The Axman Cometh Read Online Free PDF

Shannon shrugs hostilely. Perry looks at the floor, has another sip of soda.
    "Anybody else home?"
    The question makes Shannon uneasy. "My mother's upstairs. Resting. My little brother's next door, and Allen Ray'll be along in a minute."
    "He's the one who played football?"
    "You know a lot about us," Shannon says, smiling tautly.
    "I just happened to see his picture in the trophy case at school and I thought, wow, he looks a lot like Shannon, he must be—how come he doesn't play college ball anywhere?"
    "Allen Ray just got tired of football. And,
    to tell the truth, he didn't have the grades for college. Do you play? You're big enough."
    "I know. I weighed two-fifteen this morning in the locker room before P-E. I do about three-hundred push-ups every day." He pushes hard with a forefinger, showing her that he can't make much of a dent in a well-rounded bicep. "The good news is I'll probably go out for the team next season. The bad news is I might not be here." Shannon does not ask why. He shrugs as if, silent, she is only trying to hide consternation. "We move around a lot. My father does construction work. Drives Cats. Road graders, bulldozers."
    "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
    "I had—have a sister. She got married to an ironworker on the Yellowtail Dam site. That's in Montana, near the Little Big Horn. And my mother ran off when we were living in Tucumcari; she took up with an accountant from Buffalo, New York, who was out west for his health. So it's just me and my father now."
    "Uh-huh. You can take that Dr Pepper with you if you want. I really should get supper started, so I don't have time to talk."
    "Oh. Right." Perry gets up looking chastened. "Thanks. This really hit the spot. Is this a deposit bottle? Tell you what, I'll bring it to you in school tomorrow."
    ("No, keep it," Shannon said, visualizing
    Perry Kennold passing her an empty Dr Pepper bottle in biology lab; the embarrassment—. She turned away as if she was afraid she was going to laugh, but her heart was beating almost savagely and that's when he reached over her shoulder and touched her— touched her cheek with a slit, bleeding finger and said:
    "See how sharp it is? I like to chop."
    Or was it Perry?)
    Petra Kisber , managing editor of Excalibur Books, thinks she is not alone.
    There are two ways off the sixth (and top) floor of the building at Sixth Avenue and Nineteenth Street in lower Manhattan. One is by elevator, which is not working; the other is by the stairwell, the steel door to which is marked by an exit light which, as exit lights must do, glows in the blackout. In defiance of a city ordinance this door is always locked, although most of the forty-six employees of the Knightsbridge Publishing Company have keys.
    Petra thinks she is not alone. Worse, she is sure she smells pigs.
    There have been mornings in the city since she came to stay, simmering summer mornings before the streets are washed, when the rancid effluvium has reminded her of the barnyard, of hog wallow and slops and the pigs that terrified her long before a couple of sows devoured a neighbor's toddler back home in West Virginia: but for the most part she has put her country raising well behind her. Studied in Europe. Taken a new name. Petra, not Patricia. Lost the slow-pitch, hillbilly accent and improved herself through sheer willpower: diet, Hatha Yoga, postgrad courses at the New School. She lightened her hair and acquired a soul mate. If she returned to her home state now, after an absence of more than twenty years, not even her closest relatives would recognize her without prompting. She is not, however, about to go back to Buck Creek, West Virginia, for any reason.
    But she still smells pigs. And she is not alone.
    Sometimes, although there is nothing that specific to focus on (pigs? It could be the smell of the trashy street below, stewing in the rain, an olfactory reminder of her increasingly desperate desire to be out of here, well on her way home to a