A Cold Season by Matthew Hooper

Author:Matthew Hooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transit Lounge Publishing
Published: 2024-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

In the afternoon I was in the kitchen. I looked out the window and saw Owens in the yard sweeping, leaning on that broom like it was holding him up. Mama and me watched him out the window. He pushed the broom across the yard. Dust rose in the breeze. He also had a small saw and we watched him moving it gently back and forth, cutting the scrappy parts of the bushes around the path and piling them branches next to the barn. Watching him gave me a choked-up feeling. I didn’t know how to go to him because he still had a kind of force around him. I knowed he was full of sadness. Maybe he did think it was someone’s fault. Maybe he thought it was Mama’s fault.

While we was watching Owens, Sasha came into the kitchen. He stood beside me, his eyes red from crying. We all watched Owens out the window, three of us standing in a row, and Sasha said, ‘You know Sam asked me to go up the mountain with him that day and I said no.’

‘Wouldn’t you still be up there, too?’ Mama said.

‘Maybe,’ Little Sasha said, his hands resting on the cool metal sink. ‘Maybe … What’s Owens doing out there?’

‘Cleaning up the path,’ I said.

‘You’d think he’d have had enough time to himself up the mountain.’ Then Sasha went to the cupboard and took a biscuit from the tin. He pointed the tin toward me, but I shook my head.

Without discussion Sasha and me moved to the back door and started putting our outside shoes on. I could feel the cold air coming in under the door, icy from the mountain. I took my heavy coat from the peg and fished my gloves out of them pockets.

In the yard Owens was stooped and working slow. He was like a ghost of himself, as if seeing Sam had taken some part out of him, the inside energy he had for the world. It was almost like the wind could pick him up and take him away.

He had piled a lot of dark branches one on top of the other, but there were still small piles around for me and Little Sasha to pick up. It was easy work, lifting the branches. There were no splinters, not like I got when I picked up them bigger logs.

‘Beth,’ Owens called out, ‘come over here for a moment.’ And I went over to him, and he said to me, ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s been going on.’

I shivered under my coat, all down my spine. I knowed Sasha and Mama couldn’t hear but what was I going to say? I thought to myself: ‘Mama had the outlaw Wallace had dinner with candles and whisky. And she had a baby what died’.

‘Come on,’ he said.

‘I might go inside in a minute,’ I said. ‘I’m cold out here.’

‘Oh, it’s not that cold, Beth,’ Owens said. ‘Why don’t you come and talk to me.’

I couldn’t tell him about the outlaw Wallace and the way he walked like he owned the ground.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.