..
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.
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