The Voices in Our Heads Read Free

in his place up on the hill there. And he’s promised me a job at his brother’s sand quarry, washing, drying, and screening. It’s a living, and it’s done. Take me for my word, I wouldn’t decide this unless I’d put my prayers to it.”
    “But my heart is saved for another.”
    “Who?”
    “Adam Rothman.”
    Now Papa stood, tall and thick.
    “I don’t like him,” he said darkly. “His mother is mad, and his father is always off at the tavern. There’s unhappiness in that household; I’ve walked past and heard the yelling. And they know nothing of the farming they’ve undertaken. The main house is falling apart, its chimney leaning, and the yard’s overrun with rank weeds and pigs. It’s no place for a girl.”
    “But I love him.”
    “Not anymore, you don’t.”
    A knock came at the door then, and Katie went to it. A stiff blast of wind came in, and a tall, thin-faced figure stood in the frame, bent over a bit, gray waistcoat, close-set eyes, small beard twisted to a point.
    “Speak of the devil,” Katie whispered. He removed his octagon-shaped nose-pinch eyeglasses and slid them carefully into his pocket.
    “I wish to have a word with your father.”
    “Fine,” she said, “but I wouldn’t marry you even if you owned the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers!”
    She flounced to the stairs under the baleful glare of her parents, and Ezra Fletcher stepped forward. His eyes looked nervous, but his voice held steady.
    “I must tell you what I have seen,” he said quietly. “In private, with all due respect.”
    Mother took the baby away, and the two men had a whispered conversation before the cold fireplace. It intensified and almost turned to blows. After the door slammed shut on Ezra Fletcher’s exit, Mother came in to see what was wrong.
    “Bring my daughter to me,” were Papa’s words.
    He’d said them straight through his teeth.
     
    Adam Michael Rothman swore to himself that the second time would be slower, more meaningful, more for her pleasure if he could make himself last. He crossed the creek and retraced their steps from the night before, pine needles making soft melody beneath his boots, birches pressed close like lovers. He hoped he didn’t have to wait for her, since she’d be so lovely on his approach there in the high clearing, like a painting crafted in shadow and moon. There had been no ribbon left on the yard pump, their signal to abort, and he was not disappointed when he crested the rise.
    She was there by the well, hands folded before her, black hair loose and flowing in the night breeze.
    “Sweet Katie,” he said, and he approached, and she held her hands out to him, and he didn’t see the tears on her cheeks until it was too late, when the dark figures came from behind the trees at the edge of the clearing, her father stepping around the northwest corner of the demolished carriage house, club in one hand, burlap sack in the other.
    “Get her out of here,” he said softly, and just before Ezra Fletcher made to lead her away down the path, Adam croaked out to her,
    “No sign, my darling, no ribbon? But why?”
    She put her knuckles to her trembling lips and looked down at the ground, Fletcher regarding him darkly and turning her.
    Adam didn’t wait a moment longer. He sprung to the side suddenly and made to run off as fast as he was able, but there were more of them than he’d at first thought, and he was grabbed from behind and shoved over to the well. Someone clenched a fistful of his hair and pushed his face hard to the stone, breaking off a tooth that went half down his throat, cutting more and more inward each time he snuck a swallow, and through it all he only wished to be granted the moment he could cough it loose or choke it down. There was a rain of blows, and the yanking and ripping of his coat and shirt. Cold, gloved hands reached inside the slits in his back, and while a few backed off refusing to touch him, there were those who continued, muttering the name of