Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do Read Online Free PDF

trip journals, smiling photographs with beaming young mothers and their sons or equally delighted corporate donors handing over the checks that made Son the college's top fund-raiser five years in a row.
    But none of this was in any kind of order. The boxes hadn't even been opened since Beth's staff packed everything up and sent it all over. At this rate, there was no way anything was going to be ready for the public by the first week in May.
    “All right, Mr. Freeney,” I said. I wasn't here to fuss. I was here to fix it . “I think we've got some work ahead of us. Do you have a suggestion for how we ought to proceed?”
    The dusty air in the windowless room was oppressively still. The radiator hissed and rattled, and, even with the chill in the air outside, it had to be ninety-five degrees in that room.
    “I do, I do,” he said, ushering me back out into the hallway. “I think you should take over the processing of the Davis Collection.”
    He must have seen the surprised look on my face because he rushed on without stopping for breath like he wanted to get it all out before I said no.
    “That would simply entail going through all the materials and producing an overview of what we've got. Then, later, we can separate the professional from the personal, arrange them chronologically, cross-reference for names, events, and public honors.”
    “I'm not an archivist,” I protested. “I'm here to pull the program together. This is not my responsibility.”
    The idea of walking around in Son's life for the next six weeks did not appeal to me. People say that stuff about letting sleeping dogs lie for a reason: it's true.
    “Mr. Freeney,” I said, “I don't think that this is a workable solution to our problem.”
    He nodded slowly. “Of course I understand, but may I speak frankly?”
    “Please.” “I knew Son Davis. I respected him and what he was trying to do. I went to one of his Brothers Only workshops and it changed my life.”
    Mr. Freeney took out a spotless white handkerchief and wiped his face from forehead to fat little chin.
    “He believed in something, Ms. Burns. He stood for something. Now those papers in there don't tell the whole story—how could they?—but they're a beginning and who knows what young man might find something there to change his life just like Dr. King found something in Gandhi and became someone who could lead his people toward freedom.”
    Mr. Freeney reminded me of the movement people who were my parents' closest friends. They were still waiting for a leader to arise who would pick up where Martin and Malcolm and Medgar and all those unnamed martyrs left off. The possibility, however remote, kept them from becoming cynical, which is always the greatest threat to failed revolutionaries. Son seems to have done that for Mr. Freeney, just like Beth did it for me for a little while, and I know it's worth a lot. Cynicism is as deadly as cancer. It just takes longer to kill you.
    He saw me wavering, and his voice was gentle. “I just think that his papers can be useful in a way that a big ceremony just can't. I think the legacy that truly honors Brother Davis is sitting right there in those boxes. Waiting. ”
    I didn't say anything to that, and we walked in silence back up the stairs to his office. I was mentally trying to calculate how many hours it would take me to go through all those boxes.
    We reached Mr. Freeney's office and he pointed me toward a delicate antique rocker with a tapestry seat cushion. He eased himself into an equally delicate old swivel chair squeezed behind a classic rolltop desk. Overflowing bookcases lined the walls, and a fat calico cat was snoozing on the well-worn oriental rug. He was waiting for me to say yes or no to his proposition.
    I closed my eyes, remembered the weasel, and resigned myself to the inevitable. “If it's my job to pull this collection together, then that's what I'll have to do.”
    Mr. Freeney sighed with relief. “Can we shake on it