Homework
“Drop that glass and take the other one.” He whispered.
He gave the remaining glass of whisky to Henry just the clock began to strike the midnight. Henry emptied the glass. His face grew whiter and whither.
“Boys,” he said, “I’m feeling sick. I want to lie down.”
Henry was asleep, almost before the words were out of his mouth. In a moment, his two friends had picked him up and carried him into the bedroom. They closed the door and came back. They seemed to be getting ready to leave, so I said “Please don’t go, gentlemen. She will not know me. I’m a stranger to her.”
They looked each other.
“His wife has been dead for nineteen years.” Tom said.
“Dead?” I whispered.
“Dead worse” he said, “She went to see her parents about six months after she gets married. On the way back, on a Saturday evening in June, when she was almost here, Indians captured her. No one ever saw her again. Henry lost his mind. He thinks she is still alive. When June comes, he thinks she’s gone her trip to see her parents. Then he begins to wait for her to come back. He gets out that old letter, and we come around to visit it. So he can read it to us. On the Saturday night, she is supposed to come home, we come here to be with him. We put sleep drug in his drink, so he will sleep through the night. Then he is all right for another year.”
Joe picked up his hat and his guitar.
“We have done this every June for nineteen years” he said, “The first year there were twenty-seven of us. Now just the two of us left.”
He opened the door of the pretty little house, and the two old men disappeared into the darkness of the Stanislaw. |