We Are What We Pretend to Be Read Online Free PDF

you.”
    “Leave him alone,” Haley heard Hope call.

    Blushing and apologizing in half-soliloquy, Haley clambered atop the wagon, unable to look at Hope. Mr. Banghart swung three more bales up to Hope, and the wagon moved, jolting and creaking, toward the barnyard.
    In the still, dry heat of the loft, under a tin roof too hot to touch, Hope, Haley, and Mr. Banghart dragged bale after bale from the wagon over the splintered floor to a growing stack deep in the shadows of one end. The General remained on the wagon to steady the horses. Tormenting himself, Haley tried to imagine what the others were thinking of him. Hope was the only one he really cared about. The two of them worked together, their hooks driven into the same bale. She said nothing, concentrating her attention on the hard work to be done. He was bewildered by the effect her presence had had upon him since the first instant he had seen her. He now found her more beautiful than ever, with her hair lightened by dust, and with heat bringing her loose clothes into conformity with the lines of her young figure.
    Mr. Banghart rolled a cigarette, politely excused himself, and went out into the barnyard to smoke it. The General joined him with a cigar, leaving Haley and Hope alone in the barn. Haley sat down on a bale next to Hope. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll get used to farmwork after a while,” she said. “We all did. Takes about a month.”
    For want of a rational comment on this message, Haley changed the subject. “Mr. Banghart is a funny one,” he said. “I never knew anyone to talk to himself so much.”
    Hope giggled. “He’s got a screw loose, all right, but the General says he’s the best worker we ever had on the farm,” she said.
“Try and hear what he talks to himself about sometime. It’s all about what he’s going to do to people he thinks are out to get him—which is practically everybody. You’re lucky—he liked you right away, and that’s unusual.” She became more thoughtful. “I shouldn’t laugh. It’s kind of sad about him, I guess.”
    “Has he ever done anything to anybody?” asked Haley uneasily.
    “Oh, no, he just talks about it. He has one of the tenants’ houses all to himself, and he spends most of his spare time there. He never goes into town, and the General has him working by himself, or with us, so there isn’t much chance for him to get into trouble with anybody.”
    “Is he married? What does he do with his money?”
    “As far as we know, he’s a bachelor, but he keeps that house cleaner than a woman would. The General thinks he’s got his money hidden in the house somewhere, because he never goes anywhere where he could spend it. We do all his shopping for him, and he never buys anything but food and tobacco and padlocks,” Hope explained matter-of-factly. “That’s the really funny thing about him—the locks. If you make a trip into town, chances are he’ll ask you to get him one. He’s got padlocks all over that house. There were four on his front door the last time I counted.”
    The General called from below, “Lunch time!” To Haley the announcement was incredible. At 9 a.m., after watching four rural hours inch by, he had concluded that the clocks of Ardennes Farm were lubricated with molasses, and that noon was still a century away in terms of time as he had known it in the city.

    Noon brought with it the solid blessings of strong coffee and whole milk, of strawberry jam and biscuits, of ham and gravy. It was an hour of peace and plenty, reminding Haley of a medieval custom he had read about—whereby a condemned man was hanged and skillfully revived several times before being permitted to expire completely. The analogy did not spoil his appetite. He wolfed his food, excused himself, and lay down on the sunroom couch.
    Bits of conversation from the kitchen infiltrated his consciousness. He stored them away, too weary to think much about them. Kitty, who, Annie had said, had slept