We Have Always Lived in the Castle Read Online Free PDF Page B

invited to dinner, Joe, you just be sure and say no thank you to Miss Blackwood.”
    Dunham laughed. “Not me,” he said. “I fixed their step for them and never did get paid for it.”
    â€œFunny,” Jim Donell said, “them getting the house fixed up and all, and planning to move away all the time.”
    â€œMary Katherine,” Stella said, coming down inside the counter to where I was sitting, “you go along home. Just get up off that stool and go along home. There won’t be any peace around here until you go.”
    â€œNow, that’s the truth,” Jim Donell said. Stella looked at him, and he moved his legs and let me pass. “You just say the word, Miss Mary Katherine, and we’ll all come out and help you pack. Just you say the word, Merricat.”
    â€œAnd you can tell your sister from me—” Dunham started to say, but I hurried, and by the time I got outside all I could hear was the laughter, the two of them and Stella.
    I liked my house on the moon, and I put a fireplace in it and a garden outside (what would flourish, growing on the moon? I must ask Constance) and I was going to have lunch outside in my garden on the moon. Things on the moon were very bright, and odd colors; my little house would be blue. I watched my small brown feet go in and out, and let the shopping bag swing a little by my side; I had been to Stella’s and now I needed only to pass the town hall, which would be empty except for the people who made out dog licenses and the people who counted traffic fines from the drivers who followed the highway into the village and on through, and the people who sent out notices about water and sewage and garbage and forbade other people to burn leaves or to fish; these would all be buried somewhere deep inside the town hall, working busily together; I had nothing to fear from them unless I fished out of season. I thought of catching scarlet fish in the rivers on the moon and saw that the Harris boys were in their front yard, clamoring and quarrelling with half a dozen other boys. I had not been able to see them until I came past the corner by the town hall, and I could still have turned back and gone the other way, up the main highway to the creek, and then across the creek and home along the other half of the path to our house, but it was late, and I had the groceries, and the creek was nasty to wade in our mother’s brown shoes, and I thought, I am living on the moon, and I walked quickly. They saw me at once, and I thought of them rotting away and curling in pain and crying out loud; I wanted them doubled up and crying on the ground in front of me.
    â€œMerricat,” they called, “Merricat, Merricat,” and moved all together to stand in a line by the fence.
    I wondered if their parents taught them, Jim Donell and Dunham and dirty Harris leading regular drills of their children, teaching them with loving care, making sure they pitched their voices right; how else could so many children learn so thoroughly?
    Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me.
Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!
    I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world; I was almost halfway past the fence.
    â€œMerricat, Merricat!”
    â€œWhere’s old Connie—home cooking dinner?”
    â€œWould you like a cup of tea?”
    It was strange to be inside myself, walking steadily and rigidly past the fence, putting my feet down strongly but without haste that they might have noticed, to be inside and know that they were looking at me; I was hiding very far inside but I could hear them and see them still from one corner of my eye. I wished they were all lying there dead on the ground.
    â€œDown in the boneyard ten feet