A World Lost: A Novel (Port William) Read Online Free

with
astonishment and alarm even to have noticed some things that I wish
now I could remember.
    I remember climbing the stairs again, by myself this time, and going
into the bedroom where my grandmother was. She was in the dark,
alone. I could barely see her lying motionless on the old iron bed. Her
stillness touches me yet. She seemed to lie beneath the violence that had,
in striking Uncle Andrew, struck her and struck us all, and now she
merely submitted to it, signifying to herself by her stillness that there
was nothing at all that could be done.
    What had happened to us could only be suffered now, and we would be suffering it a long time; I knew that as soon as I entered the room. I
had been sent perhaps with the hope that seeing me might be of some
comfort to her, but I remember how swiftly I knew that she could not be
comforted. Comfortlessness had come and occupied the house. She had
been felled, struck down, and there she was, greatly needing comfort
where there was no comfort. I walked over to the bed and stood beside it.

    She must have recognized my footsteps, for she said in a voice that I
would not have recognized as hers if it had not come from her, "Oh,
honey, we'll never see your Uncle Andrew again. We never will see him
anymore."

    Perhaps it was the next day that Henry and I, dressed in our Sunday
clothes this time, were taken back to Hargrave, stopping again at Grandma and Grandpa Catlett's, why I do not know. It was a sunny morning.
The hushed old house was occupied by the usual population of neighbors come to do what they could. I remember only my Grandfather Catlett sitting in the swing on the back porch, wearing his straw hat as he
was apt to do even in the house, forgetting to take it off, his hands clasped
over the crook of his cane. Cousin Thelma was sitting beside him. She
was smiling, speaking to him with a wonderful attentiveness. He was
trying, I remember, to respond in kind, and yet he could not free himself
of his thoughts; you could tell it by his eyes.
    When we got to our house at Hargrave we did not see our father and
we did not see Aunt Judith, Uncle Andrew's wife. The house was full of
flowers and quiet people, who got even quieter when they saw us. Our
mother, smiling, met us at the door and welcomed us, almost as if we
were guests, into the front room, which had been utterly changed to
make way for the coffin that stood on its trestle against the wall farthest
from the door.
    Our mother led us over to the coffin and stood with us while we
looked. Lying in the coffin, dressed up, his eyes shut and his hands still
with the stillness of death, was Uncle Andrew And so I knew for sure.
    Henry and I seemed to be like people walking in what had been a
forest after a terrific storm. Our grown-ups, who until then had stood protectingly over us, had fallen, or they were diminished by the simple,
sudden presence of calamity. We seemed all at once to have become tall;
it was not a pleasant distinction.

    We stayed at Port William in the care of Nettie Banion, Granny Feltner's
cook, while Granny and Granddaddy and our aunt Hannah went to Hargrave for Uncle Andrew's funeral. When we heard the car returning into
the driveway, we went around the house to meet them. Granny and
Granddaddy greeted us as if it were just an ordinary day and we were
there on an ordinary visit. It was a kind pretense that became almost a
reality, something they were good at.
    But Hannah, who was young and not yet skilled in grief, could not
belie the actual day that it was. Tears came into her eyes when she saw
us. Forcing herself to smile, she said, "Boys, he looked just like he was
asleep."
    Hannah was married to our Uncle Virgil, who was away in the war.
She was beautiful, I thought, and I imagined that someday I might marry
a woman just like her. She was always nice to Henry and me, and it was
not just because she loved Uncle Virgil who loved us; she was nice to us
because she