The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) Read Online Free Page A

Purvine said he didn’t know. But one woman and another man said that was the right idea.
    “If we must die,” said the man with glasses on, “let it not be like hogs hunted and penned in an inglorious spot!”
    The doctor said, “Yes, we all know that.”
    But the man with glasses on went on, because the others were listening to him, and I was glad he did, because I was listening to him too. “We must meet the common foe; though far outnumbered, let us still be brave, and for their thousand blows deal one deathblow! What, though before us lies the open grave? Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, pressed to the wall, dying, but—fighting back!”
    They all thought it was fine, and a woman said that it was poetry, and I thought if that is what it is I know what I want to be now—a poetryman. I asked the man with glasses on if that was his poetry, though I did not think it was for some reason, and the men and women all looked at me like they were surprised to see me there and like I ought not hear such things—except the man with glasses on, and he said, No, son, it was not his poetry; he wished it was, but it was Claude McKay’s, a Negro, and I could find it in the public library. I decided I would go to the public library when the riot was over, and it was the first time in my life I ever thought of the public library the way I did then.
    They all left about this time, except the doctor and the old woman friend of Old Gramma’s. She came out of Old Gramma’s room, and when the door opened I saw Old Gramma lying on the cot with her eyes closed. The old woman asked me if I could work a can opener, and I said, “Yes, I can,” and she handed me a can of vegetable soup from the shelf. She got a meal together and us kids sat down to eat. Not Carrie, though. She sat in our good chair with her legs under her and her eyes closed. Mama was sleeping and the doctor rolled up the shade at the window and looked out while we ate. I mean brother George and the baby. I couldn’t eat. I just drank my glass of water. The old woman said, Here, here, I hadn’t ought to let good food go to waste and was that any way to act at the table and I wasn’t the first boy in the world to lose his mother.
    I wondered was she crazy and I yelled I wasn’t going to lose my mother and I looked to see and I was right. Mama was just sleeping and the doctor was there in case she needed him and everything was taken care of and . . . everything. The doctor didn’t even turn away from the window when I yelled at the old woman, and I thought at least he’d say I’d wake my mother up shouting that way, or maybe that I was right and the old woman was wrong. I got up from the table and stood by the doctor at the window. He only stayed there a minute more then and went over to feel Mama’s wrist again. He did not touch her forehead this time.
    Old Gramma came out of her room and said to me, “Was that you raising so much cain in here, boy?”
    I said, “Yes, it was,” and just when I was going to tell her what the old woman said about losing Mama I couldn’t. I didn’t want to hear it out loud again. I didn’t even want to think it in my mind.
    Old Gramma went over and gazed down at Mama. She turned away quickly and told the old woman, “Please, I’ll just have a cup of hot water, that’s all, I’m so upset.” Then she went over to the doctor by the window and whispered something to him and he whispered something back and it must’ve been only one or two words, because he was looking out the window the next moment.
    Old Gramma said she’d be back in a minute and went out the door, slipslapping down the hall. I went to the window, the evening sun was going down, and I saw Old Gramma come out the back entrance of our building. She crossed the alley and went in the back door of the grocery store.
    A lot of racket cut loose about a block up the alley. It was still empty, though. Old Gramma came out of the grocery store with