The Axman Cometh Read Online Free Page A

after all."
    "Oh, God," Don says dismally, wiping his brow with a cocktail napkin, "you and me both, Frank."
    Draw me.
    I'm so thirsty! I wish I had something to drink. What I'd like right now is a draft beer— no, better than that, one of Cabrera's huge frozen daiquiris, in a goddamn beer mug. I'd give anything for—what did you say?
    I want you to draw me, Shannon.
    "Are you crazy? We're in the dark—I don't even know where you are." I'm not sure you—
    Exist?
    That's what I was afraid of! I'm talking to myself! I am losing my mind!
    No, you're not.
    "Then—prove it to me. I'm here. I can't go anywhere, so—reach out and—and touch me.
    I'd like to, Shannon. But I can't. First you have to draw me. The dark doesn't matter. You have your sketch pad with you. Your drawing pencils. Do me in charcoal. Your brain knows. Your hand will know. Draw me.
    But if I do that—
    What, Shannon?
    No, I can't. I won't do it—I've never been able to do it!
    If you let me out, then I'll let you out. You've always wanted to know the truth, Shannon. You've always wanted to be sure. Now is the time.
    "I don't trust you! Stay where you belong, you son of a bitch—! Ah. Ahhh , ahhhhh !"
    If you let yourself get hysterical, you won't be able to breathe. You could die here, Shannon, before anyone finds you. Die of suffocation in this elevator. We don't want that to happen. So get busy. Open your case. Take out your pencils. And draw me.
    ("Draw Me." On a plain piece of white paper, no more than eight-and-a-half-by- eleven inches. Sometimes it was a girl in the ads, sometimes the head of a dog in profile, done with economical charcoal strokes. When she was eleven Shannon had copied one of the drawings that appealed to her, a Dalmatian, and mailed it for a free evaluation of her potential. Unsurprisingly she was informed by the art school that she would be squandering a valuable talent if she didn't immediately sign up for the home-study course they offered. There was a convenient monthly payment plan. Shannon loved to draw but she didn't like to "study," so she continued to learn in her own way, by trial and error, winning school competitions every year through eleventh grade for her pastels and watercolors.)
    "What's that going to be?" Chapman Hill asks his sister, who is hard at work on the back porch where the light is stronger after school than in her room.
    "What does it look like?"
    "Just a barn. Ho hum. Who needs another picture of an old barn?"
    "It's not the object, it's how the artist perceives it," Shannon says with a slight frown, not looking up from her wide brush strokes.
    "Huh?"
    "Never mind. Don't you have anything to do but hang around the house?" Like a mother, nagging; in a way Shannon, five years older than her brother, is more of a mother to Chap than Ernestine. Who is fond of saying, I never expected to have more than two, and treats the boy with what amounts to indifference, as if he is a neighbor's child temporarily misplaced. "And don't get any closer with that fudgecicle , you're dripping."
    There's a streak of chocolate down his bare chest, to his navel. Chap is wearing only a pair of raggedy shorts, and he's nearly as tan as he will get all summer. He already has his summer haircut, although there are two more
    weeks of school left, and his ears stick out woefully. Chap is the only one of the three children to get his father's ears, for which Shannon is grateful: ears don't make any difference to boys.
    "You're dripping too."
    "On purpose; that's my technique, it's part of the painting."
    "No, I mean you got a spot of black paint there on your red paint."
    Shannon moistens the tip of a little finger with her tongue and wipes away the spot from the scarlet oval in her twenty-four- color tray. The telephone rings. "Grab that; mom's lying down with a headache."
    "Ho hum. Are you sure it's a headache she's got?"
    "What's that supposed to mean, of course I'm sure! Answer the G.D. phone, Chapman!"
    "Found another empty