The Truest Pleasure Read Online Free PDF Page A

after a rabbit. He run down through the brush and hemlocks, trying to catch the hat on his cane.
    â€œLet it go,” I hollered. “Come back.”
    But he had started out after my hat and he was determined to get it. He disappeared in the hemlocks going toward the pasture. I was embarrassed all this trouble had happened over my silly hat. I picked my way around the hill toward the fence, trying not to catch my Sunday skirt on briars or holly bushes. It was a good ways to the edge of the pasture.
    Pa had been one of the first to put in barbed wire. He said it was easier than splitting rails, and would last longer too. He put the barbed wire around the pasture where he kept the bull.
    By the time I got to the fence Tom was already in the pasture. Wind jerked my hat in little hops over the grass, and he kept trying to pin it down with his cane. Every time it looked like he had caught it the breeze jerked the hat further along.
    â€œDon’t matter,” I hollered.
    Just then the bull come around the rise. He started running right at Tom, straight ahead in a beeline. Then Tom saw the bull. He jumped up and started for the fence.
    â€œHurry hurry hurry,” I hollered. I stood at the fence and pushed the top wire down so he could jump over it easy.
    The bull stopped for half a second, then charged as if shot from a cannon. Tom was maybe a hundred feet from the fence, and it appeared he was stretching to reach the strands while his feet was way behind pushing on the grass. I never saw a man reach so far, with the hat in one hand and the cane in the other.
    I pushed the top wire further down and he kind of turned sideways and hopped across the fence still holding the hat and cane. He made it except the pants on his left leg caught on a barb and ripped a tear maybe a foot long in the cloth. The bull run right into the fence and stuck his head through, snorting.
    â€œGet away, Bill-Joe,” I said. “You get away.”
    My hat had pieces of grass and little bits of trash stuck to it. Tom handed it to me like something I might not even want.
    â€œYou shouldn’t have gone to such trouble,” I said.
    His face was red from the heat and from the running. And I guess he was embarrassed too. His straw hat had been lost by the branch, and his blond hair was all messed up. The tear in his pants was so big I could see white skin through it.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. “This old hat wasn’t worth it.” I had ordered the hat from the catalogue from Chicago for exactly $2.98. And now it was dirty and probably couldn’t be wore again.
    â€œI better look for my hat,” he said. While he was poking around in the brush down by the branch I glanced up at the sky. A cloud passed over the sun and it got dark all of a sudden, like you had put a light out. Something snapped in the air straight above, and there was thunder at the very top of the sky. Then there was a flash over the mountains, and booms faraway.
    â€œIt’s going to rain,” I hollered. He had found his hat in the branch and was wiping it off. The wind come harder all of a sudden, as if it sprung out of the shadows. There was a big flash, and then a boom off the sides of the mountains, and I heard this roar. It was a sound I knowed only too well, having growed up across the river from the mountain. Sure enough,the top of the ridge was already white with rain. Rain at a distance looks like fog that stretches down, pulled straight down.
    Just then lightning snapped like a sheet tearing in the sky above us. Rain was marching down the mountain across the river valley. “We’re going to get soaked,” I said.
    â€œHow far is it to the house?” Tom said.
    â€œIt’s around the hill there,” I said and pointed.
    We started running along the fence toward the road from the spring. Thunder banged like boulders dropped on a roof. I took Tom’s arm and pulled him along. He seemed a little dazed by