file:///C|/Users/scumbucket/Downloads/We%20Have%20Always%20Lived%20in%20the%20Castle%20-%20Shirley%20Jackson.txt[7/1/2010 10:08:02 PM]
took out a chicken and began to wrap it. "A small leg of lamb," I said, "my Uncle Julian always fancies a roasted lamb
in the first spring days." I should not have said it, I knew, and a little gasp went around the store like a scream. I could
make them run like rabbits, I thought, if I said to them what I really wanted to, but they would only gather again
outside and watch for me there. "Onions," I said politely to Mr. Elbert, "coffee, bread, flour. Walnuts," I said, "and
sugar; we are very low on sugar." Somewhere behind me there was a little horrified laugh, and Mr. Elbert glanced past
me, briefly, and then to the items he was arranging on the counter. In a minute Mrs. Elbert would bring my chicken
and my meat, wrapped, and set them down by the other things; I need not turn around until I was ready to go. "Two
quarts of milk," I said. "A half pint of cream, a pound of butter." The Harrises had stopped delivering dairy goods to us
six years ago and I brought milk and butter home from the grocery now. "And a dozen eggs." Constance had forgotten
to put eggs on the list, but there had been only two at home. "A box of peanut brittle," I said; Uncle Julian would
clatter and crunch over his papers tonight, and go to bed sticky.
"The Blackwoods always did set a fine table." That was Mrs. Donell, speaking clearly from somewhere behind
me, and someone giggled and someone else said "Shh." I never turned; it was enough to feel them all there in back of
me without looking into their flat grey faces with the hating eyes. I wish you were all dead, I thought, and longed to
say it out loud. Constance said, "Never let them see that you care," and "If you pay any attention they'll only get
worse," and probably it was true, but I wished they were dead. I would have liked to come into the grocery some
morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the children, lying there crying with the pain and dying. I would then
help myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and go
home, with perhaps a kick for Mrs. Donell while she lay there. I was never sorry when I had thoughts like this; I only
wished they would come true. "It's wrong to hate them," Constance said, "it only weakens you," but I hated them
anyway, and wondered why it had been worth while creating them in the first place.
Mr. Elbert put all my groceries together on the counter and waited, looking past me into the distance. "That's all I
want today," I told him, and without looking at me he wrote the prices on a slip and added, then passed the slip to me
so I could make sure he had not cheated me. I always made a point of checking his figures carefully, although he never
made a mistake; there were not many things I could do to get back at them, but I did what I could. The groceries filled
my shopping bag and another bag besides, but there was no way of getting them home except by carrying them. No
one would ever offer to help me, of course, even if I would let them.
Lose two turns. With my library books and my groceries, going slowly, I had to walk down the sidewalk past the
general store and into Stella's. I stopped in the doorway of the grocery, feeling around inside myself for some thought
to make me safe. Behind me the little stirrings and coughings began. They were getting ready to talk again, and across
the width of the store the Elberts were probably rolling their eyes at each other in relief. I froze my face hard. Today I
was going to think about taking our lunch out into the garden, and while I kept my eyes open just enough to see where
I was walking -- our mother's brown shoes going up and down -- in my mind I was setting the table with a green cloth
and bringing out yellow dishes and strawberries in a white bowl. Yellow dishes, I thought, feeling the eyes of the men
looking at me as I went by, and Uncle Julian shall have a nice soft egg with toast broken into it, and I will remember
to ask Constance to put a shawl across his shoulders because it is still very early spring. Without looking I could see
the grinning and the gesturing; I wished they were all dead and I was walking on their bodies. They rarely spoke
directly to me, but only to each other. "That's one of the Blackwood girls," I heard one of them say in a high mocking
voice, "one of the Blackwood girls from Blackwood Farm." "Too bad about the Blackwoods," someone else said, just
loud enough, "too bad about those poor girls." "Nice farm out there," they said, "nice land to farm. Man could get rich,
farming the Blackwood land. If he had a million years and three heads, and didn't care what grew, a man could get
rich. Keep their land pretty well locked up, the Blackwoods do." "Man could get rich." "Too bad about the Blackwood
girls." "Never can tell what'll grow on Blackwood land."
I am walking on their bodies, I thought, we are having lunch in the garden and Uncle Julian is wearing his shawl.
I always held my groceries carefully along here, because one terrible morning I had dropped the shopping bag and the
eggs broke and the milk spilled and I gathered up what I could while they shouted, telling myself that whatever I did I
would not run away, shovelling cans and boxes and spilled sugar wildly back into the shopping bag, telling myself not
to run away.
In front of Stella's there was a crack in the sidewalk that looked like a finger pointing; the crack had always been
there. Other landmarks, like the handprint Johnny Harris made in the concrete foundation of the town hall and the
Mueller boy's initials on the library porch, had been put in in times that I remembered; I was in the third grade at the
school when the town hall was built. But the crack in the sidewalk in front of Stella's had always been there, just as
Stella's had always been there. I remember roller-skating across the crack, and being careful not to step on it or it
would break our mother's back, and riding a bicycle past here with my hair flying behind; the villagers had not openly