Sticks

by George Saunders
 

Every year Thanksgiving night we flocked out behind Dad as he dragged the Santa suit
to the road and draped it over a kind of crucifix he'd built out of metal pole in the yard.
Super Bowl week the pole was dressed in a jersey and Rod's helmet and Rod had to
clear it with Dad if he wanted to take the helmet off. On the Fourth of July the pole was
Uncle Sam, on Veteran’s Day a soldier, on Halloween a ghost. The pole was Dad's
only concession to glee. We were allowed a single Crayola from the box at a time. One
Christmas Eve he shrieked at Kimmie for wasting an apple slice. He hovered over us
as we poured ketchup saying: good enough good enough good enough. Birthday
parties consisted of cupcakes, no ice cream. The first time I brought a date over she
said: what's with your dad and that pole? and I sat there blinking.

We left home, married, had children of our own, found the seeds of meanness
 
blooming also within us. Dad began dressing the pole with more complexity and less
discernible logic. He draped some kind of fur over it on Groundhog Day and lugged out
a floodlight to ensure a shadow. When an earthquake struck Chile he lay the pole on its
side and spray painted a rift in the earth. Mom died and he dressed the pole as Death
and hung from the crossbar photos of Mom as a baby. We'd stop by and find odd
talismans from his youth arranged around the base: army medals, theater tickets, old
sweatshirts, tubes of Mom's makeup. One autumn he painted the pole bright yellow. He
covered it with cotton swabs that winter for warmth and provided offspring by
hammering in six crossed sticks around the yard. He ran lengths of string between the
pole and the sticks, and taped to the string letters of apology, admissions of error, pleas
for understanding, all written in a frantic hand on index cards. He painted a sign saying
LOVE and hung it from the pole and another that said FORGIVE? and then he died in
the hall with the radio on and we sold the house to a young couple who yanked out the
pole and the sticks and left them by the road on garbage day.

In the contributor's notes in "Story" magazine, George Saunders writes, "For two years
I'd been driving past a house like the one in the story, imagining the owner as a man
more joyful and self-possessed and less self-conscious than myself. Then one day I got
sick of him and invented his opposite, and there was the story."
 " The Story of an Hour”
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to
break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.

It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed
in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he
who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was
received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the
time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall
any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed
inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in
her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room
alone. She would have no one follow her.

There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she
sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to
reach into her soul.

She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all
aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street
below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was
singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves. There
were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and
piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless,
except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried
itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a
certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away
off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but
rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was
it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out
of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the
air.

Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing
that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will
— as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she
abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it
over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror
that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat
fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body. She did not
stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear
and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.

She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in
death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead.
But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would
belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in
welcome. There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would
live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence
with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a
fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime
as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him — sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What
could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion
which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!
"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for
admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg, open the door — you will make yourself ill.
What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."

"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life
through that open window. Her fancy was running riotalong those days ahead of her.
Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She
breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought
with a shudder that life might be long.

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was
a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of
Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs.
Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who
entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had
been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He
stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from
the view of his wife.

But Richards was too late.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease — of the joy that kills.
Questions:

1. Who broke the news that Mrs. Mallard that her husband is dead?
a. Brently Mallard
b. She found out herself
c. c. Richards
d. d. Josephine

2. In what season does the story take place and why is it significant?
a. The story takes place in spring and symbolizes a new beginning for Mrs. Mallard
b. The story takes place in winter and symbolizes that everything dies.
c. The story takes place in summer and symbolizes the burning love Mrs. Mallard
has for her husband.
d. The story takes place in fall that symbolizes that everything are falling apart.

3. From what ailment does Mrs. Mallard suffer?

a. Detached retinas
b. Kidney failure
c. Heart trouble
d. Pneumonia

4. What does Louise repeatedly say while looking out the window?
a. “Freedom”
b. “Free”
c. “Yay”
d. “Finally”

5. What is the best choice for the theme of the story?

a. Open windows are good for daydreaming
b. Stay away from trains
c. Relationships can be oppressive
d. Don’t listen to your friends news because it could be wrong.
Afflict  /əˈflɪkt/ - to make someone or something suffer physically or mentally

 Veiled /veɪld/- Veiled words or ways of behaving are not direct or expressed clearly

assure /əˈʃʊr/- to tell someone confidently that something is true, especially so that they do

not worry:
forestall  /fɔːrˈstɑːl/- to prevent something from happening by acting first

aquiver /əˈkwɪv.ɚ/- shaking slightly, often because of strong emotion

monstrous /ˈmɑːn.strəs/- very cruel

latchkey  /ˈlætʃ.ki/ - a key to an outside and especially a front door

Afflict   a. to make someone or something suffer physically or mentally

latchkey   b. very cruel

aquiver c. Veiled words or ways of behaving are not direct or expressed clearly

monstrous d. to tell someone confidently that something is true, especially so that

they do

Veiled e. to prevent something from happening by acting first

Assure f. shaking slightly, often because of strong emotion

forestall   g. a key to an outside and especially a front door