• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

"Isn't this just—like—her!" said Kate with a long sigh.

As if on second thought she pulled open the door suddenly and looked off after her. From the other part of the house came the creakings of that human tiptoeing and passing going on in the breezeway. A flash of light traveled around the bend. Very close by, a child cried. Kate shut the door.

Back came Sister Anne—she really was back in a minute. She looked across at me. "Haven't you spoken? Speak! Tell him who you are, child! What did you come for?"

Instead—without knowing I was going to do it—I stepped forward and my hand moved out of my pocket with my handkerchief where the magnolia-fuscata flowers were knotted in the corner, and I put it under Uncle Felix's heavy brown nose.

He opened his mouth. I drew the sweet handkerchief back. The old man said something, with dreadful difficulty.

"Hide," said Uncle Felix, and left his mouth open with his tongue out for anybody to see.

Sister Anne backed away from us all and kept backing, to the front of the paper-stuffed fireplace, as if she didn't even know the seasons. I almost expected to see her lift her skirt a little behind her. She ^ave me a playful look instead.

"Hide," said Uncle Felix.

We kept looking at her. Sister Anne gave a golden, listening smile, as golden as a Cape Jessamine five days old.

"Hide," gasped the old man—and I made my first movement. "And I'll go in. Kill 'em all. I'm old enough I swear you Bob. Told you. Will for sure if you don't hold me, hold me."

Sister Anne winked at me.

"Surrounded ... They're inside." On this word he again showed us his tongue, and rolled his eyes from one of us to the other, whoever we were.

Sister Anne produced a thermometer. With professional motions, which looked so much like showing off, and yet were so derogatory, she was shaking it down. "All right, Cousin Felix, that's enough for now! You pay attention to that sunset, and see what it's going to do!—Listen, that picture made twenty-six," she murmured She was keeping some kind of tally in her head, as you do most exactly out of disbelief.

Uncle Felix held open his mouth and she popped the thermometer straight in, and he had to close it. It looked somehow wrong, dangerous—it was like daring to take the temperature of a bear.

"I don't know where he thinks he is," she said, nodding her head gently at him, Yes—yes.

Before I knew it, his hand raked my bare arm down. I felt as if I had been clawed, but when I bent toward him, the hand had fallen inert again on the bed, where it looked burnished with hundreds of country suns and today's on top of them all.

"Please, ma'am," said a treble voice at the door. A towheaded child looked in solemnly; his little red tie shone as his hair did, as with dewdrops. "Miss Sister Anne, the man says it's one more and then you."

"Listen at that. My free picture," said Sister Anne, drawing breath like a little girl going to recite, about to be martyrized.

For whom! I thought.

"Don't you think I need to freshen up a little bit?" she said with a comical expression. "My hair hasn't been combed since four o'clock this morning."

"You go right ahead," said Kate. "Right ahead."

Sister Anne bent to sight straight into Uncle Felix's face, and then took the thermometer out of his lips and sighted along it. She read off his temperature to herself and almost sweetly firmed her lips. That was hers, what he gave her.

Uncle Felix made a hoarse sound as she ran out again. Kate moved to the trunk, where on a stack of old books and plates was a water pitcher that did not look cold, and a spoon. She poured water into the spoon, and gave the old man some water on his tongue, which he offered her. But already his arm had begun to stir, to swing, and he put the same work-heavy, beast-heavy hand, all of a lump, against my side again and found my arm, which this time went loose in its socket, waiting. He groped and pulled at it, down to my hand. He pulled me all the way down. On my knees I found the pencil lying in the dust at my feet. He wanted it.

My Great-uncle Felix, without his right hand