Remembering Read Online Free

something learned in college. Old Jack stopped and regarded him, his smart nephew, and went on to the barn. “If you’re going to talk to me, Mat, you’ll have to walk.”
    Mat had never forgotten it, and neither had any of the rest of the company of friends who inherited the memories of Old Jack and Mat. It had become one of Elton’s bywords, one of the many that he kept stored up for emergent occasions. He had said it to Andy a thousand times. When Andy got his mouth running on what Elton classified as a Big Idea and there was work to be done, Elton would give him a look that made Andy remember the words even before Elton said them. And then Elton would say them: “If you’re going to talk to me, Andy, you’ll have to walk.”
    Elton’s mind had been, in part, a convocation of the voices of predecessors saying appropriate things at appropriate times, talk-shortening sentences or phrases that he spoke to turn attention back to the job or the place or the concern at hand or for the pure pleasure he took in some propriety of remembrance; and he was a good enough mimic that when he recalled a saying its history would come with it. When he would tell Andy, “If you’re going to talk to me, you’ll have to walk,” it would not be just the two of them talking and listening, but Old Jack would be saying it again to Mat, and Mat to his son-in-law, Wheeler, Andy’s father, and Wheeler to Elton, and Elton to Andy all the times before; and an old understanding and an old laughter would renew itself then, and be with them.

    â€œAnd now may we have the lights out and the first slide, please?” the economist said, and the light obediently subdued itself and departed from the room. The great screen came alight with Table I of the Quantimetric Model of the American Food System, dense with numbers.

    In the dark Andy saw what he never actually did see, but had seen in his mind many times as clearly as if he had seen it with his eyes.
    Elton had not been well, something he pretended nobody knew. But they did know it. His wife, Mary, knew it. Wheeler knew it. Andy and his brother, Henry, knew it. Arthur and Martin Rowanberry knew it. They knew that he needed help with jobs he never had needed help with before. And they knew he was worried about himself.
    â€œIf you don’t feel good, Elton, go to the doctor,” Mary told him.
    And he said, “I feel all right.”
    â€œGo to the doctor,” Andy said. “I’ll go with you.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause I’m not going to do it.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause I’m not sick.”
    â€œAnd you’re not stubborn, either.”
    â€œThat’s right,” Elton said, grinning big. “I’m not.”
    But they knew he was sick. And he knew it, though he made a principle of not knowing it.
    â€œYou all come over to supper,” Mary said to Sarah, Henry’s wife. “Elton’s down in the dumps and I am too. Come over and cheer us up.”
    So they went. And it was a cheerful meal. They ate, and then sat at the table afterwards, talking about the times, beginning nearly thirty years before, when Henry and Andy had worked sometimes as Elton’s hands. They had gone through some hard days together. The work had been complicated always, and sometimes impeded, by the youth and greenness of the boys, by the brotherhood of the brothers, by the friendship of them all. Most of their workdays had ended in simple weariness, but some had ended in coon hunts, some in fish fries, some in furious arguments, one or two in fights.

    Among the results were a lot of funny stories, and that night Elton had been telling them, Henry egging him on.
    Elton told about Henry and the bumblebees. They had been cleaning the toolshed, and there was a bundle of old grain sacks hanging from a rafter.
    â€œCut it down,” Elton said.
    â€œSounds like I hear something