My Drowning Read Online Free Page A
Author: Jim Grimsley
Nora wanted Mama to take the doll from Joe Robbie so I could play with it. But any time anybody touched the doll, Joe Robbie screamed, and Mama couldnât stand to hear him scream. Mama decided Joe Robbie might as well keep the doll since he was puny and it made him happy. Nora huffed off and made Mama mad, and Mama reared back to slap her, but she remembered it was Christmas and contented herself to yank Noraâs ears good and hard.
Not once did I ask Joe Robbie for the doll. When he kept the pistol too, I didnât mind.
I had been flying with the baby boy. I replayed the dream in my head, and the memory kept me buoyant. The bushel basket still held more than half its apples. Tonight Nora and I would sleep in the kitchen again, with the ghost fire glimmering in the stove. All these were good things. But above all, I had eaten as much as I could hold. I had learned of the possibility of abundance.
WHEN THE WEATHER warmed, Mama carried the carcass of the fox outside, wrapped in burlap. She flung the softening corpse into the ditch. Daddy never asked what happened to it.
At night, across the room, Joe Robbie slept with the doll wrapped in his arms. I remained oblivious to the loss, but Nora carried the anger like a hot coal. She would get me another doll, she said, when she worked in tobacco this summer. This promise consoled her in some way. I did not care, myself. I would never want a doll.
NOT LONG AGO I drove to the Low Grounds, down that road where we used to live. I had begun to remember the Christmas of the dead fox, and I realized I was headed toward the place where that house had stood as soon as I slipped behind the steering wheel. I made the drive early one morning, after my slice of toast. The distance isnât much, only an hour or so from the place I live now, near Pinetops.
The road had been paved, Lord knows how long ago. Electric wires lined the pavement and now there was light in the Low Grounds, and more houses, most of them brick, with plain bare yards and pitiful scrawny azalea bushes. The house where my family lived collapsed long ago, and nothingremains except the chimney, lying on its side in the white dirt. I stood at the sidewise mouth of the fireplace. I closed my eyes and pictured the gray fox, the white biscuits, the specter of the dead baby boy. I remembered gathering wood across the bare field where now a brick house squatted. The countryside suddenly smelled of winter. I could not quite remember what year it was.
MOSS POND
WE MOVED FROM the Low Grounds to a house near Moss Pond. The house was small, four rooms, with a wood heater, a woodstove, and a hand pump for water in the backyard. An empty chicken house leaned precariously under a sycamore. The outhouse stood there too, in thick shade, with its narrow door hanging from the hinges and its plank seat with two holes cut in the surface for doing your business. We resorted to a slop pot only in the coldest part of winter. Otherwise everyone took the long trek down the path, except for Joe Robbie, who was allowed a pan and a jar.
Sitting suspended over the cavern of shit and piss, in summer with the buzzing of green flies, in the winter with cold fingers creeping from the wood along my nervous bottom, I felt a pure and memorable terror. I was small enough to drop straight down the hole, and I clung to the edges with my hands in fear of snakes and other creatures that lived in the woods thereabouts; I pictured them crawling along the planks toward my bare behind. The echoing of the hollow place beneath me sent a shiver of fear through me and I finishedmy business as fast as I could. I cleaned myself with soft leaves in summer and newspaper or comic books in winter, learning to rub the newsprint together until it softened and to grip the seat with one hand while cleaning with the other. I was fanatical in cleaning myself, frightened as I was of sitting there; Nora made fun of me for my fastidiousness.
If you walked far enough
Not once did I ask Joe Robbie for the doll. When he kept the pistol too, I didnât mind.
I had been flying with the baby boy. I replayed the dream in my head, and the memory kept me buoyant. The bushel basket still held more than half its apples. Tonight Nora and I would sleep in the kitchen again, with the ghost fire glimmering in the stove. All these were good things. But above all, I had eaten as much as I could hold. I had learned of the possibility of abundance.
WHEN THE WEATHER warmed, Mama carried the carcass of the fox outside, wrapped in burlap. She flung the softening corpse into the ditch. Daddy never asked what happened to it.
At night, across the room, Joe Robbie slept with the doll wrapped in his arms. I remained oblivious to the loss, but Nora carried the anger like a hot coal. She would get me another doll, she said, when she worked in tobacco this summer. This promise consoled her in some way. I did not care, myself. I would never want a doll.
NOT LONG AGO I drove to the Low Grounds, down that road where we used to live. I had begun to remember the Christmas of the dead fox, and I realized I was headed toward the place where that house had stood as soon as I slipped behind the steering wheel. I made the drive early one morning, after my slice of toast. The distance isnât much, only an hour or so from the place I live now, near Pinetops.
The road had been paved, Lord knows how long ago. Electric wires lined the pavement and now there was light in the Low Grounds, and more houses, most of them brick, with plain bare yards and pitiful scrawny azalea bushes. The house where my family lived collapsed long ago, and nothingremains except the chimney, lying on its side in the white dirt. I stood at the sidewise mouth of the fireplace. I closed my eyes and pictured the gray fox, the white biscuits, the specter of the dead baby boy. I remembered gathering wood across the bare field where now a brick house squatted. The countryside suddenly smelled of winter. I could not quite remember what year it was.
MOSS POND
WE MOVED FROM the Low Grounds to a house near Moss Pond. The house was small, four rooms, with a wood heater, a woodstove, and a hand pump for water in the backyard. An empty chicken house leaned precariously under a sycamore. The outhouse stood there too, in thick shade, with its narrow door hanging from the hinges and its plank seat with two holes cut in the surface for doing your business. We resorted to a slop pot only in the coldest part of winter. Otherwise everyone took the long trek down the path, except for Joe Robbie, who was allowed a pan and a jar.
Sitting suspended over the cavern of shit and piss, in summer with the buzzing of green flies, in the winter with cold fingers creeping from the wood along my nervous bottom, I felt a pure and memorable terror. I was small enough to drop straight down the hole, and I clung to the edges with my hands in fear of snakes and other creatures that lived in the woods thereabouts; I pictured them crawling along the planks toward my bare behind. The echoing of the hollow place beneath me sent a shiver of fear through me and I finishedmy business as fast as I could. I cleaned myself with soft leaves in summer and newspaper or comic books in winter, learning to rub the newsprint together until it softened and to grip the seat with one hand while cleaning with the other. I was fanatical in cleaning myself, frightened as I was of sitting there; Nora made fun of me for my fastidiousness.
If you walked far enough
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