Free Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon Page A

after chores it was because she had to stay in bed sick. That was only a nuisance at first but when it got to be two weeks, four and six and seven, it was hard to take. George had grew to need Anna, he could not get along very easy without he saw her. And he begun to worry either she was so sick she would not get better and then what would he do? or she was getting better or was even better already but she was mad and not taking no more chances with him. Either one of these ideas he could not stand and he hopped from one to the other all the time. And he had to admit in spite of these years he was seeing her he really did not know her well enough to know if she would dump him over such a thing as that.
    What he did besides worry was to hate that little bugger inside her. Even if it was only a baby or less that made it worse. There it was warm and fed all the time with nothing to do or even think about while George had to do without. Like if Anna had some other fellow and George had to lose out to another guy that was stronger or smarter or richer or something, well he might be sore and sad too but at least the guy who beat him out was something, was more some ways than George. But this animal in her, growing like some sort of big wart or something inside her, it was a real nothing, but it beat him out hands down without even trying, without even knowing he was there. And it was the only thing he ever got mad at her for, what did she want to get herself knocked up for, he could have done without that, it was just her wanted it and now look.
    He used to see to his traps, he went back to hunting again a whole lot, and then he would go to the cave and set there and whittle with his sheath knife and the only thing he did was hating that thing inside of her.
    Which is how he come to join the army, because things got so bad he could not sleep or nothing, he had that hot in his stomach almost all the time and it was harder and hard to get rid of. It was like word got around in the woods, everything gone from there, rabbits, coons, chucks, even chipmunk and mice, and what was left was skinny and runty. But he was kidding himself. One time with the biggest fattest possum he ever did see he felt the same way.
    Still he took to looping out wider and wider, he did not know what he was looking for but just thought he might find it somewhere else if he could not find it around home. And it was in the middle of the summer he found a beaver lodge way up the hills and went to work on a deadfall, it would have to be a big one because beaver is hard to hold. And he always always set traps where nobody ever went, this was not to save anybody any trouble, it was just no sense at all to set traps where people was slamming around yelling and jabbering. There is not one man in eight hundred dozen knows how to be quiet anywhere, let alone woods, that is what is mostly wrong with people. So anyway he come back the next day to this deadfall by the beaver lodge and here was a damn little snotnose kid caught up by the leg. Well this made George so damn mad it is funny but so damn mad he felt better. You get that mad when you are all like lost and mixed up, you do not feel lost any more at least while you are mad. He clobbered that kid good for tripping the deadfall, the kid was for him the kid growing in Anna and pushing him out of the way, he could hit out at the kid at last.
    The next day he went to town and saw the man at the post office and the first thing Aunt Mary knew about it was when he brought back the papers for her to sign, he was on his way. It come so sudden she and Uncle Jim did not know what to say even, she kind of puddled up and Uncle Jim just kept on saying Well whaddaye know, well whaddaye know, and when George was in his store clothes he said Son all we did was the best we could. George he just smiled that smile he had when he did not know what to say, and he took off.
    Well they say a lot about the army it is no good, it is hurry up