The Pesthouse Read Online Free PDF Page A

and lay down on the bed, with Grandpa's help. He placed an unfired pot of cough syrup made from onions mashed in sugar on the floor at the side of her bed: 'Watch out for ants, Mags.' He touched her forehead with his thumb, a finger kiss. 'I'm ashamed to leave you here. I hope it grows. Thick and long.' He wiped his hands again on a vinegary rag, then he and the horse were gone, and she was sleeping. When she woke, somewhat revived, it was already evening. The trees were menacing — they wheezed and cracked. Bats feasted on the early moths. The undergrowth was busy with its residents, and Margaret, Red Margaret, the Apricot, the drained and fragile woman in the hills, that applicant for unexpected death, felt shocked and lost, bewildered and unloved. Why had she been singled out? Why had the archer released his arrow into her? Such misfortune was too much to face alone — the pestilence, the pain, the degradation and the restless meanness of the night that she must spend on her own father's deathbed, breathing his last air. She coughed, a friendless cough, and had to listen to the trunks and branches coughing back, like wolves, too much like wolves for her to dare to sleep again. She'd never feared trees before. In daylight, trees had let her pass, ignored her almost, pretended not to notice her. But now that the moon was up, the forest seemed to be alert and mischievous.
    The Pesthouse occupant took comfort from her talismans that night. She passed the necklace through her fingers, recognizing and remembering the contours of each engraved link; she rubbed and stroked her piece of cloth; she smelled the cedar in the little box. Finally, she weighed the coins in her hands, the pennies and dimes and quarters that she had found among the pebbles on the river beach. She fingered all the images in the dark and tried to recognize the heads of people from the past, mostly short-haired men, one with a beard, 'In God We Trust', one with a thickish pony-tail bouncing on his neck, one heavy chinned and satisfied. Was that the eagle she could feel? Where were the leafy sprigs and flaming torch? Was that the one-cent palace with the twelve great columns at the front? She dragged her nail across the disk to count every column and tried to find the tiny seated floating man within, the floating man who, storytellers said, was Abraham and would come back to help America one day with his enormous promises.
     
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    FRANKLIN HAD NOT EXPECTED SO much rain. Anyone could tell from how brittle the landscape was that, in these parts at least, it had scarcely rained all season, and what clouds there'd been that day had been horizon clouds, passers-by, or overtakers, actually, for they were heading eastward, too — but hardly any time had gone before the last light of the day threw out its washing water, splashing it as heavily as grit on the brittle undergrowth and setting free its long-stored smells, part hope and part decay. The rain was unforgiving in its weight. It meant to stay and do some damage and some good in equal parts. It meant to be noticed. It meant to run downhill until it found a river and then downstream until it found a sea. 'If you're looking for the sailing boats, just follow the fallen rain' was the universal advice for inexperienced travelers.
    Franklin couldn't sleep through this. He couldn't even sit out such a downpour. He'd have to find some better shelter. He shook out the leaves from his bedding, wrapped the two already damp tarps around himself and limped as best he could onto a rocky knoll from which he could peer into the darkness and through the rain from a greater height. He hadn't noticed any caves or overhanging cliffs or any forest thick and broad-leafed enough to offer hope of staying dry for very long. This was the kind of rain that wouldn't rest until its job was done.
    Now Franklin considered the little boulder hut on the fringes of the clearing, with its gray scarf of smoke. It was the sort of place where