"
"Johnnie is away ... far off ... on the sea ... in a ship."
And he sighed and turned his face to the wall as if the thought troubled
him, and he wished to dismiss it. Then, in a moment, he whirled about,
changed and furious. He rose to a sitting posture ... swung his legs
out, bringing the bed-clothes a-wry with him....
"You are an impostor ... you are not my son ... I tell you again, he is
away ... has been away for years ... as long as I can remember ...
perhaps he is dead ... you are an impostor."
He leaped up, full of madness, and seized hold of me.
"Stop, Father, what are you trying to do?"
As I grappled with him, trying to keep him from hurting me--and he was
quite strong, for all his emaciation--the horror of my situation made me
sick at the stomach, quite sick ... and my mind went ridiculously back
to the times when my father and I had eaten oyster-fries together ...
"that is the only thing you and this man have in common ...
oyster-fries," remarked my mind to me. All the while I was pinning his
wrists in my grasp ... re-pinning them as he frantically wrested them
loose ... swearing and heaping obscenities on my head ... all the while,
I thought of those oyster-fries ... we had saved up a lard-tin full of
bacon grease to fry them in ... and fry after fry had been sizzled to a
rich, cracker-powdered brown in that grease .
Pages:
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320