The Last of the Gullivers Read Online Free Page A

Phoenix, she told the class, was a magic creature that lived five hundred years and could heal suffering with a single teardrop. As its end grew near, the bird built a nest of myrrh and settled itself in and burst into flame. A new Phoenix rose from the ashes of the old.
    â€œWe find this myth all over the world,” she told them. “In ancient Egypt, it was called the Bennu bird—a large heron, perhaps a stork—we can’t be sure. There are versions in China, the Americas, the Middle East. Now you tell me—Jimmy, leave her alone—tell me what you think the story of the Phoenix means.”
    â€œMs. Bellknap.” Penelope Rees, as ever.
    â€œPenelope?”
    â€œIt means sometimes things die and sometimes babies are born.”
    â€œYes, Penelope Rees. It does mean that.”
    â€œWhat I think,” Charlie Ford wiped his nose and said, “it’s about tryin’ again. It’s like gettin’ a second chance to get it right.”
    Ms. Bellknap thought for a moment. “Well, yes, Charles. It is that, isn’t it?”
    â€œMs. Bellknap.” Penelope once more.
    â€œYes, dear?”
    â€œMichael is bleeding all over the place.”
    â€œPenelope Rees. Let’s mind our own business.”
    The teacher gave Michael a tissue for his head and sent him to the school nurse. As the small and lavender-smelling woman cleaned the blood, he looked out the window and saw Nick’s Boys waiting for him. They were gathered at the fence, like the stout sullen hawks he sometimes saw in the fields.
    When school let out, they were still there, still waiting. But Michael never came. He’d been given a job at Fenn’s Market and Hetty Bellknap drove him there as her mother, the Court Clerk, had asked.
    The cramped little market was on a far edge of the village, on the road to Ambridge. “All right, come on,” Mr. Fenn spat. He was a solid man, jowly and unmarried, and his words came in wet blasts. “I want every shelf—faced. That means tins, boxes, everything—facing out, lined up, straight across!”
    Michael followed him through a storeroom, stacked floor to rafter with boxes, crates, bins, smelling like old vegetables. Fenn shoved a stubby thumb at an open shelf and told the boy to keep his schoolbooks here during work.
    They moved down another narrow canyon. “Every day you make sure the shelves are full. Myron will—he’ll show you how.”
    Myron was Fenn’s teenaged nephew, friendless and fuzzy at the edges: it was hard to tell where Myron started and Myron stopped. He was usually in the back room, gnawing a peppermint stick. “Why—me?”
    â€œWhy not?” Fenn said as he left.
    Myron told Michael what was expected of him and then he said, “Let’s get one thing straight. I don’t like you.”
    â€œYou don’t know me,” said Michael.
    â€œI don’t have to know you to know I don’t like you,” Myron grunted and went back to eating peppermint.
    Michael spent the next hours sweeping, stocking, cleaning, learning. As he worked, he quietly counted the minutes until he’d be free. It was almost five, closing time, when the door clanged open a last time.
    The boy looked across the store as a man came in, tall, bent, silver-haired, old as earth. It might’ve been him, no, had to be him, from that night at the stone cottage.
    â€œCodswallop,” Fenn said to himself. “Crazy ol’ loon. What’s he doin’ here?” Michael stood beside the grocer and watched the old man move slowly through the store. “Usually calls it in.” Fenn waited by the counter. “Crazy—ol’—loon.”
    When the shopping was finally done, Fenn called for Michael to fill a canvas bag with a half-dozen tins of dog food, a bottle of Scotch whiskey, three cards of sewing needles, and a roll of fine twine.
    â€œMr. Fenn, do you carry