For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down by Richards David Adams

Author:Richards, David Adams [Richards, David Adams]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 1994-12-17T05:00:00+00:00

Damp snowflakes fell out of the sky, and birds flitted in the crevices of half-empty doorways below Nevin’s room. There was a smell of cold harsh salt and bread.

Why did he leave his first wife? It was at university. Of course, he didn’t give a damn for divorce or marriage. But there was something else. She had waited for him at home all one night in January of 1971. It was his birthday. And the next morning when he came in, the cake was covered and left on the table in the kitchen.

“I’ve met someone – Vera Pillar – so you should know,” he said. And he couldn’t help feeling vindictive. “She is a woman with her own mind about things – not like you.”

He remembered her smiling at him timidly, as if he were joking, and then she lowered her eyes and sat on the bed clutching her left thumb with her right hand.

“So I thought you should know,” he said to her angrily, blaming her for things she had not done.

Now he remembered another incident painfully. It was Hallowe’en and Vera and he were living with a group of friends on University Avenue.

Instead of giving a group of little boys and girls treats they brought them into the house and scared them. Of course, this was a long time ago, and Nevin was only young. But what was supposed to be a joke turned mean.

And what he most remembered about that night was a little boy trying bravely to protect his sister when she started to cry.

Twenty years had passed and he had not forgotten a moment of that terrible encounter.

Can you imagine growing up like Jerry? he thought suddenly. He’d heard of Jerry’s father, who’d had a plate in his head, and had beat him unconscious “whenever there was a full moon,” Nevin had heard.

But, of course, there really was no way to help him. And every time he saw him, it always seemed to startle him, and he looked away in fear.

And he knew that Jerry disliked him.

And his little boy was sick. Which was awful. Especially now coming on to Christmas. How could a man as powerful as Jerry have a child who was sick?

This is what bothered Nevin. Secretly he had, in a way – as most men in town – admired Jerry Bines. And yet when he saw his powerful body striding up to the house he realized what he should have realized years ago – that nothing Jerry did or said, or how he acted, could make any difference, in ways which were real.

For twenty years Nevin had remembered the little boy hugging his sister. For twenty years he remembered his first wife holding her thumb and smiling, first timidly and then peevishly, at the corner of the room. And both these recollections could assault him in a second more powerfully than any Jerry Bines or Vera Pillar. Because he had not been kind, when some law greater than his required him to be.

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.