The Winter Helen Dropped By

The Winter Helen Dropped By
W. P. Kinsella

From the author of Shoeless Joe, the book that inspired the movie Field of Dreams.Narrated by young Jamie O'Day, who is beginning to understand that, like his daddy says, "every story is about sex or death, or sometimes both,"The Winter Helen Dropped Byis a story of growing up, of loss, of laughter and of characters both sexy and dead.Helen is the young, pregnant Indian woman who drops into Jamie's life one freeze-the-balls-off-a-brass-monkey snow-storming night. It is her haunting presence, woven throughout Jamie's accounts of the spring he damn near drowned, the summer of the peculiar reconstituted wedding of Mrs.Beatrice Ann Stevenson and Mr.Earl J. Rasmussen, followed by the summer White Chaps murdered his wife, that makes this a funny, sad and wholly wonderful new novel.

The Winter Helen Dropped By

BY W. P. KINSELLA

The Friday Project An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014

Copyright © W. P. Kinsella 1995

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014

W. P. Kinsella asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

FIRST EDITION

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007497539

Ebook Edition © July 2014 ISBN: 9780007497546

Version: 2014-08-07

Contents

Title Page (#u57d5f526-8a1f-5a05-b214-8118252e8b0e)

Copyright (#u61e14f04-d9d9-54f4-a619-34d41b462c8d)

SECTION ONE: Rat Pie and Fireworks

Chapter One

Chapter Two

SECTION TWO: Rosemary’s Winter

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

SECTION THREE: The Reconstituted Wedding

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

SECTION FOUR: The Summer Jamie Damn Near Drowned

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Also by the W.P. Kinsella

About the Publisher

SECTION ONE Rat Pie and Fireworks (#u437e8620-f9a1-5b06-b37f-0aa4dcc01fb8)

Chapter One (#u437e8620-f9a1-5b06-b37f-0aa4dcc01fb8)

‘Every story,’ Daddy said, ‘is about sex or death, or sometimes both.’

‘What about your baseball stories?’ said I, thinking myself more than passing clever.

‘You know what the word phallic means?’ my daddy asked.

‘Nope,’ said I, feeling less clever than I had a moment before.

‘Well, y’all come back when you do, and we’ll discuss my pronouncement further. No, on second thoughts,’ Daddy said, ‘by the time you understand the word you’ll understand the implication.’

‘Is it something like the women talking about Flop Skaalrud’s blatant male aura, when they think no one is listening in?’ said I, once again feeling passing clever.

‘It is indeed,’ said my daddy. Then after a pause, during which he scratched his mop of black curls, ‘So that’s what they talk about when they think no one is listening in. Your mama and I will have to discuss that matter.’

‘Don’t tell her you heard it from me.’