All True Not a Lie in It Read Online Free

leaving your bed. Come on, we can get a deer. I will help.
    But he says nothing. He pulls the shad off his stick and goes on fishing as if I am not here.
    —Israel!
    —Go home now, Dan.
    He is walking up the river against the current, lifting his bare feet. I shout:
    —I hate this place! I hate Exeter. I will get something without you.
    He says nothing, he only looks up briefly, and I run on. I think of running again, but it is darker now, and alone I have no hope of any deer or any escape. I go home and thump dirty into bed beside little Neddy, who sleeps as hard as Bets does. Anger thumps in my blood, anger that Israel is so free and I am so pinned and so young. I am angry too at Hill for following me and wanting to see what I will do now. I see his big face. William Hill, trotting about in my mind as if it is his own field. Dunghole. I am ready to shoot anything. But as yet I have no gun.
    Israel steals in sometime before dawn. I hear him settle into his bed and breathe slow. I will find out where he goes. I will follow him. I turn over and put my hands over my eyes, and I am struck bya thought of the blindfolded girl with her skin on fire and the prickle of her hair like hay.
    I wonder whether I crept into her sick dreams, a little husband. Molly, I did catch your slow fever when I kissed you, though not badly. I am alive yet. But you know this. You dead know about me and what I have done.

E VERY NIGHT I want to follow my brother Israel, but the boys who follow me are out at night also. On and on they go in soft voices outside our window: You whoresbrother, you ape, you arse, you toadstool, you stew-brains, you shit-stew, you fathead, you wart, you cuckoo, you maggoty bastard son of a whore.
    One night I throw a pot out at them. My teeth ache with hating, but we continue on in Exeter for five years after my sister Sallie leaves it with her fellow. At Meeting, the looks the Friends give are pitying. We might smother in pity and kindness. Daddy and Ma keep themselves sweet there. Daddy stalks about the burying ground, flattening the earth and making sure the grass grows over the newer graves so everyone is hidden for good. He says:
    —We were here first.
    He means the burying ground and the town. Daddy is never one to give up. He buys five more acres of rough pasturage up in the hills and puts up a sign with our name on it. Some of the boys scratch it out with
WHORES
. I scratch that into
HORSE
. I fight anyone until my ribs hurt and I laugh until it is the only sound in my head.
    And now Israel vanishes for days at a time, bringing back meat and skins every so often. He will not say how far he goes or just where. I think of him finding a marvellous place where he is quitealone and where all the birds and deer show themselves and say:
Shoot us, here we are
. In my mind I can quite see this place. Some days I try to track my brother up the hills and deeper into the woods, but I have no success. I will find my own place, I think. As yet I do not give it a name.
    I do find new animal traces and very old Indian trails where the trees are blazed with signs. I find a worn-out hunter’s lean- to and have a talk with two old Catawba men there who tell me where they have seen beaver on one of the streams. We have a talk together though they do not speak many English words, and they offer me a smoke, but I say no thank you, and I go on. I practise with my club until I can get any bird at the first throw, even pheasants. Once I get a raccoon that is crouching to drink, it falls into the stream dead without having seen me.
    I keep myself to myself. I keep right away from my Uncle James’s school and his lessons. I avoid the boys and Hill and his kindnesses, unless he has money or tobacco. Until he gets a new-made gun for his fourteenth birthday. It is a good gun, with a scene of lilies carved into its oak stock. He brings it to the house to show me. I say:
    —Let me use it and I will let you watch.
    With his usual grin he shoves