View from Castle Rock by Munro Alice

Author:Munro, Alice [Munro, Alice]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2006-11-07T05:00:00+00:00

One morning she didn’t appear, and I went on. In the cloakroom at school she said to me, “I won’t be coming in that way anymore because I’m staying in town now, I’m staying at Gloria’s.”

And we hardly spoke together again until one day in early spring—that time I’ve been talking about, with the trees bare, but reddening, and the crows and seagulls busy and the farmers hollering to their horses. She caught up to me, as we were leaving the school. She said, “You going right home?” and I said yes, and she started to walk beside me.

I asked her if she was living at home again and she said, “Nope. Still at Gloria’s.”

When we had walked a bit farther she said, “I’m just going out there to have a look at what’s going on.”

Her way of saying this was straightforward, not confidential. But I knew that out there must mean out at her home, and that what’s going on, though unspecific, meant nothing good.

During the past winter Dahlia’s status in the school had risen because she was the best player on the basketball team and the team had nearly won the county championship. It gave me a feeling of distinction to be walking with her and to be receiving whatever information she felt like giving me. I can’t remember for sure, but I think that she must have started high school with all the business of her family dragging behind her. It was a small enough town so that all of us started that way, with favorable factors to live up to or some shadow to live down. But now she had been allowed, to a large extent, to slip free. The independence of spirit, the faith you have to have in your body, to become an athlete, won respect and discouraged anybody who would think of snubbing her. She was well dressed, too—she had very few clothes but those she had were quite all right, not like the matronly hand-me-downs that country girls often wore, or the homemade outfits my mother had labored at for me. I remember a red V-necked sweater often worn by her, and a pleated Royal Stewart skirt. Maybe Gloria and Susannah thought of her as the representative and pride of the family, and had pooled some of their resources to dress her.

We were out of town before she spoke again.

“I got to keep track of what my old man is up to,” she said. “He better not be beating up on Raymond.”

Raymond. That was the brother.

“Do you think he might be?” I said. I felt as if I had to pretend to know less about her family than I—and everybody—actually did.

“Yeah,” she said thoughtfully. “Yeah. He might. Raymond used to get off better than the rest of us but now he’s the only one left at home I got my doubts.”

“Did he beat you?”

I said this almost casually, trying to sound moderately interested, not in any way horrified.

She gave a snort. “Are you kidding? Before I got away the last time he tried to brain me with the shovel.

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