Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace Read Online Free Page A

person had offended him and he no longer wished to talk. Then he looked so quizzically and angrily that the man decided it was time to leave.
    “And don’t be back,” Antony said. “We’ll sell our worms to those who know how to treat them!”
    Now Antony was sitting on a chair with his feet up on Dr. Hennessey’s desk. Aunt Clare, the doctor’s sister-in-law, had let Ivan through the side door, so Antony didn’t know he was there.
    Ivan stood at the door, watching his father as Hennessey gave him the shot. There was a moon over the dark, stubbled lane, and hard snow still piled in the yard.
    Antony rolled up his sleeve because he knew he was going to have his blood pressure taken. His arm was quite white, surprisingly to Ivan, who had hardly seen him with his shirtsleeves rolled up. And his shirt was opened, and his undershirt was the old-fashioned type with straps.
    Ivan knew intuitively that Antony had been discussing him and the marriage that had fallen through. Dr. Hennessey took no interest in such talk.
    But Antony had always told Ivan that Cindi was as “stupid as a fucking boot on a two-year-old. …”
    He looked at his father’s huge back, and the way his head was bent, and the way the room’s shadow played on the back of his reddish neck. His father had marvellously sad eyes, and Ivan could forgive him almost everything because of that.
    Doctor Hennessey looked bored with the talk and stood in salt-and-pepper slippers and his old khakipants that were held up by a gigantic belt, and wearing a big red bow tie that seemed to wrinkle his Adam’s apple more than usual. He was standing off in the darkness of the study. The darkness rested on the table and on the brand-new table lamp, which glowed greenly in the late-evening room.
    When Antony noticed Ivan, he winked.
    Then he said to Dr. Hennessey: “Now you did this here, and helped me out – I’m going to come over tomorrow with a load of fill.”
    “Well, I don’t believe I need fill, Tony,” the doctor said.
    “What – of course you need fill,” Antony said. “You could use some on your front yard.”
    Antony turned, his heavy black wallet linked to a chain on his belt and protruding out of his back pocket. Then he stopped by the door and grabbed Ivan by the shoulder, saying for some reason with tears in his eyes:
    “Now this young lad just beat the shit out of his wife – so I have to go straighten him out.”
    The old doctor, puffing on his pipe, turned away furiously. Ivan said nothing. There was nothing to say.
    Once outside, Antony was angry about the fill.
    “Well – why did you offer it to him then?” Ivan said.
    “Well, you know how he relishes what I do for him – first I have to ask him, and then I have to do all the dirty work.”
    So with that, Ivan didn’t say anything else.
    Tonight Antony had a plan – in fact, he always had a plan – he couldn’t go without a plan of some kind, and like people who are always watching out for themselves, this plan might change in midstream if any other direction suited him. As Ivan, who was always aloner, noted about his father, his father couldn’t do without a plan, or a partner. His partner in the last few months was Gordon Russell, whom he happened to be selling porno movies for – which he didn’t think Ivan knew about, except Ivan had found them under his father’s bed, and in his suitcase. Ivan wouldn’t care except he did not like Gordon, because Gordon was one of the men who had had his mittens on Cindi.
    The day before, Antony had cut his horse’s hoof and wanted Ivan to take a look at it. He had cut Rudolf’s left hind hoof. Rudolf had been Ivan’s horse, but Antony had beat him at a game of horseshoes when he was eleven and took it. Antony had bet him the sleigh for the horse.
    It was the only horse Ivan ever owned. However, he gave riding lessons at Madgill’s and had broken Tantramar for Ruby Madgill last year.
    Rudolf was a Belgian. Antony had bobbed its tail so