Stern Men Read Online Free Page A

couldn’t help it. He said she always looked pregnant in a cute, apologetic way.
    Mrs. Pommeroy was unusually young when she married—not yet sixteen—and she enjoyed herself and her husband completely. She was a real romp. The young Mrs. Pommeroy drank like a flapper. She loved her drinking. She drank so much during her pregnancies, in fact, that her neighbors suspected she had caused brain damage in her children. Whatever the cause, none of the seven Pommeroy sons ever learned to read very well. Not even Webster Pommeroy could read a book, and he was the ace of smarts in that family’s deck.
    As a child, Ruth Thomas often sat quietly in a tree and, when the opportunity arose, threw rocks at Webster Pommeroy. He’d throw rocks back at her, and he’d tell her she was a stinkbutt. She’d say, “Oh, yeah? Where’d you read that?” Then Webster Pommeroy would drag Ruth out of the tree and kick her in the face. Ruth was a smart girl who sometimes found it difficult to stop making smart comments. Getting kicked in the face was the kind of thing that happened, Ruth supposed, to smart little girls who lived next door to so many Pommeroys.
     
    When Ruth Thomas was nine years old, she experienced a significant event. Her mother left Fort Niles. Her father, Stan Thomas, went with her. They went to Rockland. They were supposed to stay there for only a week or two. The plan was for Ruth to live with the Pommeroys for a short time. Just until her parents came back. But some complicated incident occurred in Rockland, and Ruth’s mother didn’t come back at all. The details weren’t explained to Ruth at the time.
    Eventually Ruth’s father returned, but not for a long while, so Ruth ended up staying with the Pommeroys for months. She ended up staying with them for the entire summer. This significant event was not unduly traumatic, because Ruth really loved Mrs. Pommeroy. She loved the idea of living with her. She wanted to be with her all the time. And Mrs. Pommeroy loved Ruth.
    “You’re like my own daughter!” Mrs. Pommeroy liked to tell Ruth. “You’re like my own goddamn daughter that I never, ever had!”
    Mrs. Pommeroy pronounced the word daughtah, which had a beautiful, feathery sound in Ruth’s ears. Like everyone born on Fort Niles or Courne Haven, Mrs. Pommeroy spoke with the accent recognized across New England as Down East—just a whisper off the brogue of the original Scots-Irish settlers, defined by an almost criminal disregard for the letter r. Ruth loved the sound. Ruth’s mother did not have this beautiful accent, nor did she use words like goddamn and fuck and shit and asshole, words that delightfully peppered the speech of the native lobstermen and many of their wives. Ruth’s mother also did not drink vast quantities of rum and then turn all soft and loving, as Mrs. Pommeroy did every single day.
    Mrs. Pommeroy, in short, had it all over Ruth’s mother.
    Mrs. Pommeroy was not a woman who would hug constantly, but she certainly was one to nudge a person. She was always nudging and bumping into Ruth Thomas, always knocking her around with affection, sometimes even knocking her over. Always in a loving way, though. She knocked Ruth over only because Ruth was still so small. Ruth Thomas hadn’t got her real size yet. Mrs. Pommeroy knocked Ruth on her ass with pure, sweet love.
    “You’re like my own goddamn daughter that I never had!” Mrs. Pommeroy would say and then nudge and then— boom —down Ruth would go.
    Daughtah!
    Mrs. Pommeroy probably could have used a daughter, too, after her seven handfuls of sons. She surely had a genuine appreciation of daughters, after years of Webster and Conway and John and Fagan and so on and so on, who ate like orphans and shouted like convicts. A daughter looked pretty good to Mrs. Pommeroy by the time Ruth Thomas moved in, so Mrs. Pommeroy had an informed love for Ruth.
    But more than anyone else, Mrs. Pommeroy loved her man. She loved Mr. Pommeroy madly.