Alabama Moon Read Free Page A

haven’t touched yet.”
    I figured he wasn’t in the mood to buy extras. “We’ve got everything we need already, don’t we, Pap?”
    Pap nodded. “Got everything we need,” he repeated.
    We walked back up the road and into the forest, where we took a trail that I liked through a grove of cedars and tall field grass. That was the last time Pap left the forest.

 
3
    Winter had been on us for two months, and the forest creatures were fat and fluffy in their new coats. It had started to snow once, but the ground didn’t hold it, which always disappointed me. I only remembered a few times when there was enough snow to make tracks in. One of those times Pap and I made pine-bark sleds and had races down the riverbank. I’d always wanted to do it again.
    On the morning Pap broke his leg, the north wind was tossing the tops of the trees and gray clouds raced over our heads. Pap was always alert when the wind stirred the forest floor and cartwheeled the leaves. It was hard to tell which sounds were natural and which weren’t.
    We were checking traps along a beaver dam only a mile from the lodge. With the wind blowing like it was and us being so close to Mr. Wellington’s place, Pap must have been extra nervous. I think he was too busy looking around for signs of people to pay attention to where he was going. Heslipped on the dam and got his shin caught between two branches. He had just enough time to turn and look at me before he fell into the beaver pond on his back. The water was so clear I saw his face staring up at me and wincing in pain. I jumped down after him and jerked at the branches until his leg came loose. The rest of Pap splashed into the water, and then he dragged himself out of the pond. After he was propped against a cypress knee, I went and found some sticks to use for a splint, and we bound his leg with the leather shoelaces from my moccasins.
    That afternoon, I got Pap back to the shelter in the wheelbarrow. He pulled himself inside, and I saw how much his leg hurt by the sweat that soaked his face and clothes. I helped him up on the hide pile and stayed next to him to give him water as he needed it. Pap didn’t like doctors, and he didn’t like medicine that you couldn’t find in the forest, so there wasn’t much else for me to do.
    Sometime that night Pap told me to take his boot off. I watched his hands white-knuckle the roots above his head while I pulled slowly on the heel. He didn’t make any noise because it was nighttime.
    When I got the boot off, bloody water and sand poured out of it. I cut the sock away with my knife and placed it to the side. We saved everything. Even a bloody sock could make a rag to patch clothes.
    In the dim light of the grease lamp, I saw parts of Pap’s bone coming through his shin. Seeing bone and blood and wounds was nothing to me. I dealt with them almost every day killing, skinning, and butchering animals. I only hesitated so that Pap would tell me what to do.
    â€œGet a rag and wipe it off,” he said. “Boil some water and put the rag in the water before you do.”
    â€œSo the wound won’t get infected?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    I went to the wood stove and did as he said. When I returned and began to gently wipe his leg, I watched his face. I saw his expression change when the rag went over the jagged portion of bone.
    â€œDoes it hurt?”
    â€œJust keep wipin’.”
    â€œYou want me to go get Mr. Abroscotto?”
    â€œNothin’ he can do you can’t do yourself, boy.”
    I nodded and kept wiping. I stayed up with him that night after the wound was cleaned. After a while, Pap didn’t seem to be concerned that we stay quiet anymore. He lay there and talked to me and told me most of what he was thinking.
    â€œTell me again why we live out here,” he asked me.
    â€œBecause we never asked for anything and nobody ever gave us anything.