The taste of melon by borden deal
The Taste of Melon
B O R D E N
Focus Your Learning
Reading this story will help you:
■ relate your own experience to the story theme
■ analyse story structure
■ identify changes in the narrator’s perspective ■ interpret characters’ motives
130
Look Closely
D E A L
When I think of the summer I was sixteen, a lot of things some crowding in to be thought about. We had moved just the year before, and sixteen is still young enough that the bunch makes a difference. I had a bunch, all right, but they weren’t sure of me yet. I didn’t know why. Maybe because I’d lived in town, and my father still worked there instead of farming, like the other fathers did. The boys I knew, even Freddy Gray and J.D., still kept a small distance between us.
Then there was Willadean Wills. I hadn’t been much interested in girls before. But I had to admit to myself that I was interested in Willadean. She was my age, nearly as tall as I, and up till the year before, Freddy Gray told me, she had been good at playing Gully Keeper and Ante-Over. But she didn’t play such games this year. She was tall and slender, and Freddy Gray and J.D. and I had several discussions about the way she walked. I maintained she was putting it on, but J.D. claimed she couldn’t help it. Freddy
Gray remarked that she hadn’t walked that way last year. He said she’d walked like any other human being. So then I said, put on or not, I liked the way she walked, and then there was a large silence.
It wasn’t a comfortable silence, because of Mr. Wills, Willadean’s father.
We were all afraid of Mr. Wills.
Mr. Wills was a big man. He had bright, fierce eyes under heavy brows and, when he looked down at you, you just withered. The idea of having him directly and immediately angry at one of us was enough to shrivel the soul. All that summer Willadean walked up and down the high road or sat on their front porch in a rocking chair, her dress flared out around her, and not one of us
B O R D E N
Focus Your Learning
Reading this story will help you:
■ relate your own experience to the story theme
■ analyse story structure
■ identify changes in the narrator’s perspective ■ interpret characters’ motives
130
Look Closely
D E A L
When I think of the summer I was sixteen, a lot of things some crowding in to be thought about. We had moved just the year before, and sixteen is still young enough that the bunch makes a difference. I had a bunch, all right, but they weren’t sure of me yet. I didn’t know why. Maybe because I’d lived in town, and my father still worked there instead of farming, like the other fathers did. The boys I knew, even Freddy Gray and J.D., still kept a small distance between us.
Then there was Willadean Wills. I hadn’t been much interested in girls before. But I had to admit to myself that I was interested in Willadean. She was my age, nearly as tall as I, and up till the year before, Freddy Gray told me, she had been good at playing Gully Keeper and Ante-Over. But she didn’t play such games this year. She was tall and slender, and Freddy Gray and J.D. and I had several discussions about the way she walked. I maintained she was putting it on, but J.D. claimed she couldn’t help it. Freddy
Gray remarked that she hadn’t walked that way last year. He said she’d walked like any other human being. So then I said, put on or not, I liked the way she walked, and then there was a large silence.
It wasn’t a comfortable silence, because of Mr. Wills, Willadean’s father.
We were all afraid of Mr. Wills.
Mr. Wills was a big man. He had bright, fierce eyes under heavy brows and, when he looked down at you, you just withered. The idea of having him directly and immediately angry at one of us was enough to shrivel the soul. All that summer Willadean walked up and down the high road or sat on their front porch in a rocking chair, her dress flared out around her, and not one of us