No Eye Can See Read Online Free Page A

of name,” she screamed. Her heart pounded, and she couldn't catch her breath. She breathed through her mouth, gasping in air.
    “Best you sit down, Zilah,” he said. “I'll get us some help.”
    “Name Chou-Jou,” she screamed, then, in her flatfooted gait, she brushed past him, holding the sides of her head, staggering toward Sister Esther's tent. Her eye caught something moving. A dog! No, boy. Small boy. Clayton. The child smiled at her as he stood next to the tall wagon wheel. He waved, and she thought she saw him sneer. He show teeth! No boy a dog. He try to bite! Stop him! She had to catch him, had to protect. She turned and headed toward this danger.

    In the mirror on the back of the wagon, Tipton watched Zilah lumber across the sand then turn toward Clayton. Good, someone was looking after the boy, keeping him from trouble. Suzanne certainly didn't notice. Well, she couldn't, Tipton guessed, not really. Tipton gazed at the mirror as she dotted alum onto the blemish on her narrow chin. Those Asian women had strange habits, running with their hands to their heads. Her eyes looked at the lupine-blue sky surrounding her heart-shaped face framed by wispy blond curls. At least her hair was growing back, and less of it remained on her combs when she pulled them out. Elizabeth said it was her eating that affected her hair. How ridiculous. Some old woman's thinking. Whatever the cause, neither her face nor hair could take much more filth and grime. She wore a bonnet every day to keep the sun off the peach complexion that everyone back in the States said “just belongs with that creamy blond hair.” Without soap and decent water, she didn't feel clean, didn't feel the least bit creamy or peachy at all. She just felt parched and dry and old, much older than her fifteen—almost sixteen—years that had already seen the death of her father and fiancé and the disappearance of her brother, though the latter she considered a blessing. Charles Wilson was not a man to be trusted.
    With the tips of her fingers she pinched her cheeks until they blushed red. At least she had blood left. That was something. “Good morning, Mr. Forrester,” Tipton said, being bold. She watched as the man turned slowly away from his staring at Zilah, a frown on his face washing into warmth as he saw her. “You look quite smart this morning.”
    Seth Forrester tipped his hat and smiled, showing even teeth, all still there and not yellowed by tobacco like so many old men she knew.
    Tipton thought to carry on the conversation with him, but he seemed distracted, rubbing at his hand. He turned as though looking for Zilah, then bent to the wagon tongue. She picked up her combs and wash basin and headed toward her mother's tent. Seth was a nice manbut old, probably twice her age. Tyrell, her true love, had been older too, but he was different. He'd been perfect. And he was gone. She'd never find someone to love her like that again, ofthat she was sure. Still, it was good to know that despite the devastation of this journey, the blast of wind and sand acting as pumice to her skin, even with thinning, matted hair, she could still engage in flirtation.

    “Already working us into a routine, I see,” Mazy Bacon told Seth as she caught up with him. Mazy carried a line-dried linen that stuck out stiffly over her arm, and she held a bar of glycerin at the waist of her bloomers once red, but now faded to orange. “A woman needs routine,” she told him, pushing her auburn hair, kinky from a just-freed braid, back from her face. A wide blue scarf tied into a band caught her hair at the back of her neck.
    “Does she?” Seth asked.
    Mazy carried herself like a woman used to wearing the weight of disappointment. Seth liked her spirit of determination and honesty when he'd met her briefly back in Kanesville. He found her even more intriguing these three months later, now a widow. She was young, yet the word wisdom came to mind when he looked at her. From what