Wonderland Read Online Free PDF Page A

a gas station, now painted white. The white is too white on this strange day; it glares and makes the eye tremble.… Up and down the street people are walking, hurrying against the rain. As they hurry, their heads ducked, umbrellas raised, the rain begins to turn into bits of ice. A quick magical change. The dots of ice strike faces, the windshields of cars, the store windows.… On the bumpy surface of the street, which is gleaming wet, a million bits of ice strike and bounce. The sign for the Montgomery Ward’s store is bombarded with hail and sounds like a drum. A Christmasstreamer with its plastic bells and wreaths is struck, shudders in the wind, seems about to break in two.…
    Most of Yewville is on either side of this street, Main Street—shoe stores, clothing stores, sporting goods stores, the bus station, the movie house, the post office in its fortress-like building, a few taverns, a gas station, a few restaurants. Then comes an expanse of vacant land, then the library, which shares a nondescript old building with the police station, then the high school, a complicated three-story structure made of dark rough brick, its windows high and narrow, its roof covered with black, rotting shingles. The hail strikes against the broad front sidewalk of the high school, running right up to the double front doors. It strikes against the windows, as if trying to break them. The windows show no amazement, no faces behind them.
    The air looks as if it is coming apart—shredding into molecules of sand or grit. It is December 14, 1939.
    This is the last day of school before Christmas vacation. School will end after assembly at one o’clock. In the narrow, dingy halls of the school students are filing along, heading for the auditorium and its warped seats, its overheated boisterous cozy air. They make a crashing noise on the stairs, coming down from the second floor, the older boys clowning, almost out of control. Their legs are long, their faces bright and blurred, as if intoxicated. One of their teachers, a woman of middle age, makes an angry gesture and they turn away, laughing together. Everywhere there is a smell of wet wool. As the students pass along the corridor they strike the lockers with their fists in a kind of giddy rhythm, their excitement almost out of control. There is a bouncy, hollow, drum-like urgency to the air. Jesse is going to remember this. Already the high school is overcrowded, though an addition was built only fifteen years ago. Boys from the country, surging and clumsy in their overalls, stomp along the hall heavy as farm animals, banging their fists against the wall. The girls walk quickly, in little clusters, as if fearful of the boys. They are all wearing bright red lipstick. Their lips move and are very red. Because it is the last day of school before Christmas recess, they are dressed up, in wool dresses and stockings and high heels. “Is it snowing? Is it snowing?” they ask, their voices lifting shrilly, as if they were testing the air itself, their necks stretching in front of the boys’ eyes.
    At the doors to the auditorium a few teachers are posted. The students pass close by them, bending their heads meekly, automatically, even the big farm boys, cowed for the moment. Such a quick warm crowd of them! They are excited, giddy. The air rocks with their big feet and their giddiness. The familiar odor of wet wool is mixed with the unfamiliar odor of the girls’ perfume, and everywhere there is the clatter of the girls’ high heels. A girl cries out in surprise—someone has run his finger sharply down her backbone, which is outlined through her pink wool dress. She turns, pretending anger. One of the teachers snaps at her: “Never mind! Keep on going!”
    They file into their seats, jostling one another, laughing behind their hands; on stage, the choir is already singing to welcome them in. On the right of the stage is a large Christmas tree, donated by the Yewville Firemen, lit up with