The Watchman Read Online Free PDF Page A

Cole. Sometimes I dream it and I wake up from the dream with an awful shout and Papa lights the light and I have to sit up shaking for an hour with night terrors before I feel safe getting back Into bed again. Yes, Cole, I could be something far different than the girl I am if it wasn't for Papa. And I know what he wants me to be and I know what I want myself to be.
    What is it you want yourself to be? he said.
    Someone clean and decent and beautiful like Mama. Cole, you remember your mother, she said. Beautiful and always, always young. The last of the Ladies, as Papa always says. Well, that's how I remember my mama, too. And I just can't let myself be something cheap that Papa wouldn't love. My hair is dark like hers was—Mama's, I mean. Papa says I'm her living image. He says I'm the shining picture of her. Cole, I can't spoil that picture.
    I've got a picture, too, Jill, he said bitterly. The Sheriff of Mound County, West Virginia. At night when you're safe in bed you can hear his strong, slow boot-strides along the brick sidewalks out in the fog. You feel safer now—hearing that sound—picturing that firm mouth, those watchful, glittering eyes. And especially that big Colt he's got slung on his hip. He—
    Cole, you're killing something, she moaned. Please stop it.
    And now you're going to tell me you never want to sit with me here at our table again and you're getting ready to walk out of here, I reckon, and I'm going to follow you, he said. And if I lose you in the fog I'll call you on the phone tomorrow. And if you tell me you never want to see me again—here at our table—not anywhere—it won't make any difference. Because I love you sweeter and harder than I

    love my own life. And I guess if you made me take back everything I said tonight then I'd do that. And mean it. And say I'd made it all up for contrariness sake. Because there is nothing inside me that I feel as hard as the thing I feel about you, JUl. And the only thing you could never make me take back is telling you I love you.
    Cole, let's go for a walk, she said gently. You don't want to walk with me, Jill, he said. You just want to get me out of your sight.
    No, Cole, she said. Let's walk. I don't like our table tonight. The shadows here in our room tonight aren't kind hke they've always been. And that red light from the window—it scares me tonight. Cole. It comes and goes on my hands and when it's there it looks like blood.
    It's only a light, Jill, he said. No blood. It's only electricity. Cole, take me for a walk, she said, feeling for her purse under the chair. It's beautiful in the fog these autumn nights. We'll climb the Mound and look down at the fog and forget there's even a town underneath it. You're not sore at me? No, she said.
    As long as I Uve, he said, taking her hand. Do you know that, Jill? As long as I live I'm going to love you this much. But she was standing up now, not listening to him, smoothing her hands down over the fabric of the strange frock that covered her slender body.
    Cole? she said. Do you like me in this dress? You've never even seen me in it before. Am I pretty in this dress, Cole? Tell me.
    Beautiful, he said.
    Lord knows, it's old and out of style, she said. But he's kept it always as fresh and new as if it was just off the racks up at Gant's. Cole, would you believe this dress is twenty years old? Would you believe it? And not a worn-out seam, not a moth hole. He's kept it that way—lovely and new, Cole. All these years.
    You look beautiful in it, he said, and took her hand and they moved through the lobby and out the front door into the fog, into the still town night.
    Beautiful just like it was brand new! she was saying, pleased at his praise of the dress far more than anything he could have said of her. And wouldn't you just swear it was made for me. Cole? And nobody would ever guess—would they, Cole?

    Guess what, honey? he said. 
    About this dress, she said. It was Mama's.
    Mister Thomas Peace, the