to obey Granma, that was his opportunity. (Millie
would cry triumphantly, "_Now_ you have someone to make you be good!")
The veins on his handsome, curly forehead would swell with delight, as
he caught me and whipped me ... till Granma would step in and make him
stop ... but often he would over-rule her, and keep it up till his right
arm was actually tired. And he would leave me to crawl off, sobbing dry
sobs, incapable of more tears.
A black hatred of him began to gnaw at my heart ... I dreamed still of
what I would do when I had grown to be a man ... but now it was not any
more to be a great traveller or explorer, but to grow into a strong man
and kill my uncle, first putting him to some savage form of torture ...
torture that would last a long, long while.
He would often see it in my eyes.
"Don't you look at me that way!" with a swipe of the hand.
* * * * *
Out in the woods I caught a dozen big yellow spiders, the kind that make
pretty silver traceries, like handwriting with a flourish--on their
morning webs.
I brought these spiders home in a tin can and transferred them to some
empty fruit jars in the cellar, keeping them for some boyish reason or
other, in pairs, and putting in flies for them.
Aunt Millie came upon them and set up a scream that brought Uncle "Lan,"
as we called him, down to see what was the matter....
I took my beating in silence. I would no longer beg and plead for mercy.
After he had finished, I lay across the sloping cellar door, lumpish and
still, inwardly a shaking jelly of horror.
I was wanting to die ... these successive humiliations seemed too great
to live through.
* * * * *
The grey light of morning filtering in.
Lan stood over my bed.
"--want to go hunting with me to-day?... shootin' blackbirds?"
"Yes, Uncle Lan," I assented, my mind divided between fear of him and
eagerness to go.
In the kitchen we ate some fried eggs and drank our coffee in silence.
Then we trudged on through the dew-wet fields, drenched to the knees as
if having waded through a brook.
Lan bore his double-barrelled shotgun over his shoulder. He shot into a
tree-top full of bickering blackbirds and brought three down, torn,
flopping, bleeding. He thrust them into his sack, which reddened
through, and we went on ... still in silence. The silence began to make
me tremble but I was glad, anyhow, that I had gone with him. I
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