October by Richard B. Wright

Author:Richard B. Wright [Wright, Richard B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443440479
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2008-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

She expected me to laugh, but I was too miserable. “What’s a stile anyway?” she asked. “I never did find out. Some kind of shed?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Can I look at your book?”

I handed it to her and she began to turn the page132"indent">I was looking through the binoculars.

“Can I keep this book for a while?” she asked.

“I guess so.”

“Hey,” she said, “I just remembered. I got some cigarettes. You want one?” She was digging in the pocket of her housedress. “One of the tourists threw his package into the wastebasket and there were still four left in it. You’d be surprised what they throw away.”

It was hard to light a cigarette in the wind and she told me to turn around to provide a shield. “Like this,” she said, squaring my shoulders.

When she had lit her cigarette, she lit one for me off hers. I liked the way the wind lifted the hair off her neck as she sat there smoking. I had settled back on the sand and half closed my eyes, watching her.

After a while she said, “You smoke like a little kid, James. Like this, look.”

The sunlight was burning through my eyelids, turning everything a fiery orange, but I could see her blowing the smoke out in quick little puffs. It was true. I didn’t know how to smoke. Didn’t even enjoy it.

My moodiness was getting on her nerves. I could sense it when she mentioned Uncle Chester. There was an edge to her voice.

“He’s a strange one, that uncle of yours. People think he’s one of those queers.”

I said nothing to that.

“That would be a good joke on Madame La Plotte. Thinking she is high above the rest of us and all the time keeping a queer man in her house.” She was smiling down at me, leaning on an elbow. “Maybe the man is not even your uncle. Maybe you are his young friend.”

I closed my eyes and was silent.

“I know you are listening to me, James. I hope you like girls. You are just at the age when you should be interested. My brothers Maurice and Raymond are horny all the time. I hear them at night,” she laughed. “It’s so funny to hear them at that. Wringing the chicken’s neck and groaning away like anything.”

I wondered then if she had seen me on that day by the cliffside.

“So what about that Mister Chester with his little moustache and his wavy hair that looks marcelled?”

I opened my eyes. “Marcelled?”

“Yes, you know. He must use the curling iron on that hair.”

“Don’t be silly, Odette,” I said, closing my eyes again. “My uncle has naturally wavy hair. He just combs it.”

“Oh sure,” she said, sitting up again and hugging her knees. She looked at me. “So? Is he funny, your uncle?”

“Funny?”

“Yes, you know. Does he like other men? Boys?”

I remember putting my hands behind my head and looking up at the travelling clouds, the grave young listener considering her question. “To tell you the truth, Odette, I don’t really know.

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