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.And it didn’t now.The shaking started and then ran down me like a wave washing over and I could feel things going black and the shakes started in and then I was gone, gone wherever I went when it happened and everything washed away for a while.I don’t know how long it took, have never known.I just come to and I’m sweating and my teeth hurt and I feel for my tongue and I open my eyes as if I just been born.Then it over and whatever washed over me has washed away and I’m left like a fish on the river bank, flopping around and wondering whatever happened to me that I’m there.The dark came on suddenly and a flash of lightning lit everywhere up so it looked real scary.And then the thunder came, right over me as it seemed.There was no rain, though, and I thought maybe it would pass on by.But it didn’t and the thunder came right on in after the lightning so that I knew it must have been most overhead.And then I began to think of twisters and how they might come right on through and flatten everything.But I guess I didn’t really care about that.What did I care if I was killed? My daddy had been killed as well.But I got up and started forward and made my way all right, recognizing things, I guess, though I don’t know how.After a bit, I come into a clearing and saw the house.It were his right enough.There were no lights, so I went over by the window and crouched down.I could hear a noise coming from inside, a kind of whimpering like you hear from a wounded animal, that and a snoring sound.The windows were open but the screens were in place, except on one window that was closed.Just then the rain began, only it wasn’t rain but hail that danced and jumped white across the ground.I figured there was no sense in staying outside.If I needed to see this man, I had best get indoors.Later, it didn’t seem such a good idea, but I guess I wasn’t thinking straight.If I had been thinking straight, I wouldn’t have been there at all.Truth was, I was good and scared.I was scared over what had happened.I was scared because I couldn’t speak.And I was scared because here I was outside the house of a white man, which was a quick way to get shot in the head, only my daddy had said that this was the man who had tried to stop them, even if he hadn’t.I am trying to figure why I opened the window but, whatever it was, I opened it.I eased the window up, slipped inside, and slid it down again.I just sat on the floor for a bit, listening to the hail outside, listening to it beating on the roof, and listening, too, to the sounds of the man in the next room.Then I began to think how he would wake up and shoot me dead.And I stood up, not sure what to do.I knew I should have left then, opened that window and got myself out, but there was something else in me, someone whispering in my ear and saying to go in and see this man.So I went in.It were dark so that I couldn’t see anything except the doorway.I stepped through and stood there, waiting for the lightning to flash, and, when it did, I got to see him.He were lying there, his eyes closed but puffed up and scraped as if someone had thrown him off a truck.There was a smell, just a human smell, I guess, but it were different.Then it were dark again.A minute later, it flashed and I could see something strange about his chest.I didn’t like what I was seeing and it sounded as if he were on his way to being dead and I had seen enough of that.I went back into the other room and nearly tripped over a chair.I sat down on it and didn’t know what to do.I never been so scared.Then the lightning flashed again and I see his gun, leaning up against the wall.And for a bit I thought that maybe I should take it in and shoot him like they shot my daddy.He were white.It were others like him done this thing.But then I remembered he weren’t like that and I began to think how he was all smashed up and how maybe that was because he had helped my daddy, so I didn’t do nothing.I just sat there, with a bundle of things in my hand, and waited for morning to come.I didn’t know what I would do when morning came, but I figured maybe I would know by then or maybe he would wake up and tell me what to do.I guess I fell asleep, because the next thing I knew it were light and he was walking in through the doorway.He didn’t see me at first.He looked real scary and walked as if he was trying to hold hisself together.Then he just stops and looks at me and I looked back and I knew that whatever I did, he weren’t going to kill me, mostly because he didn’t look as if he could, but also because if he got smashed up like that for my daddy, why was he going to do bad to me? So I just looked back at him and after a bit he walked on through and out the back.I could see how there was an outhouse out there and I guessed he was gone to that.Then I realized that I needed to go as well, but I just sat there because there was no way I could go out while he was there.After a bit, he came back in.He asked me who I was, but I couldn’t answer
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