The Glass Village Read Online Free PDF Page A

oblige my neighbors, but—”
    â€œHaven’t they paid you anything?”
    â€œDribs and drabs.”
    â€œBut they have been trying to pay.”
    â€œWell, yes, but the balance keeps gettin’ bigger.”
    â€œHave you talked to Earl, Peter?”
    â€œNo use talkin’ to Earl .”
    â€œNo, I s’pose not,” said the Judge, “Earl being tied down to that wheelchair.”
    â€œI’ve talked to Drakeley, but shucks! Drakeley’s not half a man yet. Lettin’ a boy run a farm! Seems to me what Earl ought to do is sell out—”
    â€œWhat does Drakeley say, Peter?”
    â€œHe says he’ll pay first chance he gets. I don’t want to be hard on them, Judge—”
    â€œBut you’re contemplating legal measures. Well, Peter, I’ll tell you,” said Judge Shinn. “I remember—a long time ago—when Nathan Berry was so deep in a hole he had the Sheriff peering down over the edge. You remember it, too—it was during the depression. Old Seth Scott was a man then, standing on his two feet, not a bag of mumbling lard whose legs won’t support him, the way he is today. And between Seth and his son Earl, they’d weathered the storm. And your father, Nathan Berry, went to Seth and Earl Scott for help, and they saved his neck, Peter—yes, and yours, too. You wouldn’t be standing behind this counter today if not for the Scotts!” And Judge Shinn’s voice came to Johnny in a long thin line, like charging infantry. “If you had to carry those people for five years, Peter Berry, you ought to do it and be thankful for the chance! And while I’m riled up, Peter, I’m going to tell you what I think of your prices. I think you’re a highway robber, that’s what I think. Taking advantage of these folks you grew up with, who can’t deal anywhere else ’cause there’s nowhere else to deal! Sure you work hard. So did Ebenezer Scrooge. And so do they, only they haven’t got anything to show for it, the way you have!”
    â€œNo call gettin’ het up, Judge,” said the other voice, still smily-boomy. “It was just a question.”
    â€œOh, I’ll answer your damned question! If the Scotts owe you less than a hundred dollars, you can file your claim in the Small Claims Court. If it’s anything above that up to five hundred, you can go to the Court of Common Pleas—”
    â€œIt’s a hundred ninety-one sixty-three,” said Peter Berry.
    â€œOn second thought,” said the Judge, “you can go to hell. Come along, Johnny!”
    And as Johnny caught up with the old man, whose gnarled neck was as red as the flannel shirt swaying over his head, he heard the Judge mutter, “Trash!”
    The Judge seemed ashamed of himself. He mumbled something about getting to be a crotchety old fool, losing his temper that way, after all Peter Berry was within his rights, what was the use of trying to keep people from drowning when the whole damned countryside was under water, and would Johnny excuse him, he’d go lie down for a while and think over his speech.
    â€œYou go right ahead,” said Johnny. He watched the Judge head across the intersection for the Shinn house with his old man’s stiffkneed bounce, wondering just what sort of speech Shinn Corners was going to hear that day.
    Johnny Shinn wandered about the village of his paternal ancestors for a few minutes. He went up Four Corners Road past the Berry house with its droopy front-and-side porch and its ugly Victorian turret, stopped before the decayed box of a Town Hall with its flaking sign, examined the abandoned woolen factory beyond, windowless, its entrance doors gone, the ground floor caved in … stood on the rim of the ditch behind the factory building. It was choked with sickly birches and ground pine and underbrush—and, away to the south, tin cans and rubbish.
    He trudged