Whipple's Castle by Thomas Williams Page A

of the Whipples did, for that matter. They might be nasty to each other sometimes, but they were kind to her. If they felt sorry for her, they never sounded quite the way other people did who were sorry for her. They were always kidding around, but not to hurt. Never really to hurt.
    The snow swirled under the eave and hissed on the stovepipe at the window, where the pipe went through a hole in a flattened pork and beans can. What if the Whipples were not there at all, and the big house down on the road were empty and cold? She could not stand it. No matter how disorganized her own family became, or how heavy and unfair her own responsibilities, the Whipples were there, alive and warm. To think of that house dark, without their voices in its halls, made her stomach quiver, as if she were falling, and she turned cold with fear. Around her now were only the splattered, makeshift things that never had been finished and never would be repaired. Each damp board, and each half-tacked piece of tarpaper seemed to say to her how makeshift and valueless she and her mother and father were. Nothing in the house was worth a dollar, except maybe her father’s old deer rifle that leaned, furry with dust, in the corner by the ice chest.
    When would her mother get home? Maybe the snow was too deep, and had drifted in behind the plows. Or maybe whoever her mother went out with wouldn’t give her a ride back to High Street.
    The book she had been trying to read lay on the oilcloth as if it didn’t belong there, seeming to float disdainfully above the cracked fabric. Kate had lent it to her, and told her she had to read it. It was a real book, bound in real cloth, its pages crisp and clean. Wuthering Heights was the title of it, and it was dark and scary in its pages, the people always doing mad, unhappy things for reasons she couldn’t understand, that she felt the author deliberately withheld from her. It was as if the author hated her, and wanted her to be afraid. She didn’t want to go on reading it, because it didn’t seem right that a book should make her even unhappier than she already was, but Kate had said she must. She wanted to go to bed, and she would take the book into her room with her. Unopened, it was a part of that other world of intelligence and reason. It was a book. She could look at the outside of it with pleasure, and feel its weight. It had cost nearly two dollars, and it proved there were people in the world somewhere who actually paid money for things like books. But she couldn’t read it at night, when she was alone—not that dark story.
    She adjusted the stove and lamp as well as she could, and got ready for bed, then took the book and carefully placed it on the chair inside her door before she blew out her lamp. It would sit there like magic, like a visitor, and protect her. All the time she thought this, as her blankets slowly warmed down toward her feet, she knew that her room and door meant nothing, because she had to be responsible for the whole house, for her mother who would probably come home drunk with her overshoes full of snow.
    She wished for her room above the Whipples’ kitchen; if only she could believe that she was there. Just to be able to go to sleep.
    Then she was wide-awake, because the outer door had opened.
    â€œShhh!”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œShhh! You can’t come in here!” Her mother’s harsh whisper. “My kid’s sleeping in there!”
    Then the other voice, a man’s, trying to whisper, but with a giggle underneath that forced out little oinks with the words: “I won’t say nothing.”
    â€œNo!”
    â€œChrissakes I spent more’n five bucks on you tonight.”
    â€œNo! Now go on! Git!”
    â€œTook you home through snow up to my ass.”
    â€œNo! Now I mean it, Call”
    â€œAw, come on, honey.”
    â€œQuiet. You’ll wake her up, now. Don’t make any noise…”
    But her