Some of Your Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

around the house. Not much but the whole time his wife was alive he never set hand to a broom unless to hit somebody with it nor got his hands wet except to wash them. Now when it didn’t make no difference to anybody he would shove the dirt and beer cans out in the yard every day or so and even scrape off the dishes and rinse them. Once he told George he thought a garden where they could grow some corn and radishes and stuff would be nice only he had no hoe, so George swiped him one off the sidewalk display in front of Mountain Hardware, and the father took it and cussed and cussed, but wagging his head and grinning, he must have knew George swiped it because where would George get money? but he never asked, he was just pleased and he actually hoed out a patch and George went in the Acme and pretended to be studying the seed pictures and swiped eight packs of seeds, corn and melon and sunflowers and some hot peppers and the father planted them all.
    One time at night George was coming home from the old quarry on the other side of town where some big frogs were and right in the middle of town someone came out of an alley and grabbed his arm and he almost hit him but saw it was the father. The father walked along with him and began talking something about we don’t have to live like pigs no more if he didn’t have to spend all his money for food he would have money for maybe a rug for the floor and some more dishes and a tub to wash them in and another lamp and some paint and things. When they reached the corner the father turned George around and they started back, the father still mumbling on and on about this and when they came to the alley he looked up and back and all around and then quick pulled George into the alley. They went halfway down and it was real dark and the father took George’s wrist and pulled his hand down to where it touched one of those slanty cellar doors that comes out the side of some buildings, and the father pulled up on it and it came open a ways and George saw it was not locked. The father lowered it down real quiet and walked off in the dark leaving George standing there. After a while George tried it himself and it opened and he went down the steps. Down there he could not see anything but he could smell the flour and dried prunes and all the other stuff that was there, it was the basement of the Acme market.
    The next day he got matches and then in the night he went back and got his pockets full of two cans of milk and a can opener and some tallow candles and best of all a toy flashlight and batteries to fit it, a little tiny thing but all he needed down there. After that he went there every night almost and brought stuff home but he was smart and never took but from open cartons and never left anything around like wrappers or burned matches, and he was always sure to sit quiet under the alley door listening the way he’d do in the woods. The father never said nothing while he slowly filled the whole place up, all the cupboards and under the sink with canned goods and pancake mix and rice and lentils and what all. There was not much said between him and the father but things were better between them than ever before, and sure enough the father did go ahead and spend some money on a little rug for the middle of the floor and some dishes from the five and dime.
    So then he found the meat market had a side cellar door too only it was locked. He hung around town a couple of days until the delivery truck came and he helped the man unload cases of bacon and four quarters of beef and four sides of pork, and by the time he made his third trip up and down the stairs he saw where he could jam the spring lock open with a bit of cardboard and he did. That night he went down into the basement and up into the meat market, had a good look up and down the streets outside, then went and opened the walk-in freezer. When he opened the door a big bright light went on inside and scared him so much he slid