ALICE MUNRO Boys and Girls

1、alice munroboys and girls my father was a fox farmer. that is, he raised silver foxes, in pens; and in the fall and early winter, when their fur was prime, he killed them and skinned them and sold their pelts to the hudsons bay company or the montreal fur traders. these companies supplied us with he

2、roic calendars to hang, one on each side of the kitchen door. against a background of cold blue sky and black pine forests and treacherous northern rivers, plumed adventures planted the flags of england and or of france; magnificent savages bent their backs to the portage. for several weeks before c

3、hristmas, my father worked after supper in the cellar of our house. the cellar was whitewashed , and lit by a hundred-watt bulb over the worktable. my brother laird and i sat on the top step and watched. my father removed the pelt inside-out from the body of the fox, which looked surprisingly small,

4、 mean, and rat-like, deprived of its arrogant weight of fur. the naked, slippery bodies were collected in a sack and buried in the dump. one time the hired man, henry bailey, had taken a swipe at me with this sack, saying, christmas present! my mother thought that was not funny. in fact she disliked

5、 the whole pelting operation-that was what the killing, skinning, and preparation of the furs was called and wished it did not have to take place in the house. there was the smell. after the pelt had been stretched inside-out on a long board my father scraped away delicately, removing the little clo

6、tted webs of blood vessels, the bubbles of fat; the smell of blood and animal fat, which the strong primitive odor of the fox itself, penetrated all parts of the house. i found it reassuringly seasonal, like the smell of oranges and pine needles. henry bailey suffered from bronchial troubles. he wou

7、ld cough and cough until his narrow face turned scarlet, and his light blue, derisive eyes filled up with tears; then he took the lid off the stove, and, standing well back, shot out a great clot of phlegm hss straight into the heart of the flames. we admired his for this performance and for his abi

8、lity to make his stomach growl at will, and for his laughter, which was full of high whistlings and gurglings and involved the whole faulty machinery of his chest. it was sometimes hard to tell what he was laughing at, and always possible that it might be us. after we had sent to be we could still s

9、mell fox and still hear henrys laugh, but these things reminders of the warm, safe, brightly lit downstairs world, seemed lost and diminished, floating on the stale cold air upstairs. we were afraid at nigh in the winter. we were not afraid of outside though this was the time of year when snowdrifts

10、 curled around our house like sleeping whales and the wind harassed us all night, coming up from the buried fields, the frozen swamp, with its old bugbear chorus of threats and misery. we were afraid of inside, the room where we slept. at this time upstairs of our house was not finished. a brick chi

11、mney went up on wall. in the middle of the floor was a square hole, with a wooden railing around it; that was where the stairs came up. on the other side of the stairwell wee the things that nobody had any use for anymore a soldiery roll of linoleum, standing on end, a wicker bay carriage, a fern ba

12、sket, china jugs and basins with cracks in them, a picture of the battle of balaclava, very sad to look at. i had told laird, as soon as he was old enough to understand such things, that bats and skeletons lived over there; whenever a man escaped from the county jail, twenty miles away, i imagined t

13、hat he had somehow let himself in the window and was hiding behind the linoleum. but we had rules to keep us safe. when the light was on, we were safe as long as we did not step off the square of worn carpet which defined our bedroom-space; when the light was off no place was safe but the beds thems

14、elves. i had to turn out the light kneeling on the end of my bed, and stretching as far as i could to reach the cord. in the dark we lay on our beds, our narrow life rafts, and fixed our eyes on the faint light coming up the stairwell, and sang songs. laird sang jingle bells, which he would sing any

15、 time, whether it was christmas or not, and i sang danny boy. i loved the sound of my own voice, frail and supplicating, rising in the dark. we could make out the tall frosted shapes of the windows now, gloomy and white. when i came to the part, y the cold sheets but by pleasurable emotions almost s

16、ilenced me. youll kneel and say an ave there above me what was an ave? every day i forgot to find out. laird went straight from singing to sleep, i could hear his long, satisfied, bubbly breaths. now for the time that remained to me, the most perfectly private and perhaps the best time of the whole

17、day, i arranged myself tightly under the covers and went on with one of the stories i was telling myself from night to night. these stories were about myself, when i had grown a little older; they took place in a world that was recognizably mine, yet one that presented opportunities for courage, bol

18、dness, and self-sacrifice, as mine never did. i rescued people from a bombed building (it discouraged me that the real war had gone on so far away from jubilee). i shot two rabid wolves who were menacing the schoolyard (the teachers cowered terrified at my back). rode a fine horse spiritedly down th

19、e main street of jubilee, acknowledging the townspeoples gratitude for some yet-to-be-worked-out piece of heroism (nobody ever rode a horse there, except king billy in the orangemens day parade). there was always riding and shooting in these stories, though i had only been on a horse twice the first

20、 because we did not own a saddle and the second time i had slid right around and dropped under the horses feet; it had stepped placidly over me. i really was learning to shoot, but could not hit anything yet, not even tin cans on fence posts. alive, the foxes inhabited a world my father made for the

21、m. it was surrounded by a high guard fence, like a medieval town, with a gate that was padlocked at night. along the streets of this town were ranged large, sturdy pens. each of them had a real door that a man could go through, a wooden ramp along the wire, for the foxes to run up and down on, and a

22、 kennel sometimes like a clothes chest with airholes where they slept where they slept and stayed in winter and had their young. there were feeding and watering dishes attached to the wire in such a way that they could be emptied and cleaned from the outside. the dishes were made of old tin cans, an

23、d the ramps and kennels of odds and ends of old lumber. everything was tidy and ingenious; my father was tirelessly inventive and his favorite book in the world was robinson crusoe. he had fitted a tin drum on a wheelbarrow, for bringing water down to the pens. this was my job in the summer, when th

24、e foxes had to have water twice a day. between nine and ten oclock in the morning, and again after supper. i filled the drum at the pump and trundled it down through the barnyard to the pens, where i parked it, and filled my watering can and went along the streets. laird came too, with his little cr

25、eam and green gardening can, filled too full and knocking against his legs and slopping water on his canvas shoes. i had the real watering can, my fathers, though i could only carry it three-quarters full. the foxes all had names, which were printed on a tin plate and hung beside their doors. they w

26、ere not named when they were born, but when they survived the first years pelting and were added to the breeding stock. those my father had named were called names like prince, bob, wally, and betty. those i had named were called star or turk, or maureen or diana. laird named one maude after a hired

27、 girl we had when he was little, one harold after a boy at school, and one mexico, he did not say why. naming them did not make pets out of them, or anything like it. nobody but my father ever went into the pens, and he had twice had blood-poisoning from bites. when i was bringing them their water t

28、hey prowled up and down on the paths they had made inside their pens, barking seldom they saved that for nighttime, when they might get up a chorus of community frenzy-but always watching me, their eyes burning, clear gold, in their pointed, malevolent faces. they were beautiful for their delicate l

29、egs and heavy, aristocratic tails and the bright fur sprinkled on dark down their back which gave them their name but especially for their faces, drawn exquisitely sharp in pure hostility, and their golden eyes. besides carrying water i helped my father when he cut the long grass, and the lambs quar

30、ter and flowering money-musk, that grew between the pens. he cut with they scythe and i raked into piles. then he took a pitchfork and threw fresh-cut grass all over the top of the pens to keep the foxes cooler and shade their coats, which were browned by too much sun. my father did not talk to me u

31、nless it was about the job we were doing. in this he was quite different from my mother, who, if she was feeling cheerful, would tell me all sorts of things the name of a dog she had had when she was a little girl, the names of boys she had gone out with later on when she was grown up, and what cert

32、ain dresses of hers had looked like she could not imagine now what had become of them. whatever thoughts and stories my father had were private, and i was shy of him and would never ask him questions. nevertheless i worked willingly under his eyes, and with a feeling of pride. one time a feed salesm

33、an came down into the pens to talk to him and my father said, like to have you meet my new hired hand. i turned away and raked furiously, red in the face with pleasure. could of fooled me. said the salesman. i thought it was only a girl. after the grass was cut, it seemed suddenly much later in the

34、year. i walked on stubble in the earlier evening aware of the reddening skies, on entering silence of fall. when i wheeled the tank out of the gates and put padlocks on. it was almost dark. one night at this time i saw my mother and father standing talking on the little rise of ground we called the

35、gangway, in front of the barn. my father had just come from the meathouse; he had his stiff bloody apron on, and a pail of cut-up meat in his hand. it was an odd thing to see my mother down at the barn. she did not often come out of the house unless it was to do something hang out the wash or dig po

36、tatoes in the garden. she looked out of place, with her bare lumpy legs, not touched by the sun, her apron still on and damp across the stomach from the supper dishes. her hair was tied up in a kerchief, wisps of it falling out. she would tie her hair up like this in the morning, saying she did not

37、have time to do it properly, and it would stay tied up all day. it was true, too; she really did not have time. these days our back porch was piled with baskets of peaches and grapes and pears, bought in town, and onions an tomatoes and cucumbers grown at home, all waiting to be made into jelly and

38、jam and preserves, pickles and chili sauce. in the kitchen there was a fire in the stove all day, jars clinked in boiling water, sometimes a cheesecloth bag was strung on a pole between two chairs straining blue-back grape pulp for jelly. i was given jobs to do and i would sit at the table peeling p

39、eaches that had been soaked in hot water, or cutting up onions, my eyes smarting and streaming. as soon as i was done i ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my mother thought of what she wanted me to do next. i hated the hot dark kitchen in summer, the green blinds and the flypa

40、pers, the same old oilcloth table and wavy mirror and bumpy linoleum. my mother was too tired and preoccupied to talk to me, she had no heart to tell about the normal school graduation dance; sweat trickled over her face and she was always counting under breath, pointing at jars, dumping cups of sug

41、ar. it seemed to me that work in the house was endless, dreary, and peculiarly depressing; work done out of doors, and in my fathers service, was ritualistically important. i wheeled the tank up tot he barn, where it was kept, and i heard my mother saying, wait till laird gets a little bigger, then

42、youll have a real help. what my father said i did not hear. i was pleased by the way he stood listening, politely as he would to a salesman or a stranger, but with an air of wanting to get on with his real work. i felt my mother had no business down here and i wanted him to feel the same way. what d

43、id she mean about laird? he was no help to anybody. where was he now? swinging himself sick on the swing, going around in circles, or trying to catch caterpillars. he never once stayed with me till i was finished. and then i can use her more in the house, i heard my mother say. she had a dead-quiet

44、regretful way of talking about me that always made me uneasy. i just get my back turned and she runs off. its not like i had a girl in the family at all. i went and sat on a feed bag in the corner of the barn, not wanting to appear when this conversation was going on. my mother, i felt, was not to b

45、e trusted. she was kinder than my father and more easily fooled, but you could not depend on her, and the real reasons for the things she said and did were not to be known. she loved me, and she sat up late at night making a dress of the difficult style i wanted, for me to wear when school started,

46、but she was also my enemy. she was always plotting. she was plotting now to get me to stay in the house more, although she knew i hated it (because she knew i hated it) and keep me from working for my father. it seemed to me she would do this simply out of perversity, and to try her power. it did no

47、t occur to me that she could be lonely, or jealous. no grown-up could be; they were too fortunate. i sat and kicked my heels monotonously against a feed bag, raising dust, and did not come out till she was gone. at any rate, i did not expect my father to pay any attention to what she said. who could

48、 imagine laird doing my work laird remembering the padlock and cleaning out the watering dishes with a leaf on the end of a stick, or even wheeling the tank without it tumbling over? it showed how little my mother knew about the way things really were. i had forgotten to say what the foxes were fed.

49、 my fathers bloody apron reminded me. they were fed horsemeat. at this time most farmers still kept horses, and when a horse got too old to work, or broke a leg or got down and would not get up, as they sometimes did , the owner would call my father, and he and henry went out to the farm in the truc

50、k. usually they shot and butchered the horse there, paying the farmer from five to twelve dollars. if they had already too much meat on hand, they would bring the horse back alive, and keep it for a few days or weeks in our stable, until the meat was needed. after the war the farmers were buying tra

51、ctors and gradually getting rid of horses, that there was just no use for any more. if this happened in the winter we might keep the horse in our stable till spring, for we had plenty of hay and if there was a lot of snow and the plow did not always get our roads cleared it was convenient to be able

52、 to go to town with a horse and cutter. the winter i was eleven years old we had two horses in the stable. we did not know what names they had had before, so we called them mack and flora. mack was an old black workhorse, sooty and indifferent. flora was a sorrel mare, a driver. we took them both ou

53、t in the cutter. mack was slow and easy to handle. flora was given to fits of violent alarm, veering at cars and even at other horses, but we loved her speed and high-stepping, her general air of gallantry and abandon. on saturdays we wen down to the stable and as soon as we opened the door on its c

54、ozy, animal-smelling darkness flora threw up her head, rolled here eyes, whinnied despairingly, and pulled herself through a crisis of nerves on the spot. it was not safe to go into her stall, she would kick. this winter also i began to hear a great deal more on the theme my mother had sounded when

55、she had been talking in front of the barn. i no longer felt safe. it seemed that in the minds of the people around me there was a steady undercurrent of thought, not to be deflected, on this one subject. the word girl had formerly seemed to me innocent and unburdened like the word child; now it appe

56、ared that it was no such thing. a girl was not, as i had supposed, simply what i was; it was what i had to become. it was a definition, always touched with emphasis, with reproach and disappointment. also it was a joke on me. once laird and i were fighting, and for the first time ever i had to use a

57、ll my strength against him; even so, he caught and pinned my arm for a moment, really hurting me. henry saw this, and laughed, saying, oh, that there lairds gonna show you, one of these days! laird was getting a lot bigger. but i was getting bigger too. my grandmother came to stay with us for a few

58、weeks and i heard other things. girls dont slam doors like that. girls keep their knees together when they sit down. and worse still, when i asked some questions, thats none of girls business. i continued to slam the doors and sit as awkwardly as possible, thinking that by such measures i kept mysel

59、f free. when spring came, the horses were let out in the barnyard. mack stood against the barn wall trying to scratch his neck and haunches, but flora trotted up and down and reared at the fences, clattering her hooves against the rails. snow drifts dwindled quickly, revealing the hard gray and brown earth, the familiar rise and