything in his whole life, and that’s crazy. Because if ever he hated anything it was the father. If ever there was a man he didn’t give a damn what he thought, it was the father. But when the father smiled and said that he got all hot in the mirror over the sink he was all pink and to save his soul he couldn’t keep from smiling too.
    Well the father went back to work after a while, as a swamper out at the head of the slag-pile where they never could keep a man working for long, who wants to be in hell until he is dead? but the father could get back there any time. And things went on quiet, never another drunk, never much talk and school let out, and the mother sat quieter and quieter. It was like she had quit, she was not going to fight anything any more, him or being ashamed or dirt in the house or anything. She got thin and light as a dead possum, George could easy carry her out to the outhouse and stand her up in there where she would slowly close the door and after a long time he would hear her calling and he would go back and she would be standing there and he would carry her back in to her wheelchair. George made a pass at cleaning up when he thought about it. He felt like hunting almost all the time now but he got stubborn inside and wouldn’t, just hung around her all the time. After the black eyes went away and the nose was only crooked not swole up they sent for the district nurse and she come and looked at the hands and clucked some and said she had ought to go to the hospital over to Mountaindale but the mother said no! real sharp, the first thing she said in a long while. The nurse took the arm and rolled up the sleeve and looked at it, it was like two peeled willow sticks stuck together, she tried easy to bend the arm and straighten it, it wouldn’t go but a little way each way and the mother like gasped and bit on her tongue. So the nurse shrugged again and left some pills for her to take if she was in pain. The mother died about four months after she was hit in the nose. The father went to work that day but George just hung around and hung around and when the wagon came for her he wanted to ride in it and when they wouldn’t let him he ran all the way behind it to the funeral home and hung around there until they chased him away. At night he waited until everyone went away and then got around the back and broke in and said goodbye to her in his own way. He swore they would be together one way or the other no matter what. In the morning he was there outside waiting and he hung around until they finished with her and went out to the graveyard. The father came too. They stood side by side watching the grave get filled in and like someone said they looked as if they did not understand it, and they did not. Nobody cried. Afterward the father went back to the mine and George was supposed to go back to school, but he went hunting. He did not catch anything. That was the bad part.
    Life went on, George was hunting a lot of the time and the father working and the funny part of it was the father began to straighten out a little at least as far as the drink went. He worked steady and they gave him a job at the shaft checking tools and if he kept on that way he’d wind up down below making real money for a change. But he did not want that, or anyway he did not try for it. The crazy thing was that for the first time anyone could remember he did things