This Boy's Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

was not. I knew that the apartment door was locked—I always locked it when I took the rifle out—but I went over and double-checked it anyway. I heard her coming up the steps. She was whistling. She stopped outside the door and knocked. It was an imperative knock. She continued to whistle as she waited. She knocked again.
    I stayed where I was, still and silent, rifle in hand, afraid that Sister James would somehow pass through the locked door and discover me. What would she think? What would she make of the rifle, the fur hat, the uniform, the darkened room? What would she make of me? I feared her disapproval, but even more than that I feared her incomprehension, even her amusement, at what she could not possibly understand. I didn’t understand it myself. Being so close to so much robust identity made me feel the poverty of my own, the ludicrous aspect of my costume and props. I didn’t want to let her in. At the same time, strangely, I did.
    After a few moments of this an envelope slid under the door and I heard Sister James going back down the steps. I went to the window and saw her bend low to enter the car, lifting her habit with one hand and reaching inside with the other. She arranged herself on the seat, closed the door, and the car started slowly up the hill. I never saw her again.
    The envelope was addressed to Mrs. Wolff. I tore it open and read the note. Sister James wanted my mother to call her. I burned the envelope and note in the sink and washed the ashes down the drain.
    R oy was tying flies at the kitchen table. I was drinking a Pepsi and watching him. He bent close to his work, grunting with concentration. He said, in an offhand way, “What do you think about a little brother?”
    “A little brother?”
    He nodded. “Me and your mom’ve been thinking about starting a family.”
    I didn’t like this idea at all, in fact it froze me solid.
    He looked up from the vise. “We’re already pretty much of a family when you think about it,” he said.
    I said I guessed we were.
    “We have a lot of fun.” He looked down at the vise again. “A lot of fun. We’re thinking about it,” he said. “Nothing like a little guy around the house. You could teach him things. You could teach him to shoot.”
    I nodded.
    “That’s what we were thinking too,” he said. “I don’t know about names, though. What do you think of Bill as a name?”
    I said I liked it.
    “Bill,” Roy said. “Bill. Bill.” He turned silent again, staring down at the fly in the vise, his hands on the table. I finished off my Pepsi and went outside.
    While my mother and I ate breakfast the next morning Roy carried fishing gear and camping equipment out to the Jeep. He was lashing down something in back when I left for school. I yelled “Good luck!” and he waved at me, and I never saw him again either. My mother was in the apartment when I got home that day, folding clothes into a suitcase that lay open on her bed. Two other suitcases were already packed full. She was singing to herself. Her color was high, her movements quick and sure, everything about her flushed with gaiety. I knew we were on our way the moment I heard her voice, even before I saw the suitcases.
    She asked me why I wasn’t at archery. There was no suspicion behind the question.
    “They canceled it,” I told her.
    “Great,” she said. “Now I won’t have to go looking for you. Why don’t you check your room and make sure I’ve got everything.”
    “We going somewhere?”
    “Yes.” She smoothed out a dress. “We sure are.”
    “Where?”
    She laughed. “I don’t know. Any suggestions?”
    “Phoenix,” I said immediately.
    She didn’t ask why. She hung the dress in a garment bag and said, “That’s a real coincidence, because I was thinking about Phoenix myself. I even got the Phoenix paper. They have lots of opportunities there. Seattle too. What do you think about Seattle?”
    I sat down on the bed. It was starting to take hold of me too,