Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner

Author:Wallace Stegner [Stegner, Wallace]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781101077894
Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Published: 1969-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

4

Until afternoon Chet stayed indoors. The silence of the house bothered him, and the thought of what if Mom and Pa and Brucie never came back at all lay big as a sob in his throat. On his back was the burden of being the man of the house, responsible for the fires, the stock, for getting his own meals and keeping the house clean. He accepted those duties solemnly. For a while he was attentive to the fires as though they were in danger of flickering out every ten minutes. He made the beds. He got the broom and stirred a dust in parlor and dining room.

As he was eating his second bowl of bread and milk for lunch, the young man named Vickers came back and said he needed some beds and bedding, so Chet helped him knock down both double beds and load them on the sleigh. He would sleep on the couch in the parlor. It was warmer there anyway, and it would be pretty nice to undress right by the fire and pop into bed without any cold old floor and stairs.

In the kitchen, making a list of things he had taken, Vickers saw the keg, the sacked bottles. “Your dad doesn’t want to sell any of that, does he?” he said.

“Sure,” Chet said. “That’s what he got it for, to sell for flu medicine.”

“What have you got?”

“Rye and bourbon,” Chet said promptly. “There isn’t much bourbon left, I guess.” He rummaged. “Five bottles is all.”

“How much?” Vickers said, and reached for his wallet.

“Four dollars a bottle,” Chet said. He caught himself, shot a look at Vickers’ face. If he got more than the regular price, they’d have to admit he had held the fort to a fare-thee-well. “Or is it four and a half?” he said. “I forget.”

Vickers’ face was expressionless. “Sure it isn’t five? I wouldn’t want to cheat you.” Under his eyes Chet broke and fled into the other room. “I’ll go look,” he said. “I think there’s a list.”

He stood in the front hall a minute before he came back with his face business-like and his mind crafty. “Four-fifty,” he said casually. “I thought prob‘bly it was.”

Vickers counted twenty-two dollars out of the wallet, dug in his pocket for fifty cents, and picked up the ripped sack. He stood by the door and looked at Chet and laughed., “What are you going to do with the extra two-fifty?” he said.

Chet’s heart stopped. His face began to burn. “What two-fifty?”

“Never mind,” Vickers said. “Have you got all you need to eat here?”

“I got crocks of milk,” Chet said in relief. He grinned at Vickers and Vickers grinned back. “Ma baked bread the other day, and there’s spuds. I can go out and shoot a rabbit if I need some meat.”

“Oh,” Vickers said. His eyebrows went up. “You’re a hunter, are you?”

“I shot rabbits all last fall for Mrs. Rieger,” Chet said. He tried to make it sound matter-of-fact. “She lent me the shotgun and shells.

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