The Whistling Season Read Online Free PDF Page A

his fellow school board member Joe Fletcher were laboring to lift the coffin onto the unhitched dray. "They forgot the horses," Damon kept fretting as we toed the brink of the boxcar, wanting to go to the aid of the men. Aunt Eunice was the only person around who could help us down, but she wasn't about to. "Don't let those boys at that," she bossed the men struggling with the casket's brass handles. "They'll drop it."
    "At least we know you're not off your feed, Paul," Father deduced from my empty plate, his words snapping me out of the dream visitation. Leaning my way at the table, he reached to feel my forehead with the back of his hand. I had no idea what he would find there, fever or chill, but the diagnosis never took place. Instead came a terrifying wail from Toby:
    "A UNT E UNICE , I DON'T WANT YOU TO D-D-DIE !"
    This commotion took some while to settle down, Toby sobbing the front of Father's shirt wet and then Rae's blouse. I suspected Aunt Eunice of being secretly pleased, but outwardly she showed only impatience as she at last directed: "Oh, for heaven's sake, let me have the child."
    Still full of sniffles, Toby went to her, the lifting
oof was
given, and he perched unsteadily on those venerable knees. "Mustn't cry," she ordered, dabbing him dry with the lace hanky. "Now I want you to be a good boy all week, and tell me all your doings next Sunday."
    As Toby blinked and tried to muster a shiny-eyed smile, she added as piteously as before:
    "If I'm spared until then."
    ***
    T HE LETTER WAS THERE WHEN WALT STINSON DROPPED OFF our sack of provisions and mail the Friday of the next week.
    Father plucked it up as if it were the royal invitation he had been expecting. But he tapped the envelope thoughtfully against the fingertips of his other hand a few times before sitting down to slit it open with his jackknife blade.
    The three of us crowded around him at his place at the kitchen table. The page full of staccato handwriting was too much for Toby. "Read it to us," he implored. Damon's lips were moving silently as he tried to scan the closely worded sheet of paper over Father's shoulder.
    "I think Paul should be in charge of the elucidation," Father said as soon as he had figured out the gist of the letter.
    The "Dear Mr. Milliron" salutation and the rest of the formal part of the letter I read off as if it had come from Shakespeare himself; perhaps Aunt Eunice's nagging about elocution had made more impression than I thought. I slowed up markedly, though, at the penultimate paragraph and then the ultimate:
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The salary you have suggested is, may I say, not quite adequate to my current needs. Fortunately, however, I do see a way out of impasse on this matter. Were I able to draw my first three months of wages ahead of time, that would be a sufficiency to enable me to take my leave of Minneapolis and join your employ.
If you will send the wage sum and the ticket price by Western Union, I will embark on the most immediate train for Montana.
Sincerely yours,

Rose Llewellyn
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    "Rose Llewellyn," Toby all but rolled in the sound of it. "That's a swell name, isn't it, Paul? Damon, don't you like it too?"
    Damon, though, was rocked back on his heels by something else. "We have to pay her until after Christmas to even get her here?"
    "Wait, there's something on the back," I said, seeing the ghost line of ink that had come through the paper. I turned the letter over and read aloud:
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PS. May I say, Mr. Milliron, you write a splendid hand.

It is inspirational to correspond with one to whom

penmanship is not a lost art.
    Â 
    I tried to hide a grin of pride. Meanwhile Father, who had not been heard from during any of this, cleared his throat.
    My brothers and I expectantly sank to our chairs at the table.
    Father still said nothing. As we watched, he held the letter up in front of him and ran his other hand back and forth through his hair, as if massaging his next thought. I still wonder what the outcome would have