The Glass Village Read Online Free PDF

back to the intersection and crossed over to the north corner. He inspected the old horse trough with its leaking faucet and green slime, the church and the parsonage set in lawns overrun by crab grass, chickweed, and dandelions, the little parsonage strangling in the clutch of ivy and wistaria vines and evergreens set too close to the walls. …
    Beyond the parsonage lay the cemetery, but Johnny suddenly did not feel like exploring the cemetery. He suddenly felt that he had had enough of Shinn Corners for one morning, and he crossed over to the west corner, skirted the now-deserted green with its toy cannon and its chipped monument and its mocking flagpole … set foot on the Judge’s precincts, achieved the skaky porch, and sat down in the rocker and rocked.
    â€œLewis Shinn’s a reprobate. The idea him not fetchin’ you to visit soon’s you came,” said Aunt Fanny Adams. “I like young men. ’Specially young men with nice eyes.” She peered at him through her silver spectacles. “Color of polished pewter,” she decided. “Clean and homey-lookin’. But I expect Lewis likes ’em, too. There’s no more selfish o’ God’s creatures than a cantankerous old man. My Girshom was the most selfish man in Cudbury County. But he did have the nicest eyes.” She sighed. “Come set.”
    â€œI think,” said Johnny, “you’re beautiful.”
    â€œDo ye, now?” She patted the chair beside her, pleased. It was a comb-backed hickory chair, an American Windsor that would have brought tears of avarice to the eyes of an antique hunter. “A Shinn, are ye? There was always somethin’ about a Shinn. Joshers, the lot o’ ye!”
    â€œIf I had the nerve,” said Johnny, “I’d ask you to marry me.”
    â€œYe see?” She chuckled deep in her throat, patting the chair again. “Who was your mother?”
    Johnny was overwhelmed. She was a rawboned old lady with knotty farmer hands and eyes sharp and twinkly as snow in Christmas sunshine, set in a face wrinkled and pungent, like an apple treefall. Ninety-one years had dragged everything down, a bosom still full, a great motherly abdomen—everything but the spirit that touched the wrinkles with grace and kept her ancient hands warm. Johnny thought he had never seen a wiser, shrewder, kinder face.
    â€œI never knew her, Mrs. Adams. She died when I was very small.”
    â€œAh, that’s no good,” she said, shaking her old head. “It’s the mothers make the men. Who reared ye, your father?”
    â€œNo, Mrs. Adams.”
    â€œToo busy makin’ a livin’? I saw him last when he was no bigger than a newborn calf. Never came back to Shinn Corners. How is your father?”
    â€œHe’s dead, too.”
    The shrewd eyes examined him. “Ye’ve got your grandfather Horace Shinn’s mouth. Stubborn. And I don’t like your smile.”
    â€œSorry,” murmured Johnny.
    â€œIt’s got nothin’ behind it. Are ye married?”
    â€œHeavens, no.”
    â€œOught to be,” Aunt Fanny Adams decided. “Some woman’d make a man of ye. What d’ye do, Johnny Shinn?”
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œ Nothin’? ” She was appalled. “But there’s somethin’ wrong with ye, boy! Why, I’m over ninety, and I ain’t found time to do half the things I want to! Never heard the like. How old are ye?”
    â€œThirty-one.”
    â€œAnd ye don’t do nothin’? Are ye rich?”
    â€œPoor as poor.”
    â€œDon’t ye want to do somethin’?”
    â€œSure. But I don’t know what.”
    â€œBut weren’t ye trained for nothin’?”
    Johnny laughed. “Studied law, or started to. The war stopped that. Then afterward I couldn’t seem to decide on anything. Sort of drifted, trying one thing and another. Came Korea, and I jumped back