Williamson, Penelope by The Outsider

Author:The Outsider [Outsider, The]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-11-20T23:45:09+00:00

The slop bucket sat there beside the door waiting to be taken outside and emptied into the pig trough. A simple enough chore, but every time her glance strayed that way, Fannie Weaver screamed inside.

Outside the night waited, and the sky, the black and empty Montana sky. The night brought the sky closer. Even within the stout log walls of the house she could feel the sky looming over her, big and black and brutal, pressing down on her. Crushing her.

The slop bucket sat there, a silent and smelly reproach. If she left it until morning it would stink even worse, and Noah would scold. She could see her brother through the half-open door of his room. He sat on the edge of his bed, etched by the lantern light. His Bible was clasped lovingly in his hands, his lips moving silently as he memorized the day's verses.

"Noah?"

He looked up, looked through her, and then his gaze fell back to the open book in his lap.

Fannie wiped her sweating hands on her apron. If Mose had been here she would've told him to do it. But he was out somewhere, lost to the night, running wild.

She wiped her hands again. It was a small kitchen with little in it, for it was Plain, as it should be, with a bare pine floor, a square oak table with four ladder-back chairs, a black potbellied stove, and a trundle bed tucked into one corner where Mose slept. Yet by the time she crossed that bare pine floor to the door, her ragged breathing was louder than the hated Montana wind. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears.

Her hand fumbled with the latch. Slowly she cracked the door open, just as a bat flew out from beneath the eaves with a frantic flapping of black wings.

She shrieked and slammed the door so hard the whole house shook.

"Vas geht?" Noah called out. But she was already past him. The house shook again with the slamming of her own bedroom door.

She fell back against the wall, sucking in great gasps of air, breathing, breathing, breathing frantically, as if she dared not stop even for an instant.

"Fannie?"

Her breath caught.

He knocked. "Fannie? Wie gehts?"

Her whole body was so rigid it shook. A high-pitched whine hummed in her constricted throat. She heard his booted feet thump back across the floor and the click of his own door latching closed.

She sagged, sliding down the wall until she was sitting on the floor with her legs drawn up tight against her chest. "Leave me alone," she said, too loud, too loud with only her to hear it. She smothered her mouth with her knee, but now she was shouting it, screaming it, inside herself, Leave me alone, leave me alone, don't leave me, don't leave me, don't leave me alone....

She threw her head back and squeezed her eyes shut against the burn of tears, but they came anyway. They poured like hot, silent rain over her face, into her nose and mouth and ears to drown her, poured back down her throat to flood her heart.

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