Nathan Coulter Read Online Free

for so long that we hardly noticed it was there.
    Aside from the harness shop it was a pretty town. Most of the buildings were painted white, and tall locust and maple trees grew in the yards along the road.
    Big Ellis and Gander Loyd and the Montgomery twins were squatting in front of the drugstore, leaning back into the shade of the wall. The Montgomerys didn’t look at us when we came up, and we didn’t speak to them. Grandpa had thrashed their father one time for calling Uncle Burley a drunkard, and none of them had ever got over it. They were always shamefaced and hangdog when even Brother and I were around, as if they expected one of us to walk over and kick them in the shins. Their names were Len and Lemuel, but everybody called them Mushmouth and Chicken Little. We walked past them to where Big Ellis and Gander were.
    â€œHow’re you boys?” Big Ellis said.
    â€œAll right,” I said. “How’re you, Big Ellis?”
    â€œHot. Too hot to work. What’re they doing over at your place?”
    â€œDigging postholes.”
    â€œWhoo,” Big Ellis said. “They’re feeling the heat.” He squinted his eyes and giggled.
    We spoke to Gander and sat down. Gander turned his head and looked at us with his one eye. He was chewing on the end of a matchstick. “Hello,” he said. He wiped the matchstick on the bib of his overalls and began picking his teeth. Gander never had much to say. He’d killed a man and lost an eye in the fight, and it always took me a while to get used to his one-sided face. He stayed quiet, even when he was in town, keeping what he knew to himself.
    â€œCould you boys use a chocolate ice cream cone?” Big Ellis asked us.

    â€œWe had dinner a while ago,” Brother said. “Thank you just the same.”
    â€œAw hell, you can eat a chocolate ice cream cone anytime. Let’s have one.”
    We got up and went into the drugstore.
    â€œThree chocolate ice cream cones,” Big Ellis said. The girl behind the counter scooped them up for us. Big Ellis gave her three nickels and we went out and sat down again.
    â€œYou boys ever get in a fight?” Big Ellis asked me.
    â€œNo,” I said.
    â€œIf we ever did I’d win,” Brother told him.
    Big Ellis looked around at Gander and giggled. But Gander wasn’t paying any attention. Big Ellis let it go, and ate his ice cream without talking anymore. He wasn’t likely to stir any conversation out of Gander—or the Montgomerys, either, as long as we were there. It wasn’t very good company. After we finished the ice cream we stayed a while to show Big Ellis that we appreciated his buying it for us, then we thanked him and left.
    Up the street from the harness shop was the hotel. It was a long, two-story frame building with a porch running all the way across the front of it. Salesmen and travelers used to spend the night there, but now the rooms were rented out by the month, to old people mostly. Some of them were sitting in rocking chairs on the front porch when we went by. An old woman nodded her head to us. “Good afternoon, young gentlemen.” She turned to the others and said, “Such fine young men.”
    An old man leaned toward her and said, “Whose boys are they?”
    â€œWhy, they’re Dave Coulter’s grandchildren.”
    â€œWell, God damn,” he said. “Are they old Dave’s boys?”
    â€œGrandchildren,” she said.
    On a rise at the far end of town was the graveyard. In a way it was the prettiest part of the town—with its white headstones and green grass and flowers, shady under the gray-trunked cedars. From there you could see a long stretch of the river valley. Grandma said it was a restful place, and it was. But it was hard to forget all the dead people buried underneath it. In the summer it was easier to forget them than it was in the winter. In the winter you felt they must be cold.

    We