{"product_id":"2940013748804","title":"Kif: An Unvarnished History","description":"The boy stepped into the chill dark of the winter morning and closed the\u003cbr\u003edoor quietly behind him. Quietly because the wife of Farmer Vass was apt\u003cbr\u003eto be unreasonable if she were wakened betimes. It lacked an hour till\u003cbr\u003edawn and there was neither earth nor sky, hedge nor horizon. Only the\u003cbr\u003eall-enveloping dark, immediate, almost tangible--the blackness that hems\u003cbr\u003eus in with ourselves and annihilates philosophy. And it was bitterly\u003cbr\u003ecold. The boy clutched at his coat collar as the thin sterile air struck\u003cbr\u003eat his bare throat. His hobnailed boots echoed irrelevantly--a dreary\u003cbr\u003esound--as he made his stumbling way over the cobbles of the yard and\u003cbr\u003efumbled for the lantern that hung at the stable door. His sleep-sodden\u003cbr\u003ebrain which had brought him thus far mechanically was waking to its daily\u003cbr\u003epassion of revolt.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGod! what a life! What a bloody dam-fool life! A day that began with\u003cbr\u003efumbling in the dark and ended fumbling in another dark, and in between a\u003cbr\u003elong procession of monotonous jobs, impersonal and void of interest. A\u003cbr\u003elife of fastening buckles, he thought venomously, as his rapidly\u003cbr\u003estiffening fingers refused their office. Buckle-fastening! When life was\u003cbr\u003eso short and there was so much of the world. Even those high new-born\u003cbr\u003epearly dawns of summer that lifted his heart with their wonder were but\u003cbr\u003eurgent invitations to set out and see. He wanted passionately wanted--a\u003cbr\u003elife where things happened; where the unexpected swung at you with a\u003cbr\u003eterrifying beauty and events were not, since every hour brought its\u003cbr\u003eevent. The phlegm, the appalling foreverness of the fields and hills\u003cbr\u003eroused in him a desperate consciousness of his own evanescence, and a\u003cbr\u003erebellion that any part of his short and so precious time should be given\u003cbr\u003eto their thankless service. And what was there beyond his work to make it\u003cbr\u003eworth while? To sit in winter at the farmhouse kitchen fire while Johnny,\u003cbr\u003ethe other hired man, scraped on his fiddle and Mary the 'girl' flirted\u003cbr\u003eineptly with a surfaceman from the railway or a shepherd from the hill?\u003cbr\u003eOr to go once in three weeks or a month to a dance at the nearest\u003cbr\u003eschoolhouse--an affair of polkas and boots? Or on summer evenings and\u003cbr\u003eSundays to join the gathering at the bridge-head and exchange gossip and\u003cbr\u003esmutty stories, to make one of the self-elected tribunal which sat in sly\u003cbr\u003ejudgment on the manners and morals of the countryside, utterly content\u003cbr\u003ewith themselves and their lot? Even when he capped their stories and\u003cbr\u003eearned their appreciative laughter and their admiring 'Ay, boy, you're\u003cbr\u003ethe one!' he had waves of angry disgust, not at the subject of his\u003cbr\u003etriumph, but at the spiritual poverty of his audience.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe only events at Tarn were the New Year and an occasional calving. And\u003cbr\u003elast autumn the little Jersey had got bogged in the low grazing; an\u003cbr\u003eaffair which had caused one day at least to be vivid with the meeting of\u003cbr\u003eemergency which is life, and which, like lightning at night, had left the\u003cbr\u003esucceeding moments darker. Beyond the occasional kissing of a girl at a\u003cbr\u003edance the only thrill of positive pleasure that he knew was provided by\u003cbr\u003ethe threepenny 'shockers' which he bought with his scanty pocket-money\u003cbr\u003ewhen in Ferry on carting-business and absorbed in bed at night to the\u003cbr\u003eaccompaniment of Johnny's snores. It was usually a battle between the\u003cbr\u003eswift sleep that falls on the open-air worker and his thirst for colour\u003cbr\u003eand movement. That his need for at least vicarious adventure was great\u003cbr\u003ewas witnessed to by the repeated trouble with Mrs Vass over the\u003cbr\u003eunwarrantable burning of candles. Johnny, not being cast in martyr's\u003cbr\u003emould, had no hesitation in absolving himself at the price of his\u003cbr\u003ecompanion's secret, with the result that candles were rationed\u003cbr\u003ethenceforth. If it had not been for the kindheartedness of the\u003cbr\u003eflirtatious Mary--to whom a male thing in trouble, even if it were only a\u003cbr\u003elong-legged sulky-mouthed boy, was quite unthinkable--his one escape from\u003cbr\u003ea too drab reality might have been seriously hindered. But Mary's\u003cbr\u003egenerous supply of candle-ends--and Mary had royal ideas as to what\u003cbr\u003econstituted ends--saved the situation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt this moment she came to the kitchen door and called into the darkness\u003cbr\u003e'Kif! Are you there, Kif?' her voice subdued in deference to the\u003cbr\u003eunawakened household. The boy, who had seen the light appear fifteen\u003cbr\u003eminutes before in the blank house and had been hoping for the summons,\u003cbr\u003ecame clumping to the open door that emitted a friendly stuffiness to the\u003cbr\u003efrozen yard and followed her into the kitchen, where the fire had\u003cbr\u003egraduated from the first stage of merely spectacular flame to a glowing\u003cbr\u003eheat, and a steaming bowl of tea stood on the table.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47083170595056,"sku":"2940013748804","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013748804_p0.jpg?v=1763589753","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013748804","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}