[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

faster. I'll tie up the rowboat first." He released his grip, letting the two
craft separate.
"Okay." Saul wielded his paddle again. Rowing and paddling, they worked their
respective vessels toward the landing at Frenchman's Bend.
As if returning to a dropped subject, Saul asked: "What do your aunt and uncle
do in that shop all day?"
"
Jeez, I
dunno. Putter around. Sometimes they get a customer. Why?"
"I bet they don't have too many customers."
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"I guess not."
"But they make enough money to get along. Or they get money from somewhere
else."
"I guess so. Why?"
Saul paddled, looking straight ahead. "Does your grandma have a job?"
"Yeah, in an office down in the Loop. Some days she works at home. Why?"
Saul shrugged. "Just that some of our relatives have a lot of money, and some
don't."
"Which ones have a lot?"
Saul just shrugged again.
They were nearing the shore. "I guess," said Simon, "your folks are some who
do."
Watching Simon closely again, Saul said. "They're my step-parents, actually."
Simon nodded at this information, then did a double take. "Both of 'em?"
"Yeah, both. The way they tell me it happened was that my real father died
before I was born, and then my mother married again. Then she died, when I was
still real young, and my stepdad got married. So I
got a full replacement set."
"You and Vivian both did, then."
Saul never answered that straight out. The prow of the canoe grated gently
al^the shoreline, and he braced his paddle against the river bottom to hold
the craft against the gentle current. He said: "Our whole family's kinda
crazy, you know? I mean the way it's organized. There's about a couple
thousand people all related to each other. Like you and me. And the funny part
of it is, almost nobody has any really close
relatives. Except for husbands and wives."
Simon grunted, rowing one last hard stroke, driving the old tub of a rowboat
firmly into the shore. Then he shipped oars and hopped out into the muddy
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shallows, grabbing a length of chain to tie up the boat at its usual place,
the ancient willow trunk. He said: "There's not really a couple thousand."
"All right. Maybe there's really about a hundred people. Littlewoods and
Collines and Picards and
Wedderburns. Hell, old Gregory's actually some kind of a cousin to both of
us." Carefully shifting his seat in the canoe, Saul made ready for Simon to
get in. "You wanna do the paddling?"
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"Sure." Simon had learned to use a canoe the previous summer. He was in a
hurry now to get across the river, and also eager to see how fast he could
paddle, with another year's growth of muscle to call upon.
Jeez, Vivian was thinking about his big muscles. "I guess you're right, about
the family." But he wasn't really able to think about the family now. Not now,
when Vivian wanted to see him. Maybe there would even be some way that Saul
could be got rid of for a while&
Saul, relaxed now, sat in the bottom of the canoe, watching the water go by as
Simon swung the craft downstream and headed it out from shore. "Yeah," Saul
said, "maybe my folks will be the ones who own the castle someday, and we'll
be rich."
Simon paddled. To have something to talk about, to relieve his mind from
Vivian, he asked: "So just who owns the castle now?" He felt sure it was
someone in some branch of the family.
Saul sighed faintly, as if he didn't much care about that point. "They say
it's all tied up in the courts and things. We can come and stay in it whenever
we want. There's a little furniture and stuff." Pause. "That room still looks
burned, and screwed up, you know, where old man Littlewood blew himself up. He
was like our great uncle or something."
"Yeah." After using the old rowboat, the sleek canoe was a joy to handle.
Simon drove the paddle fast and hard, angling between islands, taking
advantage of quicker current wherever he could. Between strokes he asked: [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]