The Elementals Read Online Free PDF Page A

of a thirteen-year-old girl.”
    “She can’t see me,” said Luker, who was invisible from where India sat, “and she doesn’t know who said it.”
    “Yes I do,” said India, but then added to her grandmother: “He’s said worse. And so have I.”
    “I’ll just bet,” sighed Big Barbara.
    “Barbara, you know how mean that woman was,” said Luker. “Poor old Dauphin, she treated him like dirt as long as Mary-Scot was around. And then when Mary-Scot joined the convent, she treated him like shit.”
    “Shhh!”
    “Well you know she did.” Luker shrugged. “And that’s the way it’s been for two hundred years in that family. All the men are very sweet and good-hearted, and the women walk around with armor plating.”
    “But they make good wives,” protested Big Barbara. “Marian was a good wife to Bothwell for as long as he lived. She made him happy.”
    “And he probably liked getting nailed to the wall and beat with a bicycle chain, too.”
    “ You do,” said India to her father. Big Barbara jerked her head around, dismayed.
    “India’s lying through her teeth,” said Luker evenly. “She doesn’t know anything about my sex life. She’s only thirteen,” he said, lifting himself so that he could grin at his daughter. “She doesn’t even know what fucking is yet.”
    “ Luker ! ”
    “Oh, Barbara, listen, as long as I’ve got my feet in your lap, why don’t you rub ’em for a while? Those shoes pinched today.”
    Big Barbara peeled off her son’s socks and began to massage his feet.
    “Well,” said Luker, “granted that the Savage women make okay wives, the fact is that as mothers, they’re the pits.”
    “No they’re not!”
    “Barbara, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Why are you trying to defend a dead woman?”
    “Marian Savage—”
    “ Savage mothers eat their children up ! ” cried Luker, and the parrot screamed again.
    Chapter 2

    Big Barbara, Luker, and India remained on the glassed-in porch for another hour, waiting for Leigh to return. Luker slept, still with his feet in his mother’s lap, and turned disturbed only when the parrot Nails screamed. India brought her grandmother a stack of catalogs to be looked through while she herself worked free embroidery in green and purple threads on a blue work shirt. The sun continued bright and green through the live oak foliage at the back of the house. A square of leaded stained glass dangled before one of the windows, and now and then the sun, breaking momentarily through stirred foliage, pierced that square of glass and painted India’s face gold and blue and red.
    At last Leigh arrived: they heard the car in the gravel driveway, they heard the doors of the car slam, they heard the opening of the door to the laundry room downstairs.
    “Was there that much to do?” asked Big Barbara of her daughter, who came through the kitchen. “You were gone such a long time.”
    “Get up, Luker!” said Leigh. “I’ve been on my feet the whole day.” Luker rose wearily and unsteadily from the sofa. Leigh kicked off her shoes and took his place. She unpinned her veil and dropped it on the coffee table. “Mama, I bet you’ve been sitting here the whole afternoon rubbing his feet. Well, rub mine for a little while.”
    “You want your stockings on or off?”
    “On, leave ’em on. I don’t have the strength to pull ’em off right now.”
    “Did you bring Odessa back with you?” asked Luker, who now sat at the table examining his daughter’s work on the graph paper.
    “I’m here,” said Odessa from the kitchen door.
    “That’s what took us so long,” said Leigh. “We went back to the church, took care of everything there—though when there’s only seven people attending and just one coffin, there’s not a whole lot to do.”
    “What’d you do with the extra flowers?”
    “We took ’em over to Odessa’s church. Old man died there last night, family didn’t have anything so we carried the flowers