Read The Cure for Death by Lightning for Free Online

at me.
    “They said she was pulled apart from the crotch up,” said my brother. “And the tops of her legs were just gone. Nothing. That’s what would’ve happened to you, if that bear got you last spring. They say her breasts were eaten off.”
    “Shut your filthy mouth,” said my father. He pointed his finger at my brother until Dan gave in and looked at his plate. My father went back to eating.
    “I heard the bear walked right up to Morley Boulee,” said Dennis. “Walked right up like a tame bear and Morley Boulee shot him dead, like it was nothing.”
    I looked over at my father to see if he’d react to Mr. Boulee’s name, but he didn’t say anything.
    “I killed a bear with a .22 once,” said Dennis. “The trick is to get real close, then throw your arms up, like you’re challenging the bear. When the bear stands up, on its hind legs, and growls at you, when its mouth is open, that’s when you shoot it, through the mouth!”
    “What a bunch of baloney,” said Dan.
    “That’s an old Indian way,” said Dennis. “Taught to me by my grandfather.”
    “That’s bullshit, is what that is!” said Dan.
    “Enough!” said my mother.
    Dennis grinned. “Yeah, well, it’s a good story, anyway.”
    “Can you believe it?” said my brother. “Her breasts eaten off!”
    “Keep your mouth shut,” said my father. “Keep your goddamned mouth shut.”
    We didn’t talk anymore about Sarah Kemp, or anything else. My brother’s talk left me without appetite. I played with my peas, arranging them in circles. My mother stood up and began clearing away dishes and I helped. Dennis stood up too and carried his plate and cup to the washtub.
    “You don’t have to,” said my mother.
    “Sure I do,” he said, and he kissed my mother on the cheek.
    My mother and I took a quick look over at the table to see if my father was watching, but he was still hunched over his plate, serving up another spoonful of peas. My brother had leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head. His eyes were closed. I turned back to my mother and the dishes. Dennis tousled my hair and left the kitchen. Shortly after, Dan jumped up, took the .22 down from the wall rack, and left the kitchen without saying a word to anyone.
    “Where are you going?” said my father, but all he got for an answer was the screen door slapping shut. I looked out the kitchen window and saw Dan striding up the driveway towards Blood Road with the gun bouncing in his hand. He was a black silhouette against the sunlit lake of flax.
    I cleared the rest of the dishes from the table and dipped out some water for washing from the reservoir on the stove. My mother sat at the kitchen table cutting something from a magazine and gluing it to the page where the tortoiseshell butterfly fluttered over the oatcake recipe. I ignored what she was doing so she wouldn’t get the idea that Ihad any interest at all in her musty old scrapbook, and so she wouldn’t put warning notes in there for me to find. My father wound the gramophone in the parlor, put on Enrico Caruso, and sat in the thick chair that was his alone.
    My mother tapped the recipe. “We’re out of oatcakes,” she said. “I served the last of them to Bertha. One more thing to do.” She sat there for a time, looking tired, feeling the corner of the page made from blue striped wallpaper and staring at the recipe as if wishing would make the oatcakes appear. My mother’s recipe was easy, really. It called for:
    a quarter pound of butter

a quarter pound of sugar

three tablespoons of golden treacle

one teaspoon of almond extract

and half a pound of oats
    I call it my mother’s recipe, though she may have copied it from somewhere; she was always copying down a recipe. But this one was not cut from a magazine, or copied from the newspaper, as she did, by rubbing wax paper over newsprint to collect the words and then rubbing the wax paper on a page of the scrapbook, transferring all those little black