The kitchen screen door hung from a hinge. It hadn’t had a lick of paint since VJ Day, maybe the war before that. Its crooked old lightning rods pointed bony fingers at the sky. You could see from here the house was haunted. As a family, we turned away just as they burst into flame. She lumbered up to her cauldron and swung the rats onto the white embers beneath. They hung by their tails, and they were good-sized, almost cat-sized. In her other fist she carried a pair of headless rats. In one of her hands hung a double-barreled shotgun, an old-time Winchester 21, from the look of it.
Dowdel, gray in the gloaming, loomed out from around her cobhouse. Ruth Ann slid off her chair and was at the kitchen door. Another explosion erupted and bounced off every house from here to the grain elevator. Russians, we thought, and without a Civil Defense bomb shelter for miles. Every nesting bird in the county took flight. Our kitchen clock stopped, and the box of matches jumped off the stove. When an almighty explosion rocked the room. Dad began, “For what we are about to receive-”
Mother had pulled together a potato salad out of three potatoes. There were some slices of ham from somewhere. One evening we were just settling around the supper table.
0 kommentar(er)
