We Are What We Pretend to Be Read Online Free Page A

to the truth of his mother’s contention that the General, “down deep,” had a heart of gold. His mother had never been able to produce much evidence for the affirmative. His father, on the other hand, had always had dozens of incidents to recall, which seemed to back up his opinion that the General was a “pompous, selfish old teddy bear with sawdust for brains.” As he lay abed for his first night in his new home, Haley thought he liked the General. The man was gruff, certainly, but he always gave sound reasons for the things he did.
    Haley flexed his fingers and recalled the dreamlike quality his music had given his life in the past; and a pleasurable shudder passed over him as he reminded himself that that part of his life would begin anew in thirty days—for the General had promised
that he might go to Chicago to resume his studies then. That was all that really mattered, Haley decided. Knowing that that much of the future was assured, he decided that he could adjust to any of the new order’s rigors and get along with just about anyone.
    It was certainly to the General’s credit as a man of compassion that he should understand the importance of music to his new charge, Haley thought, for the man was as tone-deaf as a sparrow, and so were two of his three daughters. Judging from the whistling and humming they did, he had concluded that only Hope was able to carry a tune. Haley had heard that this was a hereditary trait. His mother, or, as Annie had reminded him, his foster mother, had been similarly afflicted. In this thought Haley found some consolation for his not being a blood relative of the Cooleys. There were apparently no instruments on the farm, and the evening’s choice of radio programs had indicated that the General and his family found homicide far more entertaining than music. As Haley had undressed for bed, he had been surprised to hear an excellent, if untrained, tenor voice singing hymns in the barn, and he had wondered who it might have been. It could not have been a Cooley, at any rate. He decided to ask about it in the morning.
    Tomorrow his new life would begin in earnest in the vast, unfamiliar flatness of the plain—a world of strange sounds and sights and attitudes. He was, the General had said, to help with the haying.
    He turned over, pulled the sheet over his head, and closed his eyes. Haley dreamed of saying good night to his mother and father, of wishing them, handsome and young in evening clothes,
a pleasant time at their party. He dreamed of the friends who had come to get him the next morning, to tell him that he must stay with them for a little while, that there had been an automobile accident, that he mustn’t cry, that he must be a man. . . . He had cried.

III.

    III.
    Haley was awakened the next morning by a banging on his door, a shout by his ear, and the shock of a cold washcloth on his face. He sat upright and saw the General standing at the foot of the cot, squat, fat, and laughing. A towel was knotted about the man’s abdomen; with another he was rubbing his bare chest to a glowing pink. “You’re not in the music business, boy; you’re a farmer now. Take a cold shower, and be down for breakfast in ten minutes, or you don’t eat,” he trumpeted.
    “Yessir,” said Haley. Ten minutes later he was seated, puffing and shivering, at the long kitchen table, ducking his head now and then to avoid the flying elbows of Annie, who was energetically making flapjacks on the range behind him. The hot water faucet in the shower stall had been a cruel fraud, he reflected resentfully. The glare from the naked bulb that hung over the table hurt his eyes. He looked away from it to the blackness outside the windows and realized with sleepy awe that he would be seeing a sunrise for the first time in his life. “Good morning,” he
said, after waiting fruitlessly for someone—Annie, Hope, or the General—to acknowledge his presence.
    The General and Hope sat across the table