“Look there: isn’t that old Henry Stamper and his boy Hank? What the hell they got there in back?”) Dreamily, still staring down at the cave-in, Jonas runs his tongue over the nails in his mouth. He starts to turn back to the house, then stops again, his face running gradually into a puzzled frown. He takes one of the square nails out and holds it in front of his eyes. The nail is
rusted2. He looks at another nail and finds more
rust1. One at a time he removes each nail from his mouth and looks at it, studying for a long time the way a slight powder of rust is already splotching the iron like a
fungus3. And it didn’t rain last night. In fact, it hasn’t rained now in almost two incredible days, that was why he hadn’t bothered
tacking4 the lid back on the nail keg when he finished work the day before. Yet, rain or no, the nails have rusted. Overnight. The whole keg, come all the way from Pittsburgh, four weeks on the road, bright and shiny as silver
dimes5 . . . rusted overnight . . . “By golly, you know, it looks like a
coffin6!” the sailor said. . . . So, nodding to himself, he replaces the nails in the keg and lays the hammer on the dewy grass, then walks thigh-deep through fog to the river and gets in the boat and rows across to the dirt road where a lean-to stables the
mare7. And saddles the mare and goes back to Kansas, to the dry, flatiron prairies where
sage8 struggles for a grip in the
meager9 soil, and jackrabbits
nibble10 barrel
cactus11 for the moisture, and decay goes on slow and unseen under the baked brick sky. “It is a coffin! In a
shipping12 box like on trains.” “Oh, look what they’re doing!” The other sailor and his girl untangled swiftly, and the four of them watched the old man and the boy on the launching dock unload the pick-up’s
cargo13 and drag it across the
planks14 and tip it into the bay—then get back in the pick-up and drive away. The sailors and the two girls sat in the car and watched the box up-end and slowly sink over many minutes.
Eddy16 Arnold sang: There’ll be smoke on the water, on the land an’ the sea, When our Army and our Navy overtake the en-ah-mee . . . as the box gave a stiff
lurch17 and finally slid under, leaving a spreading circle, trailing bubbles down through
winding18 kelp and
algae19 into the green-brown purple-brown avenues of rubbery sea grass where
crabs20 with eyes on stalks patrol a
dreary21 collection of bottles, old
plumbing22, blown-out tires, iceboxes, lost outboard motors, broken
porcelain23, and all the other
debris24 that decorates the bottom of the bay. In the pick-up, home from the docks, the tight-knit little man with the bottle-green eyes and the hair already turning white tried to ease his sixteen-year-old son’s curiosity by reaching over to
knuckle25 the boy’s head. “Watcha say, Hankas? How’d ya like to drift down to Coos Bay tonight an’ watch the old man tie one on. I’m gonna need a level head to look after me.” “What was in it, Papa?” the boy asked (didn’t even know then that the thing was a coffin...). “Was what?” “In the big box.” Henry laughed. “Meat. Old meat I didn’t want stinkin’ up the place.” The boy glanced swiftly at his father—(Old meat, he says ...Pa said....And I didn’t know any better for lord, it’s hard to say, for a couple of months anyhow when Boney Stokes—who’s been the local doom-teller around town as far as I can remember—took me aside when he was out to the house visiting and we sit there for a good half-hour, me squirming around and him all the goddam time laying that goddam spit-dripping hand on my leg or my arm or my head or any other place he could get to me with it like he just won’t rest a
wink26 till everybody else is saddled with whatever germ it is he’s
vending27. “Ah, Hank, Hank,” he says, wagging his head back and
forth28 on a neck about the size of his skinny wrist, “I hate to do it but I feel it my
Christian29 duty to tell you some of the hard facts of life.” Hate to, bull: He’d rather play the ghoul with other people’s dead than ride a speedboat. “About who was in a great notion that box. Yes, I feel someone should tell you about your grandfather, and his early years in this land . . .”)—but said nothing. They drove on in silence. (“. . . in his early years, Hank, child”—old man Stokes leaned back and let his eyes get misty—“things wasn’t just the way they are now. Your family didn’t always have a big logging business. Yes... yes; your family, one might say, suffered some terrible misfortunes . . . back then...”) That foggy morning the
eldest30 boy, Henry, was the first to wake and discover his father missing. He took up the hammer and, working along side his two brothers Ben and Aaron, completed more work on the house that day than had been
accomplished31 in the last week. Boasting: “We got ’er by the tail, men. Yessir. Goddam right.” “What’s that, Henry? What we got?” “The tail, you dumb bunny! We’ll show these boogers in town who been sniggerin’ in their beards. That Stokes bunch. We’ll show ’em. We’ll whup this swamp from hell to breakfast.” “What about him?” “About who? About old All-Is-Vanity? Old No-Profit-under-the-Boogin’-Sun? Shit. Ain’t he already made hisself crystal clear where he stands? Ain’t it apparent he’s run out? Give up?” “Yeah, but what about he comes back, Henry?” “He comes back, he comes back crawlin’ on his
belly32 an’ even then—” “But Henry, what about he don’t come back?” Aaron, the youngest, asked. “How’ll we make it?” Hammering: “We’ll make it. We’ll whup it! We’ll whup it!” Slamming the hammer head into the springy white planks. (So I first heard from Boney Stokes about how old Henry’s daddy, Jonas Stamper, disgraced Henry and the rest of us. Then heard from Uncle Ben about how Boney had spent so many years trying to rub it in on Pa. But it was from Pa himself that I found out what it all come to, how the disgrace and the rubbing-in had built an iron-clad commandment. Not that Pa come out and told me. No. Maybe some fathers and sons talk with each other like that, but me and old Henry was never able to
hack33 it. But he did something else. He wrote it down for me, and hung it up on my wall. On the very day I was born, they tell me. I didn’t catch on to the whole of it till a good spell later. Sixteen years. And then it still wasn’t the old man that told me; it was his wife, my stepmother, the girl he brought from back East ...But I’ll get to that directly . . .) They found Jonas had taken the money from the feed store and left them with little more than the building and what meager stock was on hand and the house across the river. The stock was mostly seed, nothing that would bring in cash until spring, and they made it through that first winter largely on charity from the most well-to-do family in the county, the Stokes family. Jeremy Stokes was unofficial governor, mayor, justice of the peace, and moneylender of the county, having been granted the positions by that old unwritten decree: First Come, First Served. What he had first served himself to was an enormous
warehouse34 left empty by Hudson’s Bay. He moved in; when no one ever came around to move him out, he turned the warehouse into the town’s first general store and worked out a nice deal with the shipping line that steamed every two or three months into the bay, a sweet little deal whereby they received a little something extra for the privilege of selling to no one but him. “It’s on account of I’m a member,” he explained, but never made it clear of exactly what. He talked
vaguely35 of some obscure union in the East between the steamboat men and the merchants, “And I propose, friends and fellow pioneers, to make all of us around here members: I’m a generous man.” Generous was hardly the word. Hadn’t he fed that
tragic36 Mrs. Stamper and her brood after their old man left? The goods had been delivered for seven months by his oldest boy, a thin, pale drink of water—Bobby Stokes, who not only enjoyed the distinction of being one of the few white natives of the county but was as well the only member of the town ever to take a cruise all the way to Europe; “None of the doctors around here,” Aaron once remarked, “could really appreciate the quality of Boney’s cough.” Delivered daily, for seven charitable months, “And the only thing father asks,” the boy said after the term of
generosity37 was up, “is that you become a member of the a great notion Wakonda Co-op.” He handed a sharpened pencil and a paper to the mother. She took glasses from a black coin purse and studied the document for a long time. “But ...doesn’t this mean our feed store?” “Just a formality.” “Sign it, Mama.” “But ...” “Sign it.” It was Henry, the eldest. He stepped forward and took the paper from his mother and put it on a
plank15. He put the pencil in her hand. “Just sign it.” The thin boy smiled, watching the paper
warily38. “Thank you, Henry. You’re very wise. Now, as
shareholding39 members this entitles you folks to certain
deductions40 and privileges—” Henry laughed, an odd, tight laugh he had recently developed, able to cut off conversation like a knife. “Oh, I reckon we’ll whup ’er without certain privileges.” He picked up the signed paper and held it just out of the other boy’s reach.
点击
收听单词发音
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1
rust
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| n.锈；v.生锈；(脑子)衰退 |
参考例句： |
- She scraped the rust off the kitchen knife.她擦掉了菜刀上的锈。
- The rain will rust the iron roof.雨水会使铁皮屋顶生锈。
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2
rusted
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| v.（使）生锈( rust的过去式和过去分词 ) |
参考例句： |
- I can't get these screws out; they've rusted in. 我无法取出这些螺丝，它们都锈住了。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
- My bike has rusted and needs oil. 我的自行车生锈了，需要上油。 来自《简明英汉词典》
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3
fungus
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| n.真菌，真菌类植物 |
参考例句： |
- Mushrooms are a type of fungus.蘑菇是一种真菌。
- This fungus can just be detected by the unaided eye.这种真菌只用肉眼就能检查出。
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4
tacking
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| （帆船）抢风行驶，定位焊[铆]紧钉 |
参考例句： |
- He was tacking about on this daily though perilous voyage. 他在进行这种日常的、惊险的航行。
- He spent the afternoon tacking the pictures. 他花了一个下午的时间用图钉固定那些图片。
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5
dimes
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| n.（美国、加拿大的）10分铸币( dime的名词复数 ) |
参考例句： |
- Pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters are United States coins. 1分铜币、5分镍币、1角银币和2角5分银币是美国硬币。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- In 1965 the mint stopped putting silver in dimes. 1965年，铸币厂停止向10分硬币中加入银的成分。 来自辞典例句
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6
coffin
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| n.棺材，灵柩 |
参考例句： |
- When one's coffin is covered,all discussion about him can be settled.盖棺论定。
- The coffin was placed in the grave.那口棺材已安放到坟墓里去了。
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7
mare
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| n.母马，母驴 |
参考例句： |
- The mare has just thrown a foal in the stable.那匹母马刚刚在马厩里产下了一只小马驹。
- The mare foundered under the heavy load and collapsed in the road.那母马因负载过重而倒在路上。
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8
sage
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| n.圣人，哲人；adj.贤明的，明智的 |
参考例句： |
- I was grateful for the old man's sage advice.我很感激那位老人贤明的忠告。
- The sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.这位哲人是百代之师。
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9
meager
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| adj.缺乏的，不足的，瘦的 |
参考例句： |
- He could not support his family on his meager salary.他靠微薄的工资无法养家。
- The two men and the woman grouped about the fire and began their meager meal.两个男人同一个女人围着火，开始吃起少得可怜的午饭。
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10
nibble
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| n.轻咬，啃；v.一点点地咬，慢慢啃，吹毛求疵 |
参考例句： |
- Inflation began to nibble away at their savings.通货膨胀开始蚕食他们的存款。
- The birds cling to the wall and nibble at the brickwork.鸟儿们紧贴在墙上，啄着砖缝。
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11
cactus
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| n.仙人掌 |
参考例句： |
- It was the first year that the cactus had produced flowers.这是这棵仙人掌第一年开花。
- The giant cactus is the vegetable skycraper.高大的仙人掌是植物界巨人。
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12
shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） |
参考例句： |
- We struck a bargain with an American shipping firm.我们和一家美国船运公司谈成了一笔生意。
- There's a shipping charge of ￡5 added to the price.价格之外另加五英镑运输费。
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13
cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 |
参考例句： |
- The ship has a cargo of about 200 ton.这条船大约有200吨的货物。
- A lot of people discharged the cargo from a ship.许多人从船上卸下货物。
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14
planks
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| （厚）木板( plank的名词复数 )； 政纲条目，政策要点 |
参考例句： |
- The house was built solidly of rough wooden planks. 这房子是用粗木板牢固地建造的。
- We sawed the log into planks. 我们把木头锯成了木板。
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15
plank
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| n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目 |
参考例句： |
- The plank was set against the wall.木板靠着墙壁。
- They intend to win the next election on the plank of developing trade.他们想以发展贸易的纲领来赢得下次选举。
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16
eddy
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| n.漩涡，涡流 |
参考例句： |
- The motor car disappeared in eddy of dust.汽车在一片扬尘的涡流中不见了。
- In Taylor's picture,the eddy is the basic element of turbulence.在泰勒的描述里，旋涡是湍流的基本要素。
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17
lurch
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| n.突然向前或旁边倒；v.蹒跚而行 |
参考例句： |
- It has been suggested that the ground movements were a form of lurch movements.地震的地面运动曾被认为是一种突然倾斜的运动形式。
- He walked with a lurch.他步履蹒跚。
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winding
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| n.绕，缠，绕组，线圈 |
参考例句： |
- A winding lane led down towards the river.一条弯弯曲曲的小路通向河边。
- The winding trail caused us to lose our orientation.迂回曲折的小道使我们迷失了方向。
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19
algae
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| n.水藻，海藻 |
参考例句： |
- Most algae live in water.多数藻类生长在水中。
- Algae grow and spread quickly in the lake.湖中水藻滋蔓。
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20
crabs
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| n.蟹( crab的名词复数 )；阴虱寄生病；蟹肉v.捕蟹( crab的第三人称单数 ) |
参考例句： |
- As we walked along the seashore we saw lots of tiny crabs. 我们在海岸上散步时看到很多小蟹。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- The fish and crabs scavenge for decaying tissue. 鱼和蟹搜寻腐烂的组织为食。 来自《简明英汉词典》
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21
dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 |
参考例句： |
- They live such dreary lives.他们的生活如此乏味。
- She was tired of hearing the same dreary tale of drunkenness and violence.她听够了那些关于酗酒和暴力的乏味故事。
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22
plumbing
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| n.水管装置；水暖工的工作；管道工程v.用铅锤测量（plumb的现在分词）；探究 |
参考例句： |
- She spent her life plumbing the mysteries of the human psyche. 她毕生探索人类心灵的奥秘。
- They're going to have to put in new plumbing. 他们将需要安装新的水管。 来自《简明英汉词典》
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23
porcelain
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| n.瓷；adj.瓷的，瓷制的 |
参考例句： |
- These porcelain plates have rather original designs on them.这些瓷盘的花纹很别致。
- The porcelain vase is enveloped in cotton.瓷花瓶用棉花裹着。
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24
debris
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| n.瓦砾堆，废墟，碎片 |
参考例句： |
- After the bombing there was a lot of debris everywhere.轰炸之后到处瓦砾成堆。
- Bacteria sticks to food debris in the teeth,causing decay.细菌附着在牙缝中的食物残渣上，导致蛀牙。
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25
knuckle
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| n.指节；vi.开始努力工作；屈服，认输 |
参考例句： |
- They refused to knuckle under to any pressure.他们拒不屈从任何压力。
- You'll really have to knuckle down if you want to pass the examination.如果想通过考试，你确实应专心学习。
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26
wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 |
参考例句： |
- He tipped me the wink not to buy at that price.他眨眼暗示我按那个价格就不要买。
- The satellite disappeared in a wink.瞬息之间，那颗卫星就消失了。
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27
vending
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| v.出售（尤指土地等财产）( vend的现在分词 )；（尤指在公共场所）贩卖；发表（意见，言论）；声明 |
参考例句： |
- Why Are You Banging on the Vending Machine? 你为什么敲打这台自动售货机？ 来自朗文快捷英语教程 2
- Coca-Cola had to adapt almost 300,000 vending machines to accept the new coins. 可口可乐公司必须使将近三十万台自动贩卖机接受新货币。 来自超越目标英语 第5册
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28
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 |
参考例句： |
- The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
- He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。
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29
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 |
参考例句： |
- They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
- His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。
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30
eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 |
参考例句： |
- The King's eldest son is the heir to the throne.国王的长子是王位的继承人。
- The castle and the land are entailed on the eldest son.城堡和土地限定由长子继承。
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31
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 |
参考例句： |
- Thanks to your help,we accomplished the task ahead of schedule.亏得你们帮忙,我们才提前完成了任务。
- Removal of excess heat is accomplished by means of a radiator.通过散热器完成多余热量的排出。
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32
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 |
参考例句： |
- The boss has a large belly.老板大腹便便。
- His eyes are bigger than his belly.他眼馋肚饱。
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33
hack
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| n.劈，砍，出租马车；v.劈，砍，干咳 |
参考例句： |
- He made a hack at the log.他朝圆木上砍了一下。
- Early settlers had to hack out a clearing in the forest where they could grow crops.早期移民不得不在森林里劈出空地种庄稼。
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34
warehouse
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| n.仓库；vt.存入仓库 |
参考例句： |
- We freighted the goods to the warehouse by truck.我们用卡车把货物运到仓库。
- The manager wants to clear off the old stocks in the warehouse.经理想把仓库里积压的存货处理掉。
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35
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 |
参考例句： |
- He had talked vaguely of going to work abroad.他含糊其词地说了到国外工作的事。
- He looked vaguely before him with unseeing eyes.他迷迷糊糊的望着前面，对一切都视而不见。
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36
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 |
参考例句： |
- The effect of the pollution on the beaches is absolutely tragic.污染海滩后果可悲。
- Charles was a man doomed to tragic issues.查理是个注定不得善终的人。
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37
generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 |
参考例句： |
- We should match their generosity with our own.我们应该像他们一样慷慨大方。
- We adore them for their generosity.我们钦佩他们的慷慨。
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38
warily
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| adv.留心地 |
参考例句： |
- He looked warily around him,pretending to look after Carrie.他小心地看了一下四周，假装是在照顾嘉莉。
- They were heading warily to a point in the enemy line.他们正小心翼翼地向着敌人封锁线的某一处前进。
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39
shareholding
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| n.股权 |
参考例句： |
- Shareholding commercial banks must exercise an independent system of board of directors. 股份制商业银行必须实行独立董事制度。 来自互联网
- Asset re-structuring: to conduct shareholding reform for high quality assets. 资产重组：对优质资产进行股份制改造。 来自互联网
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40
deductions
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| 扣除( deduction的名词复数 )； 结论； 扣除的量； 推演 |
参考例句： |
- Many of the older officers trusted agents sightings more than cryptanalysts'deductions. 许多年纪比较大的军官往往相信特务的发现，而不怎么相信密码分析员的推断。
- You know how you rush at things,jump to conclusions without proper deductions. 你知道你处理问题是多么仓促，毫无合适的演绎就仓促下结论。
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