Summer of the War Read Online Free

of self-control and never filled his plate, finished first. He took a last swallow of his coffee and said, “I want to have a serious talk with you children. Your cousin Caroline should be here in time for supper.”He announced it as if it were brand-new news to us, when we had been talking of nothing else for days.
    â€œNaturally, traveling around most of her life, and with no mother, Caroline has been a little too much on her own, but I’m sure things will work out. Once she’s here, we’ll soon have her feeling like one of us.” I could see Grandpa meant to take her in hand. Carrie would be one more female on the island. I thought Grandpa was getting to be like a rooster in a hen yard.
    Grandma said, “I’m sure Carrie won’t be any trouble, Everett.”
    Grandpa gave Grandma the look he gave people who decided to take up his time by saying something that needn’t have been said.
    I was thrilled to have Carrie. Our lives were so ordinary, I couldn’t wait to hear the stories I was sure she could tell us. Though I envied her exotic life, I felt sorry for her. She had no mother, and now her father was off to a country where bombs were dropping out of the sky.
    I had a bedroom all to myself that Carrie would share with me. I loved the room. All winter long I kept it in the back of my mind, something to bring out when I needed cheering up, like a piece of candy you hoard against a special hunger. The walls of the room were pale yellow. There were two white metal beds and a chest of drawers with several coats of white paint and a bottom drawer that always stuck. Therewas a big old white wicker chair with faded blue and yellow cushions. My window looked out on the channel, and the first thing I saw in the morning was the reflection on the ceiling of sunlight dancing on the water.
    I was giving up my privacy, which was hard to get in our family, but I was excited at the idea of having my cousin all to myself. To make her feel welcome, I had gathered trillium into a bouquet for our dresser. I had cleared out half the closet, which wasn’t hard because I had only one dress, some shorts and shirts, and a few one-piece playsuits that I hated so much I hid them behind the rest of my clothes. I had given Carrie my bed, which was next to the window, so she could look out at the channel. On her side of the little table that stood between our beds I had placed my favorite books: Willa Cather’s My Ántonia , which I loved because it was so sad, and Jane Eyre . I had practically memorized the scene where Mr. Rochester’s wife escapes from the attic and creeps into Jane’s room with a knife. I couldn’t wait for Carrie to read it so we could talk about it.
    I think Grandpa was afraid we would waste time by sitting around chattering about our cousin, so he had planned the whole day. There was an hour given over to dragging rocks to help rebuild the cribs that held up the dock. The cribs were square log boxes filled with stones. We had repaired them every year for as long as I could remember. The ground wasmostly rocks, so stones were easy to come by.
    We had a kind of sled Grandpa had made. We loaded it with the rocks and pulled them to the dock. Every winter the waves and ice wore away the cribs that supported the dock. Every summer we built them up again. It was as if Grandpa were fighting a war with the channel and we were his soldiers. He knew the channel was stronger than he was, but he didn’t mean to give in.
    Tommy took the job seriously; he took everything seriously. He was skinny, with twiggy arms and legs and enormous brown eyes. He struggled with one mammoth rock after another, calling out each time, “Hey, Grandpa, look at how I can pick this one up.” The weight of the rock would nearly buckle him, but you didn’t dare offer to help. He was stubborn and independent, which I guess you have to be if you have two older sisters. He took the same