The Brat Read Online Free

enduring, the brooding hate.
    I would look at her and see bright wrong, and go ahead anyway. Nothing mattered. Nothing at all.
    One morning the family went their usual ways. Rona had kept herself pretty well hidden since the episode by the water. Evis had already told them flatly she was leaving. They showed no excitement.
    I took the canoe back to town, picked up my Chevrolet convertible, and drove back to the landing—Hagar’s Point.
    I couldn’t find her. I didn’t call her name.
    I stepped into the woodshed bright with the noon light.
    A black-haired, rawboned man in a flannel shirt and dungarees had her bent back over a bracing two-by-four. They were sucking mouths, moaning like animals. The man’s right hand was clutched like a steel claw on the thrust of her left breast.
    It was a fist in the heart.
    “Lee? Are you ready?” She stepped toward me, flushed, tucking her white blouse into the taut waistline of a blue skirt. She looked at me, followed me into the sunlight, her lips still smashed.
    “I said are you ready, Lee?”
    The man leaned against the two-by-four in the pale shadow of the shed, staring at the calves of her legs. His gaze traveled upward, stopping at her thighs and hips. His eyes were clear and black.
    For a moment I stopped. It was like the last cold tick of a clock. Then I began to wind up inside, tight and hot.
    She stepped over to me, smiling, and took my arm. She was composed. She motioned with one hand.
    “This is Berk Kaylor, Lee. A cousin of mine. He just dropped over to see me. He didn’t know I was going away.”
    The man’s gaze flicked toward me. He did not move from the two-by-four. Then he lunged away from there and came out of the shed. He walked slowly up behind her. He did not slap or pat—he gripped her harshly by one buttock. She did not move.
    “See you, Evis,” he said, releasing her. He turned and walked away. He went as far as the corner of the house, where he leaned again, watching.
    I shook her off, started for him. I was out of my head now. Rage bloomed like fire. It was the first time I ever wanted to kill.
    “Lee—wait!”
    He watched me come at him. He snatched a clasp knife from his pocket, flicked it open, stropped the blade against his left palm.
    She ran beside me. “Lee!” She grabbed my arm. “Come with me, Lee!”
    “You better,” Kaylor said, holding the knife.
    “Lee!”
    I stopped, looking at the knife. She was breathing harshly, and Kaylor did not move, just waited. Some of the rage went away, and I walked behind the shed with her.
    “Don’t pay any attention to that, Lee. I knew you wouldn’t understand, and I’m sorry you saw it. He didn’t want to fight. He didn’t know what to do—”
    “That’s just how he looked, all right.”
    “He’s a cousin. It’s always been that way. There’s nothing I could do.”
    “I can do plenty.”
    “No. For me, don’t. He’d kill you. Forget it. We’re going away. I love you, Lee—remember that. It would have no meaning.”
    She clung to me, pleading desperately with her eyes.
    “I’ve forgotten it,” she said. “Don’t ever mention it.”
    I pulled away, walked around the shed. Kaylor was gone. I ran on to the house. There was no sign of him. She came again to my side, smiling now, fresh and composed and it
was
as if it had never happened. But it had.
    “You’ll have to help me with the boxes, Lee.”
    “All right.”
    • • •
    The books and magazines were in the boxes—the dream. We piled them in the convertible, until I wondered if the engine would pull the load, all the time thinking about Bert Kaylor—and then, because of her actions, her words, putting him aside, out of mind, but not ever really forgetting.
    Her family didn’t gather. They stood among the trees, in the dust, watching like dubious deer.
    “If you’d care to speak with them alone?” I said.
    “No, darling. Just one more thing.”
    She went hurriedly to the rear of the cypress shed and returned with