Read Faraway Places for Free Online

do to you at the St. Joseph’s School and he was yelling at her and using those swear words men use. Then he kicked her in the stomach and went to kick her again, when suddenly the nigger jumped on him from behind. The men struggled like that for a long time, the both of them yelling terrible and cussing at each other, the nigger’s right arm around Endicott’s neck and his left hand smacking at Endicott’s face and chest, Endicott bent over, his Stetson hat knocked off, his pink head pointing at me fat and round. All the while that woman Sugar Babe was screaming and cussing like usually only men do, saying all those words, and then I saw Endicott put the whistle that was hanging around his neck into his mouth. There was a high-pitched sound, the sound I think the planets must make as they whirl in their orbits around the sun in infinity, an awful, other-worldly sound, and then those hellhounds came around the corner of the house and jumped on that woman Sugar Babe and the nigger.
    I dived and swam downriver, staying underwater as far asI could, holding my breath, my heart beating everywhere, and in my chest a pain—from not breathing and their screams.
    Their screams were the worst sounds that I had ever heard: that woman Sugar Babe and the nigger screaming, scared and mad and crying out like lost souls. Running through the cottonwoods, I could hear their screams still. I could hear the dogs on top of them, teeth biting into their flesh. As I swam, as I ran, I was thinking those dogs were after me. I could feel their teeth on my calves and ankles. I ran and ran and I could hear them the whole time: the hellhounds, the screams of that woman, the screams of the nigger and what he was calling out to her, to that woman Sugar Babe.
    Mother , he was calling out to her.
    Mother is what the nigger was screaming out to Sugar Babe, to that woman. Mother, Mother .
    THAT NIGHT, LYING in bed, I couldn’t stop thinking about the hellhounds, and about Harold P. Endicott, and about that woman Sugar Babe and the nigger; couldn’t stop hearing the nigger calling out to her, calling out Mother like that.
    I tried praying the rosary again but I was too nervous to keep track of the beads.
    But more than anything, what I was thinking was that I had run away.
    NOBODY WAS ALLOWED to read the newspaper before my father read the newspaper, and that night, two days after I saw the three of them together—Harold P. Endicott, that woman Sugar Babe, and the nigger—when I came in for supper that night, my mother had put the newspaper on the coffee table next to my father’s chair like usual. I looked over and this was the headline: “ BODY OF WOMAN FOUND IN PORTNEUF RIVER .”
    I picked up the newspaper without thinking and then put it back down because nobody was allowed to read the newspaper before my father read the newspaper. My father always readthe newspaper after supper with his coffee, usually in the front room or, when it was hot, on the front porch.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” my mother said when she saw me. She had been asking me that for two days.
    â€œNothing,” I told her as I had all along.
    â€œSomething’s bothering you,” my mother said. “Has been for two days now.”
    â€œNothing’s bothering me.” But I was acting bothered and lied again.
    My mother just looked at me and put the tuna casserole on the supper table—it was Friday again—but that Friday my father wouldn’t eat the tuna casserole because my mother had tried something new and put potato chips in it, so my mother scrambled him up some eggs and spuds, which he did eat.
    All through supper she watched me with that look on her face—that same look she had that first night of the chinook when she swept past the bathroom door.
    There’s not much you can do when my mother turns that eye on you but let yourself be watched, so I concentrated on my tuna casserole and had part of a