Five Minutes in Heaven Read Free Page B

Sunday school building.
    Ace and his father also had matching black eyes that seemed just to absorb the rainbow light through the stained-glass windows rather than to reflect it as everyone else’s eyes did. The other adults tried to avoid Mr. Kilgore’s stare just as the kids avoided Ace’s. He was always buttonholing Jude’s father outside the church, trying to argue about Senator McCarthy. Mr. Kilgore’s voice would grow louder and louder and his face more and more red as he described the agents of evil who were infesting the country like vermin.
    Spotting Jude in line behind him, Ace leaned back to whisper, “We gonna get you, Goody Two-shoes.”
    Jude flinched, picturing the cat cowering in the dirt.
    Molly, standing beside her, said, “Just shut up, goofball.”
    Ace looked at her, startled. “Who are you?”
    â€œThat’s for me to know and you to find out.”
    â€œWell, we’ll get you, too, ugly. And lynch you with those long black braids of yours.”
    The choir was singing: “…red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.…”
    â€œYou and what army, cat killer?” asked Molly, whose irises had shifted to a dangerous battle gray.
    Ace narrowed his eyes and glared at Jude. “Don’t you worry, little lady. The Commie Killers know how to take care of rats, and friends of rats.” Grabbing his tie, he pulled it upward, nooselike, mouth lolling open and tongue hanging out.
    â€œWhy don’t you go eat a vomit sandwich?” suggested Molly as their lines parted before the carpeted steps leading to the altar, on which stood a golden cross with Christ writhing in agony. Jude was impressed by her new friend’s courage. No one ever talked like that to the Kilgores.
    â€œM AYBE THERE’S SOME WAY to make a tunnel fall down with the Commie Killers inside it,” mused Molly as they sat at a long table coloring pictures of Jesus tending baby lambs.
    â€œI think we should ask Sandy Andrews to help us,” said Jude. “He’s a child progeny.” She selected a fat ocher crayon for Jesus’ hair and beard.
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œHe taught himself to read and write when he was four, so they let him skip first and second grade. My dad says he’s so smart that they may have to send him away to school. I’m glad I’m not that smart.”
    â€œDo you think he’d help girls?”
    â€œMaybe. He doesn’t have any friends. He doesn’t like to kill things.”
    â€œW HY ARE SOME PEOPLE SO mean?” Jude asked Clementine, licking chocolate frosting off a beater while the morning sun through the kitchen window turned the red linoleum to orange. When she woke up that morning, her stomach had clenched with dread. The Commie Killers were going to get her. They were going to do to her what they’d done to that cat. Then she remembered her new friend, Molly, who had promised to help her, and she began to feel a faint flicker of hope.
    â€œThe good Lord made them that way so the righteous could be tested.”
    â€œLike a test at the hospital?”
    â€œLike a test ever day of the year. You gots to be kind to them what treats you cruel.” Clementine was spreading the frosting with swirling strokes of her spatula, making chocolate waves.
    â€œHow come?”
    â€œCause one fine day they gets ashamed of acting so ugly and they turns to Jesus. And then you wins yourself a golden crown.”
    Jude studied Clementine, picturing a golden crown atop her red bandanna head cloth. “But what if it’s not you they’re ugly to? What if they’re ugly to something else?”
    â€œWhat ugliness you seen, Miss Judith?” She paused to study Jude, who was winding her tongue around a beater blade to get at the frosting in back, which was still gritty with sugar.
    â€œNothing. I’m just wondering.”
    â€œA good person will