The Dark Closet Read Online Free Page A

either, but there’s an old stove in the kitchen we’re using for the occasion. Not much to eat but oatmeal and grits. What I’d give for a smoking roast!” Both men laughed, and Crossett seemed to relax a little. They had grown up together on these two farms, played in the pre-Civil War tobacco barns and corn cribs to escape the summer heat, hunted minnows and tadpoles in the swamp on Twynne’s farm in the spring, worked in the tobacco fields at their fathers’ commands, gone off to Williams College and returned to inherit the family fortunes within four months of each other. The Forster and Mainwaring alliance was an historic fact. Generations of Forster and Mainwaring eldest sons had been steadfast friends practically from birth to death, even bailing one another out in the particularly lean tobacco years of 1733 to 1801. In those days they even hired to one another their best field slaves; now they sought to protect one another from unscrupulous sharecroppers whose reputations preceded them and from neighboring farmers who sought to lure their most trustworthy sharecroppers to their own estates, a common practice in Barrow.
    Unbuttoning his coat part way, Crossett reached in a shirt pocket and pulled out a silver cigarette case. He tapped it distractedly against the heel of his hand.
    “It’s as quiet as a tomb in that house at night. I don’t know why it seems that way. All the lights would be off at night even if we had current because everyone would be in bed.” He opened the case and drew out a cigarette.
    “Must be the weight of the snow on the roof… all that creaking.” He proffered the case to his friend. “Or snow falling from the trees. I lost a few branches in all that wind.”
    He leaned forward to inhale as he lit his cigarette, then lifted the silver engraved lighter to Twynne’s pipe, which he had pulled out at Crossett’s offering of a cigarette.
    “So have I. In fact, I lost a maple I thought a great deal of.”
    “ Where?” His children were shuffling restlessly in the snow. “Go on and play,” he said curtly, blowing a great puff of white smoke into the frigid air. His own breath was just as pale, but not as plentiful.
    “In the yard.”
    “The one by the box walk?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’ll lose a lot of shade in the summer.”
    “You’re telling me. The house will be hot as blazes in the east rooms. I won’t have any choice but to buy a couple of air conditioners.”
    “You’ll be the first on the block.”
    “Progress, Crossett, progress.”
    “I understand progress, Twynne,” he ans wered slyly. “That’s why I have a portable broiler oven now.”
    “First on the block, Crossett. Next thing you know you’ll turn up with a toaster oven.”
    “What would I need that for with a broiler oven?
    “Because you can’t toast with a broiler oven, Crossett. You can only broil .
    “I have a toaster for that.”
    “You have a toaster?” Twynne asked, faking incredulity. Crossett slit his eyes, then opened them wide.
    “Why, yes. You and Maragret will have to come see it sometime.” Twynne looked down with a smile. “Come now, Twynne,” Crossett continued, “I’m not that backward, just… frugal. No reason to stock up on a lot of new inventions when the old ones do just as well, just take a little longer.”
    “ I wonder if Anne would agree. You know there’s a wonderful new invention called a cook. I’ll bet Anne would like that one.”
    “Anne doesn’t need or want a cook. That’s interesting coming from you anyway. I can’t get you up from the table when you come to dinner.”
    “You’re frugal to a fault, Crossett. Admit it.”
    “It was  the Depression. I just can’t seem to get it out of my system.” In his mind’s eye he could see himself  compulsively scraping every last smear of mayonnaise left in the jar long after the average person would have determined it was empty. And two tablespoons spread very thinly equaled three sandwiches in