The Outsider Read Online Free PDF

filled his eyes, but then his eyes touched Brice briefly as he searched the room.
    Brice said gently, “She was here all through the night, son, but with the morning she had to leave.”
    Suspicion filled the boy’s brown eyes as he spoke slowly and carefully. “Why do you think I was seeking someone?”
    Brice smiled. “And you weren’t?”
    Again the boy looked around the room. “Are we alone?”
    “We are,” Brice said. “Elder Caleb was here, but he said he had work to do. Something about plans for a new barn.”
    A look of horror twisted the boy’s face. “The fire. I didn’t think I’d ever see another sunrise.” He looked at Brice again. “Who are you?”
    “Brice Scott. Dr. Brice Scott. And you’re Nathan, but they didn’t tell me your last name. Or do any of you people in this place have last names?”
    Nathan’s mouth turned up in a half smile. “Oh, we all have last names. We just don’t use them much. Mine’s Bates. Nathan Bates.”
    Brice sat back in his chair and studied the boy. “Well, Bates, what do you have to say for yourself?”
    Nathan stared back at the doctor as if puzzled by his question. Then instead of answering, he asked his own question. “Am I bad burnt?”
    “You want to see?” Brice didn’t wait for an answer. He pulled off the covering he’d laid over the boy’s legs and helped him raise up to look.
    Nathan sucked in a quick breath, but he didn’t flinch away from the sight of the burns. After a moment, he said, “I guess it’s no wonder I’m hurting some.”
    Brice was heartened by the boy’s calm acceptance of the angry, oozing skin on his legs. “I’ll give you another dose for the pain in a little bit,” he told him.
    “That’s okay, Doc. It’s not so bad I can’t handle it.” Nathan lay back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling for a long time before he spoke again. “You think I’ll be able to do much walking anymore?”
    “I’ll be honest with you, Bates. It’ll just be according to how much you want to.”
    “I’ll want to. A lot. A Shaker that can’t work doesn’t make much of a Shaker.” Nathan frowned. “Not that I plan to be a Shaker all that much longer.”
    “What do you plan to do?”
    Nathan looked quickly around the room again before he lowered his voice. “I wouldn’t want the others to know. At least not yet. But I’m not aiming to stay here much longer. I’ve been planning on leaving ever since my pa brought us over here and said we had to start being Shakers. I knew that very day this couldn’t be no kind of place when they made me give up Jack.”
    “Jack?”
    “My dog. Best hunting dog you’d ever want to see, but then the Shakers don’t hold much with dogs or hunting. Believe in growing what you need.”
    “Then why haven’t you left already if that’s what you want to do? You look old enough. What are you? Nineteen? Twenty?”
    “I’m twenty, and I’ll be leaving soon. I’d have left already except for Gabrielle.” Nathan looked at the doctor quickly as if he’d told more than he intended on telling.
    “Gabrielle?” Brice said. “That’s the young sister who was here last night.”
    “So she really was here. I thought I saw her a time or two, but then I wasn’t sure I might not be dreaming. Or just wishing I saw her.”
    “She was here.” The boy’s face lit up at Brice’s words. “She has a beauty about her.”
    “She is beauty,” Nathan said simply. “I’m going to marry her.”
    Brice kept his eyes on the boy. “I’ve heard Shakers don’t hold with marriage.”
    “They don’t hold with a lot of things.”
    “The young sister seems a devout Believer.”
    Nathan waved off Brice’s words. “I’ll make her see that it’s better to be part of the world than here among the living dead.”
    “The living dead? I don’t know that I’d call them that. They seem good enough people. Kind, gentle, industrious.”
    “But dead,” Nathan insisted. “They even say they’re dead