The Latchkey Kid Read Online Free Page B

he won’t try competing in the Festival – he’s too lazy.”
    “You don’t give him enough time, you and Boyd,” said Mrs. Palichuk. “You never did encourage him. Always out gallivanting, and him home with a sitter or maybe nobody at all, for all I know.” She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “You didn’t even give him one of those fancy cookies just now,” she added in an aggrieved tone.
    Mrs. Stych glared at the exquisite collection of cookies she was arranging on a tray. “He’s too fat,” she snapped. Her voice became defiant: “And what time did you and Dad ever spare for us?”
    Indignation welled up in Mrs. Palichuk. She closed her tired, bloodshot eyes and saw herself again as a young woman, buxom and pregnant, set down in wild bush country, her only asset a husband as young and strong as herself. She remembered how, side by side, they had hacked and burned the underbrush, borrowed a plough and pulled it themselves, working feverishly to get a little harvest to last them through the first arctic-cold winter. In those hungry, freezing years she had born and lost two children in the small sod hut in which they lived, before Olga, coming in slightly easier times, had survived. She had fed the precious child herself and carried it with her into the fields, watching it as she wielded a hoe or a sickle, tears of weakness and fatigue often coursing down her dusty cheeks. A year later Joe had arrived, and the first doctor in the district had attended her in the first room of what was now a complete frame house. She remembered the doctor telling her, as gently as he could, that it was unlikely that she would have more children, and the shocked look on her husband’s face when he heard the news. They would need children to work the land when they became old. Her husband had been kind, however, had kissed her and said the Lord would provide.
    And the Lord had provided, reflected Mrs. Palichuk. The farm was well equipped with machinery and did not need the hand labour of earlier years. Olga and Joe had been able to go to school, though they had plenty of farm chores as well. Olga, the brighter of the two, had clamoured to be allowed to go to college in Tollemarche, and both parents had encouraged her in this, hoping she would become a school-teacher; but she had met Boyd Stych and got married instead. It was not fair to say that her parents had had no time for her or for Joe; all four of the family had worked together, and, as the settlement grew, they had enjoyed churchgoing and Easters and Christmases with their neighbours.
    Her exasperation, added to her feeling of being unwanted, burst out of her, and she almost shouted at her daughter: “Your father and I were always with you, teaching you to be decent and to work. Joe always makes time to play with his kids – he’s got to be both mother and father to them – in spite of having to run the farm alone since your father died. You’re just too big for your shoes!”
    Mrs. Stych was unloading savoury rolls and a bowl of chicken salad from the refrigerator, and she kicked the door savagely, so that it slammed shut with a protesting boom. When she turned onher mother, her face was scarlet and her double chin wobbled as she sought for words.
    When the words came, they arrived as a spurt of Ruthenian, the language of her childhood.
    “I’m not too big for my shoes!” she cried. “You just don’t know what it’s like living in a town – it’s different.”
    Mrs. Palichuk wagged an accusing finger at Olga.
    “Excuses! Excuses!” her voice rose. “You were always good at them. Anything to avoid staying home and looking after Hank. How he ever grew up as decent as he is, I don’t know.”
    Arms akimbo, Olga swayed towards her mother.
    “Let me tell you,” she yelled, “Boyd and I are somebodies in this town, and mostly because I was smart enough to set to and cultivate the right people.”
    “Rubbish!”
    “It’s not rubbish