Brave Enemies Read Free Page A

oily ink. I tried to spit it out but swallowed a mouthful anyway. It went down like a trickle of warm oil, filling cracks and running along veins and pooling up in corners. I started to warm up around my belly and the heat spread to my ribs and groin. Warmth spread to my shoulders and elbows.
    They lifted me up. I reached out and felt all the arms holding me up. They were trotting and we moved faster and faster.
    â€œHold still,” somebody said.
    It was as if I were floating in a warm swamp. There were flowers on the banks and a bird singing in the trees. It was a mockingbird that knew all the songs. There was grass way back under the trees and beyond the hayfields, and beyond that the haze of the mountains.
    â€œHold his shoulders,” somebody said. They gripped me harder. A purple moon circled somewhere above my head. I remembered what it was I was afraid of.
    â€œYou can’t cut off my foot,” I yelled as loud as I could.
    â€œSteady on there,” the officer said.
    It took all my strength and all my will to say it. I had to pull strength from my toes and my fingertips and from behind my ears. The air was on fire and the crows were laughing high in the sky. Men were laughing too.
    â€œOh Lord,” the doctor said.
    Hands were touching me, hands on my hips and on my belly. Hands on my chest and on my throat.
    â€œI never saw the like,” somebody said.
    I tasted the flower of fever, a taste thick as porridge on my tongue. I had sleep in my mouth and thick batter drying on my tongue.
    â€œI never would have thought it possible,” somebody said.
    I knew I had to find my rifle. I’d dropped my rifle. But I couldn’t recall anymore. Mama would ask me what happened to the rifle. I stayed in the swamp, sinking deeper and deeper into the warm mud. There wassilt and salt and rotten leaves, and leeches in the mud. I settled until my eyes were level with the water. There were lizards and crawfish on the bottom.
    I tasted the dry fever flames and the crust on my tongue. It was fever water, swamp water I sank into. Things floated in the pool, scums and slimes, crusts that shone like metal, skims and spiders. Bugs and water dogs crawled up my britches leg. Mud squeezed between my toes.
    I was pushed back and down, and the breath got sucked out of me. And then I raised up and the light hit my face. My nose stung inside and my eyes burned. My ears gurgled as I was thrown back and the water streamed off me. I tasted hot mud and couldn’t get my breath. My eyes were full of mud.
    â€œIs my baby all right?” I said.
    Everybody all around me laughed.

O NE
    D ID YOU EVER SEE somebody stamp a terrapin, just stand over it and come down with a boot heel on its shell? Mr. Griffin would do that. Now a terrapin never hurt a thing, except a strawberry or tomato that was lying on the ground. A terrapin is the quietest creature. Even when it moves through the leaves or sticks you don’t hear a thing. They say a terrapin will bite you and won’t let go till it thunders. But I never did see a terrapin bite anybody. You come close and they pull their wrinkled neck and beak into the shell, and even their legs. They act like Mama did when something bad happened, they pull all into themselves.
    But my stepdaddy, Mr. Griffin, would find a terrapin in the yard or on the road, or eating a dewberry at the edge of the woods, and he’d say to me, “Josie, this young fellow thinks he’s safe, all closed up in his armor.”
    I never would answer, because I knew what was coming. Since Mr. Griffin married Mama when I was twelve, I’d been keeping away from him all I could.
    â€œThinks he’s safe because he can’t see nothing,” Mr. Griffin said, andkicked the terrapin onto hard ground. And then he stood over the wrinkled shell and brought his foot down like a hammer. You would have thought the terrapin was a big walnut the way it cracked into pieces. Mr. Griffin raised