SOME OF YOUR BLOOD.

Theodore Sturgeon.

1.

...but first, a word: You know the way. You have the key. And it is your privilege.

Go to the home of Dr. Philip Outerbridge. Go on in-you have the key. Climb the stairs, walk to the end of the corridor, and turn left. This is Dr. Phil's study, and a very comfortable and well-appointed one it is. Books, couch, books, desk, lamp, books, books. Go to the desk-sit down; it's all right. Open the lower right drawer. It's one of those deep, double drawers. It's locked? But you have the key-go ahead.

Pull it open-more than that. All the way. That's it. See all those file-folders, a solid ma.s.s of them? Notice how they are held in a sort of box frame? Well, lift it out. (Better get up; it's heavy.) There.

Underneath, lying flat, are a half-dozen folders-just plain file folders. Perhaps they are there to level up the main box-frame; well, they certainly do that. Perhaps, too, they are there because they are hidden, concealed, secret. Both perhapses could be true. And perhaps they are there because they are valuable, now or later. Value is money, value is knowledge, value is entertainment... sentiment, nostalgia. Add that perhaps to the others. It does not destroy them. And bear in mind that of the six folders, any of six might be any or all of these things. You may look at one of them. The second one from the top. You will note that it, like the others, is marked with Dr. Outerbridge's name and, in large red capitals, PERSONAL-CONFIDENTIAL-PRIVATE PERSONAL-CONFIDENTIAL-PRIVATE. But go ahead. Go right ahead; take it out, replace the box-frame, close the drawer, light the lamp, make yourself comfortable. You may read through the papers in this folder.

But first rest your hands on the smooth cream-yellow paperboard and close your eyes and think about this folder which is marked CONFIDENTIAL CONFIDENTIAL and which is hidden in a drawer which is locked. Think how it was filled some years ago, when Dr. Phil was a young staff psychologist in a large military neuropsychiatric hospital. It happened that he was then two months short of the required age for a commission, so he rated as a sergeant. Yet he had, since his freshman year in college, trained and interned in psychological diagnosis and treatment at a famous university clinic, where be had earned a graduate degree in clinical psychology. and which is hidden in a drawer which is locked. Think how it was filled some years ago, when Dr. Phil was a young staff psychologist in a large military neuropsychiatric hospital. It happened that he was then two months short of the required age for a commission, so he rated as a sergeant. Yet he had, since his freshman year in college, trained and interned in psychological diagnosis and treatment at a famous university clinic, where be had earned a graduate degree in clinical psychology.

It was wartime, or something very like it. The hospital was swamped, staggered, flooded. The staff had to learn as many new tricks, cut as many unheard-of corners, work as unholy hours, as those in any other establishment that handled the goings and comings of war, be they shipbuilders or professors of Baltic languages. And some of the staff, like some builders and teachers everywhere, were burdened by too many hours, too little help, too few facilities, and too much tradition, yet found their greatest burden the constant, grinding, overriding necessity for quality. Some men in tank factories turned down each bolt really tight; some welders really cared about the joints they ran. Some doctors, then, belonged with these, and never stopped caring about what they did, whether it was dull, whether it was difficult, whether, even, the whole world suddenly turned enemy and fought back, said quit, said skip it, it doesn't matter.

So perhaps the value of these folders, and their secrecy lies in their ability to remind. Open one, relive it. Say, here was a triumph. Say, here is a tragedy. Say, here is a terrible blunder for which atonement can never be made... but which, because it was made, will never be made again. Say, here is the case which killed me; though I have not died, yet when I do I shall die of it. Say, here was my great insight, my inspiration, one day my book and my immortality. Say, here is failure; I think it would be anyone's failure, I-I pray G.o.d I never discover that someone else could succeed with something, some little thing I should have done and did not. Say... there is something to be said for each of these folders, guarded once by a lock, again by concealment, and at last by the declaration of privacy.

But open your eyes now and look at the folder before you. On the index tab at its edge is lettered "GEORGE SMITH"

The quotation marks are heavily and carefully applied, almost like a 66 and a 99.

Go ahead.

Open it.

You know the way. You have the key. And it is your privilege. Would you like to know why? It is because you are The Reader, and this is fiction. Oh yes it is, it's fiction. As for Dr. Philip Outerbridge, he is fiction too, and he won't mind. So go on-he won't say a thing to you. You're quite safe.

It is, it is, it really is fiction...

2.

Here is a typewritten letter written on paper showing signs of having been torn across the top with a straight-edge, as if to remove a letterhead. The letters O-R over the date are in ink, printed by hand, large and clear.

Base Hospital HQ, Base Hospital HQ, Portland Ore. : otherwise known as- Office of the Understaff O-R Freudsville, Oregon. 12 Jan.

Dear Phil:

First and foremost notice the O-R notation above. That means off the record, and I mean altogether. If and when you see it in future you don't need explanations. Anything which can be gotten across by abbreviation and in code is a blessing to me, especially since they gave me this nut factory to administer without relieving me of that bedlam of yours. You'll excuse the layman's vulgarisins, dear doctor; believe me, they do me good.

Under separate and highly official cover, and through channels, you'll find orders from me to you relative to a file AX544. I'm the colonel and you're the sergeant. I'm the administrator and you're just staff. Hence the orders. On the other hand we are old friends and you are senior to me in your specialty six times umpteen squared. The fact-not mentioned in the orders-is that we've pulled the kind of blooper you don't excuse by saying oops, sorry. This soldier was yanked out of a staging area overseas and shipped back here with a "psychosis, uncla.s.sified" label and a "dangerous, violent" stencil, by a meat-headed MedCorps major. It could only have been sheer vindictiveness, deriving from the fact that the GI punched him in the nose. Criminal he may be-according to the distinctions now current-but insane he is not. Seems to me he did the right thing; but to the major's dim appreciation it appeared insane to strike an officer and so he was sent to your laughing academy instead of to a stockade.

What complicates things is that we lost this guy. What with understaffing and turnover and all-around snafu, this GI has been stuck in padded solitary for three months now without diagnosis or treatment, and if he didn't qualify as one of your charges when he got there, he sure as h.e.l.l should now.

However it happened, it comes out looking like the worst kind of carelessness, to say nothing of injustice. So what "diagnose and treat" means in the official order is, please, Phil, on bended knee, get that man out of there and out of the Army in such a way that there will be no kickbacks, lawsuits or headlines. And aside from the merits of the case itself, we have to slough off these trivial cases. We need the bed. I I need the bed, or will soon if this kind of thing happens again. need the bed, or will soon if this kind of thing happens again.

I trust you to sew it up tidily, Philip. Not only a sound diagnosis, but a sound-sounding one. And then a medical discharge. His remuneration, whether or not he ever appreciates it, can be that his fisticuffs on the person of that moo-minded major are on the house. yr absentee landlord, yr absentee landlord, Al P. S. : To enrich the jest, I just got word that above-mentioned major, by name Manson, got himself deceased in line of duty, in a C-119 crash. This I learned in answer to my request for any additional files he may have on subject patient. There ain't any files. P. S. : To enrich the jest, I just got word that above-mentioned major, by name Manson, got himself deceased in line of duty, in a C-119 crash. This I learned in answer to my request for any additional files he may have on subject patient. There ain't any files. A. W. A. W.

Here is the carbon copy of a letter.

Field Hospital #2 Field Hospital #2 Smithton Township, Cal. : also called- O-R Bedpan Bureau 14 Jan.

Reik's Ranch, Cal.

Dear Al:

You diagnose right handily by mail. You must have been studying that technique where the quack sends you a ten-dollar Kleenex and you wipe it over your face and send it back and he tells you you've got housemaid's knee. I spent a half-hour with the guy today-honest to G.o.d, Al, all the time I could split off-and I found him up on the top floor all alone in a secure cell. Very polite, very quiet. Although he offers nothing, he responds well. I had no hesitation in holding out some hope to him-all he wants is out, and I handed him the idea that if he cooperates with me he ought to make it. He was pathetically eager to please. For once and probably the only time, I'm glad I'm not an officer. He doesn't like officers. And as you said, if we put in solitary every GI who feels that way we'd have to evacuate the entire state of California for housing.

Not having anything with me on that first visit to do any tests-including time, d.a.m.n you-I sent Gus for a composition book and some ball-points and told the patient to write the story of his life any way it came to him, suggesting that third person might help. That'll give him something to do until I can get back to him, which will be soon-even sooner if you'll okay a requisition for a thirty-hour day and a sleep-eliminator for me. yrs wearily, yrs wearily, Phil The third or fourth carbon of a typed transcription.

George's Account The first that anybody heard about George was at this big staging area outside Tokyo and they were so busy they threw a lot of work to people who usually didn't do it. Which is the usual Army thing, thousands of guys sitting around waiting and a few dozen knocking themselves out. One of the things was the mail. The mail had to be censored but for military stuff and in this particular war, only certain special military stuff. Anything else was n.o.body's business but whoever wrote the letter.

All the same some lieutenant who should have known better, well, he did know better but he did it anyway, he got very puzzled at one of the letters he was supposed to censor. He took it to a friend of his who happened to be a major in the Medical Corps, but this major was not just a doctor, he was a psychiatrist. He looked at the letter and told the lieutenant he had no business worrying himself about, it, it was not military, which the lieutenant already knew. And that did not do any good because the major had the letter now and it bothered him just as much, so he sent for the soldier who wrote the letter.

The next day the major cleared up his desk and went and opened the door to the little room outside where this soldier was waiting. The major had a file in his hand turned around back to back with a lot of papers. He said "Come in uh," and looked at the papers, "uh Smith."

The soldier came in and the major closed the door. The soldier was at attention but he looked around when he heard the door close. The major did not look at him yet but walked past him looking at the papers and he said "It's all right, soldier. At ease." And he didn't seem to be so tough. He sat down and put the papers on the desk and squared them away and finally he leaned back in his shiny brown swivel chair and took a good look at the soldier.

What he saw was a big fellow with yellow hair and a pink kind of skin and the shoulders and chest that make the shirt look like it grew on him, it was so snug. He had thick arms and thick legs and he kept his face closed.

Up to now the major did not tell the soldier he had the letter. So the soldier did not know why he was there.

The major said, "The company clerk tells me you're something of a loner, Smith. Don't run with a crowd much."

The soldier just said, Yes sir. He always liked to let the other guy do the talking as much as he could.

"What do you do for amus.e.m.e.nt?"

"I like to walk around. At home I fish some. Hunt." The major did not say anything to this so the soldier had to say, "There isn't much of that here. c.o.o.ns and chucks, I mean. Rabbits."

The major looked down at his papers and said, "Miss that a lot?"

"Well, yes sir, I reckon."

"Got a girl at home, George?" The Major called him George this time.

"Sure do, yes sir."

"Go in town once in a while, do you?"

George knew just what he meant and he just shook his head no.

The major picked up a paper and looked to see if it had anything written on the other side, which it had not. It was blue paper and had two lines written on it. It was only then that George began staring at it. He stared at it as much as the major did for the rest of the time he was there but from farther off. The major seemed to be going to say something about the paper but he did not. He said, "What do you hunt for, George? I mean, just what do you get out of it?"

He waited, looking down at the paper, and when he did not get an answer he looked up to the soldier's face. Then he said, real soft and long, "Hey-y-y..." and got on his feet. He went to the far corner of the room quickly but sort of sidling, watching the soldier's face the whole time, took down a gla.s.s, filled it from a cooler, came back and pa.s.sed it to the soldier. The major said, "Here, you better drink this."

The soldier's face was bone-white and little drops of sweat were all over it and he was shaking and his eyes were half-way closed and what they call glazed. He took the gla.s.s but he did not seem to know he was taking it. He did not drink out of it but just held it out in front of him. He was staring down at the paper. The major looked down there too and that was when there was the explosion.

The gla.s.s, it seemed to explode but that was really because the soldier squeezed it. The next thing would be to jump the major and the major knew that because he turned just as white as the soldier. But what saved the major's life was the hand still out. First it was dripping water and then it was dripping blood. The blood dripping was what saved the major, because when George Smith saw it he like forgot there was anyone or anything else there. Slowly he brought his hand up to his face. The fingers opened and pieces of b.l.o.o.d.y gla.s.s fell out. He closed the fist and brought it close and began to smell it. He opened it and along the outside edge of the hand under the little finger, blood was pulsing where a little artery was cut. George put his mouth on that part.

The major must have pushed a b.u.t.ton under his desk or something because the door banged open without knocking and two MP's ran in and grabbed George. After a while the major had to come and help, and then two more MP's came and that did it. The major had a b.l.o.o.d.y nose and one of the MP's just lay there on the floor without moving. George got his hand back to his mouth and stood breathing like a bull through his nostrils and watching the blood on the major's face.

"Wait a minute," the major said when the MP's started hustling the soldier out, and they stopped. He looked George Smith straight in the eye and spoke to him kindly. He was breathing hard and bleeding but he really was kindly. He said, "What was it, soldier? What did I say?"

George looked at the file folder on the desk and then he looked at the major bleeding and he sucked at his bleeding hand, and he did not say anything. For three months he did not say anything because he figured he had said much too much already.

They packed up the file folder and the soldier and sent both back Stateside.

3.

This George Smith was twenty-three years old at the time. He came from Kentucky, back in the hills. It was hills with woods and bills with farms and every once in a while these little towns that grow like you know, hair; around something, crossroads or a hole in the ground like a mine.

George came from a mine town. His mother and father came from the old country. They got married on this side. The father was working in Charleston, South Carolina when he met the mother. Probably the only reason he married her was she was the only girl he knew who could talk to him. There sure was nothing else worth while between them. Lonely. People get lonesome by theirselves and then get hooked up and go off and be lonesome together.

When they went to Kentucky so he could work in the mines they were always set apart from everybody because they never did learn much English. Whatever it was he wanted, friends or some place to belong or to be a big shot, he tried to find in a bottle. About the earliest thing George could remember was the father bellowing drunk and the mother screaming and sometimes George screaming too. This was not the kind of memory like a thing happens and you remember it. This was no special one time, but like a colored light or a smell that you live in all the time. And hungry. Practically all the time hungry. Hungry waiting for the father to come home and sometimes he didn't and sometimes he came late and one single word to him about it and he'd start slugging. You found out that when the mother yelled you didn't feel hungry any more.

But all the same it was nice. Like the woods. You could walk in the woods and know where you were, first a little way away from the house, then more, finally, anywhere. The woods in the rain, in the snow, the woods even when you were hungry, they couldn't hurt you the way you might get hurt at home. You might die in the woods or get killed, but the woods did not drink, the woods did not punch your mother in the face. You're always all right if you can get away into the woods. The woods are smooth, you might say, towns are rough. You can lay up to the smooth woods and drink, but not towns, not people, all split halfway up and p.r.i.c.kly. Also you know where you stand in the woods. Animals, now, they never stay mad. You go to club a rabbit and you miss, or hurt him and he gets away, he's not going to get sore about it. Maybe he's learned something and maybe he's more careful after that, more scared, but that's all. But if you hit out at a person you never know what's going to come of it, from nothing at all all the way down to a stretch in the Big House. Also if a squirrel should see you cut a squirrel, it makes no never mind. But if a person sees you cut a person, look out. Even years later.

When George was old enough to walk he was old enough to be in the woods. No matter what happened they were there waiting for him. From the time he was eleven there was something as good, even better, because the father's sister married a man who had a farm in the south part of Virginia and although it was a long way away he got to go there once in a while. And he found out years later that as farms go that farm was pretty nothing, but at the time it was heaven. And for a while he lived there permanent. But that was later after everyone died.

The only really bad thing that ever happened to George in the woods was when he was five and he heard voices and crawled up a ridge and looked down and saw a guy giving it to a girl. It was not the first time he had seen it but this was different from what happened at home because the girl was not crying. What he always remembered most about it was this girl's ankles, they were in the air and every time the guy lunged they wiggled like putty. George was watching this not thinking one way or the other about it when the other guy-there was two of them taken this girl out in the woods and the one was hanging around waiting-well this second guy come up behind George and whupped him with a tree trunk. It was not a very big tree and it was a long time dead and punky or I guess George would be dead but it hurt a lot and also scared him very bad, the guy running after him whupping him eight or ten times till George got away the brush being so thick around there and him so small, it was like clubbing a rabbit in brambles, you just can't do it.

They say that these things affect you in late life but it never bothered George. I mean if it was supposed to scare him away from the woods it did not. Even at five years old George could understand that it was not the woods done it to him.

Well George had to go to school like everybody else and that was where he first learned to let other people do the talking because they all did it so easy. George could talk all right, his father made him do it like in the store and all, but for a long time that hunky talk lay in his mouth and put a stink on every word that came out and they laughed. Of course after a while George could talk American as good as anyone but by that time the whole town was calling the father the town drunk which he was and any time George opened his mouth he was like to get somebody's fist in it. And besides the other kids in town used to run together all the time and go to each other's house, but n.o.body ever came to George's house because that was the one and only place they were scared of the father. And besides the mother was always too sick and too tired. She had the arthritis at first in her hands and it hurt her to do the wash and clean up although she did as much as she could and George helped her when n.o.body was watching. But one thing he would not do was hang out the clothes because the kids one time saw him do it All this could of been worse because George just natturally grew big, sixteen pounds when he was born, his mother used to say that's what gave her the arthritis, then from the time he was eight or so he really grew and what with getting left back in school two years he was always bigger than the kids he was thrown in with. By the time he was twelve he was six feet and a hundred and seventy pounds.

About the hunting. He was only about seven or eight when he started to get anywhere good at it. A sling shot was all right but it took a long while to get good at. Sometimes he could bean a rabbit with a club. You go out in the early morning when it is dark and be there at the edge of a field by the woods when the first light comes. You have a club about two feet long and thick as your wrist, green maple or hickory is best, green because it is heavier that way. Pine is easier to cut but it gets that pitch on your hands and clothes and you can not get it off. You get yourself set in thick brush but near the edge so your arm can swing clear. You stand with your arm back and the club resting in a tree crotch or some place that takes the weight of it and you make up your mind you will be there without moving for a good long time. Pretty soon it begins to get light and then the rabbits come out and eat the clover and timothy or whatever, and jump around and lay flat and rub their stomachs on the wet gra.s.s and all that. You pick out your rabbit and you make up your mind no other one will do. No matter how close another one comes you leave it be. Pretty soon your rabbit will get just where you want him and no matter what he does, roll over, wave his feet in the air, squat down and nibble, sniff around another rabbit or whatever, you leave him be. But when he holds real still with all four feet on the ground and his chin down and his ears floppy, because when his ears are up he's on lookout, then you let fly with your club. You want to sc.r.a.pe it away from the tree it is resting on because that makes a little sound, just enough to bring him straight up on his haunches. He's sticking up out of the ground like a boundary peg. You sc.r.a.pe your club off the tree and throw it all at once, no waiting, and you throw it low and fast, level with the ground and no higher than the middle of his ears and you throw it so it spins like an airplane propeller (but the airplane would have to be flying straight up)and you jump out and dive on that rabbit as soon as the club leaves your hand. Now if the club hits right it likes to tear his head plumb off but if it knocks him going away, or if it gets him on the shoulder it just like stuns him and you better be there to grab him because he can be stunned and back on his feet and gone before you can blink. And if he is stunned you can grab him and you take hold of his two hind legs in your left hand and pick him up and when you do that to a rabbit he straightens right out and throws his head back, so with your right hand you chop straight down with the edge of it and it breaks his neck and he never moves and blood runs out of his nose. But if you do that to a rat or a chuck or a c.o.o.n or a squirrel it will not straighten out and throw up its head but instead it will curl up the other way and bite you. A squirrel can bite you nine times before you can say ouch and it has big yellow teeth an inch long. A rat that looks dead can get you if you hold it even by the end of the tail, it can climb up that tail with its front feet hand over hand and cut you good before you get sense enough to let go. A squirrel bites straight down and leaves holes as big as his teeth but a rat has a way of slashing, the hole is always much bigger than his teeth, you can not figure out how he does it. A rat if he is stunned you want to grab the end of his tail and put your foot on it crosswise so the tail is under the arch of your foot and then pull him up close to the shoe on the other side of the foot. That way you got him up tight where he can't but lash around some and you have one hand free to club him or pick up a rock or your knife or stomp him with your other foot. A ground squirrel, what they call back East a chipmunk, is not worth your trouble, he has a tail comes off if you grab it, well it does not come off but it skins off and he gets away and the rest of the tail shrivels up and drops off later. A chipmunk can bite worse than a rat almost and you would not believe anything that size could get his mouth open that wide, and once you got him what have you got? He has no more juice than a stewed prune. A skunk is not worth your trouble, although they are easy to get because they are not afraid of nothing. A possum all you have to do is lift him clear of the ground. A c.o.o.n you want to have a good club for and you do not do nothing but club him and keep it up till you are sure, if he ever gets his back against a tree or a rock and he is not dead yet you will think somebody threw a buzz saw at you spinning. George got a bobcat throwing a club once but never again. All cats got the same taste, you breathe outward through your nose and there's a taste there like cat pee smell. For hours. You wouldn't believe it but snakes taste all right, maybe a little fishy but there is nothing wrong with fish, the only thing is it is not warm. Birds are a waste of time they are mostly feathers, except a couple of times George saw wild turkey but he never did get near enough for even a big sling shot. Except ducks. Ducks are fine.

When George got a little older, ten or eleven, he got good with traps. He never could pay for steel traps but he got so good with snares he did not need them. He could make a deadfall big enough to take a badger and that is saying something because a badger can dig straight down through a blacktop road if he has to unless your deadfall rock is big enough to kill him first crack, but this George was a strong boy. Your deadfall is nothing but a big flat rock tipped up and propped on a stick. Some people tie a long string to the stick and wait and watch all day till something goes under the rock after the bait, but that is for boy scouts. George liked to prop up the rock and then whittle the stick almost through, and tie the string to the notch. The string goes back under the rock around a peg sunk in the ground and then back a ways and you tie your bait to it. A fox or a possum will grab hold and pull, and the stick breaks and down comes the rock. For rabbits a carrot is the best bait because it is strong. For foxes or even a badger sometimes rabbit meat is good, but don't ever use the kidneys or you will catch yourself some kind of d.a.m.n cat.

The nicest one of all is the figure-four, and George could make one faster than you can climb a yellow pine tree. All you do is find a nice young hardwood sapling, ash or hickory or even birch if you got to. You pace off the right distance, depends on the tree, and dig a hole. Then you find a branch thick as your thumb with a good V crotch on it. You cut it through right under the V and then you cut away one of the side branches leaving a spur. What you have now is a bushy branch with a hook like. You turn this upside down and bury the branchy part, stomping it good and putting heavy rocks in the hole and maybe a log on top, so just the upside-down hook is showing out of the ground. You cut a little notch in the shank part of the hook and whittle yourself a good strong double-pointed peg to fit into that notch and cross to the tip of the hook. It looks like a figure 4.

Now you pull down your sapling to bend almost double and tie a piece of twine near the top and the other end of the twine to the double-pointed peg, and set the peg in the hook to make the figure 4. Real easy you let the bent tree pull up until the peg sets hard against the hook. Now, tied to this twine just above the figure 4 is another piece of twine, and tied to this is nothing in the world but a old number one guitar string, the kind with a little bitty bra.s.s stopper on one end looks like a hollow bra.s.s barrel. You have the end of the guitar string pa.s.sed through this to make a loop. You lay this loop around the bait, and you tie the bait with a short cord to the double-ended peg in the figure 4. You shake fine dirt all around until the loop is buried and the bait-cord is buried, and then you go home. In the morning you got yourself a rabbit or a chuck or maybe even a fox or badger. Because first time he tugs on the bait he pulls out the peg and that snaps upright and that thin wire loop grabs him and hangs him up higher than Haman. Or maybe it's a d.a.m.n skunk or maybe nothing but the chawed off foot of a fox, but usually it's something good.

Oh this George he loved to hunt. But he never liked killing anything. He had no use for people who killed things just to be killing when the animals never did nothing to them. n.o.body should kill nothing they don't need to for some purpose. Like deer. One time George found a doe pressed flat against the ground by a fallen tree after a bad windstorm and he worked all morning clearing it away with just a bitty hand axe and dragging up poles until he could lever it up high enough to let the deer out The doe like to died of fear but George just laughed and went on working till he got it loose. George never did kill a deer. They are too big anyway. But this George, when he wasn't hunting, or maybe fishing, he was laying around thinking about it. He sure did like to do it.

4.

All the time this hunting was going on, and school days and all, things were getting worse around the house. The mother got more arthritis and pretty soon she stopped cleaning the house much and couldn't hardly cook even. This made the father mad and he got worse than ever. Sometimes he was out all night and would go to work drunk in the morning and he was a good worker, strong, but sometimes when the foreman would say something he would argue back and once he hit him but not much. So he kept getting laid off. When he got laid off he would draw his pay and then he would go on a mad drunk until he spent it all. It was not too bad when he stayed away at those times but when he came home it was very bad. George and the mother always tried not to say the one word that would set him off but any word would do it. Then he would beat up the mother, punching her right in the face and the blood came and the mother cried but she never screamed real loud she was so ashamed. He used to beat up George too but when George was big enough to run away he would run away as soon as the the trouble started and even before that, as soon as the father came home. He would come back after the father was asleep. Once the father was asleep there was never any more trouble and when he woke up he never seemed to remember anything about it. George never ran to the neighbors because they had no use for any of them or to the cops because the father hated cops and George never thought there was anything wrong with that, who was to tell him different? He just went into the woods and lay up in a tree or hunted if it was moonlight or maybe just hung around outside until it got quiet and then peeked in the window to see if he was asleep and if he was he would come in and get in bed.

And sometimes he would already be in bed and even asleep when the father came in and those were the times he would wake up hearing the mother crying, first, "Don't, don't, not now, the boy, the boy," and the father would growl that the boy was asleep. George would keep his eyes tight closed and lie still like in the woods waiting for the rabbits, and the mother crying no no until she would give a little scream and say, "My hands, oh, my hands," because that is what he would do, squeeze her arthritis until she gave in, because he always said there was nothing really wrong with her, she was faking. So she would stop saying no no but go on crying until he went to sleep. That was one thing about it, he always went right to sleep.

When George was thirteen he was as big as a man. He was, as big as his father and maybe stronger although he did not seem to know this. His father was a yellow headed man with a lot of bad teeth and his skin hung down under his eyes with like little b.l.o.o.d.y hammocks under the eyeb.a.l.l.s and his pants fit him best if he let his stomach hang out over his belt so he always wore them real low like that. When George was a little kid he used to try to wear his pants like that but he never had the belly for it. When he got bigger he stopped trying to do anything like the father. Well when he was thirteen something happened that changed everything.

The father had been working for quite a spell and for a while there was plenty to eat and George helped out as much as he could with the cleaning up and all. Because the father would come home and when he was sober and the house was all cleaned up and dinner cooking he maybe wasn't like a kind and loving husband in the movies but at least he walked in and washed up and ate and sat in the door whittling and went to bed without yelling at anybody or hitting. And once or twice he would look at something George did like white-washing the wall or fixing the busted porch rail or a step or something and he would look at it and at George and he would say "Wal aw kay!" in that foreign accent of his and George would of done anything for him then. And he could still remember the one time he came in and sniffed in the kitchen and said, "Poy, dat schmells goot!" and the mother just sat there in her wheelchair and cried. She got the wheelchair from the priest who came visiting I guess to see if a wheelchair would make her or George or even, the father go to church once in a while, but they never did, the father told them not to and cussed every time he saw the wheelchair for a month but all the same he let her keep it.

And with things that way naturally George and the mother knocked themselves out trying to keep everything nice to make it last as long as they could and make the father glad to come home to a nice place. So this one night was the day he was supposed to stop off at the store on the way home because they were out of food pretty much but for a slab of fatback and some turnip greens. The mother set that aside for some other time and her and George got everything ready for the father to come home with the food, and they talked it around this way and that what they'd fix according to what he brought, so they could have it ready real quick, like if he had a lump of chuck they'd slice off some and quick pound it with the edge of a plate to make pan-fry steaks with onions if he brought onions, or if he brought collards they wouldn't boil them but sear them quick in hot fat. George always felt very close to his mother but in a funny way disappointed or something like that. Like when she got sorry for herself and used to cry and tell him how she caught the arthritis from him being born and she would pat herself on her skinny chest and say how hard she tried to feed him off her own body but she couldn't he was too big and she was too sick and how she wished she could. It was like she was always feeding him from herself all his whole life, and what she put out, it cost her, it weakened and sickened her, but still she did it and did it. For him. And at the same time it was like he needed something from her, he took what she fed him, but it was never enough and it was never the right thing that he wanted. It is very hard to explain this. But anyway he always felt her giving and giving out of herself, and he always needed something from her, and hung around her to get it, only what she was giving him all the time was not the thing he wanted. This would get so bad with him sometimes that he would have to go hunting again. That usually made him feel better.

But now this one time when they were waiting for the father to come home and planning all the different things they might be doing to fix something quick and good for him it began to get later and later and they talked a little more to cover it up and then they got quiet and just waited, she was in her wheelchair looking down at her hands, her hands by now were all brown and twisted like cypress. And George he sat in the doorway looking down the cowpath that ran down to the road where the father would have to come. And when it got dark the mother said as bright as she could, "I know! Just shave up that fatback and we'll fry it up like bacon and have bacon sandwiches and we can boil up a lump of it with the turnip greens and then I think there's a little beans left too. A whole dinner, and we can have it all ready!" So George got right up out of the doorway, it was beginning to get too dark to see anyway, and he lit the kerosene lamp and shook up the stove and went to the table with the knife and the fatback to shave it up. So that is how he come to have the knife at the time. He did not go for it and he wouldn't never even thought about it except there it was in his hand.

In walked the father and he was drunk as a hoot-owl and he looked all around the place and said "Gaw dam dot Polock," and that was all we needed to know, he had fought with the foreman and got laid off and drew his money and got drunk. And the mother she just couldn't hold it in, she let out one long wail and threw up her poor crooked hands and said oh, oh again, again, and he run right through the room and punched her one in the nose so hard you could hear it break and the blood squirted out before he could get his hand away. So George clear across the room, he never could remember afterward actually doing it, he threw the knife.

Well it was so quiet in there for so long you wouldn't believe it. Then the father peeled off his undershirt which was all he was wearing besides pants, it was a hot day, and he looked down at the cut and the blood coming out of it. And the mother was bleeding through her hands and her eyes bulging out over them, looking at the father. And the father pushed George away and got the dishrag and splashed cold water on his chest and wiped it with the dish towel and got his other undershirt from the peg over the bed and a clean rag and put the rag against the cut and pulled the shirt on over it and went out. n.o.body had said word one since he said Gaw dam Polock.

Well nothing was ever the same after that. The father still had money when he left and he drank that all up that same night. The next day he got George alone and talked to him, he said he got drunk first because he was so mad about the layoff, and after what happened he got drunk because he was so sorry. It seemed to make a lot of difference to him that George should understand this but George did not understand it and just shrugged his shoulders. And he did not say he was sorry he threw the knife or anything else and the father did not ask him to as a matter of fact he never mentioned the knife or anything else.

But he never again laid a hand on the mother. He spent most of the time just sitting in the open doorway looking down the cowpath. In a day or two all the fatback and turnip greens was gone and the beans and a heel of bread, but still the father sat in the doorway and the mother in her wheelchair with wet cloths to her nose. n.o.body wanted to say anything to the father about getting some food in or going to work so the third day George came back from school and he was carrying a big sack of groceries. He walked right past the father and came in and put the bag down. The part of the bag where George had been holding it against his chest was marked in big black grease pencil Morosch which was the name of a white collar guy in the mine office. George quick took everything out of the bag and shoved the bag in the stove to burn up. Then he put everything out of sight, a roasting chicken and two pounds of hamburger and a loaf of stale for stuffing and a loaf of fresh, two quarts of milk, fresh carrots, a whole pound of b.u.t.ter, a jar of strawberry jam, a pound of coffee and some bananas.

The mother probably was too sick to notice, what with her big shut blue black eyes and her nose three times as big. The father came in and looked at the stuff as George put it away out of sight. "Ware ya gat dat?" he wanted to know.

George for once in his life turned and looked the father straight in the eye. "Swiped it, off the Acme store delivery wagon," and it was the truth. If the father yelled or hit out or said nothing or flew to the moon, just then he did not care.

The father stood for a long time quiet and then made a funny little smile. He said, "Mabbe ya amoont ta schomthing yat, boy." And you know that made the boy George feel better than anything in his whole life, and that's crazy. Because if ever he hated anything it was the father. If ever there was a man he didn't give a d.a.m.n what he thought, it was the father. But when the father smiled and said that he got all hot in the mirror over the sink he was all pink and to save his soul he couldn't keep from smiling too.