Gemini Summer Read Free Page B

voice like Scarlett O’Hara, said, “Great balls of fire!”
    Mrs. River told Danny to sit on the kitchen table. She sent Beau to fetch tweezers and the bottle of iodine, and began to pick bits of glass from Danny’s skin.

eight
    The boys never learned what Old Man River said to Creepy Colvig. They didn’t even know he’d come back until they heard him digging again. Then Danny, a bit ashamed of what he’d done, was afraid to go out and ask.
    Right then, he decided that he would have to spend the rest of his life in the south end of the Hollow and never go near where the Colvigs lived. As he sat on the table, watching his mother scrub the skin raw on his knees and his hands, he felt quite sad about that. He could never cross the little bridge again. He would have to use the big one instead, and walk nearly twice as far to get to school.
    “Sit still,” said his mother.
    “Sorry,” said Danny. He’d been squirming.
    She opened the bottle of iodine. A glass dropper was built into the cap, and it tinkled round the bottle as she stirred.
    “Is it going to hurt?” asked Danny.
    “It might sting,” she said, and it did. But Danny only grimaced; he made no sound as she smeared the iodine across his knees with the glass dropper. It felt tangy and sharp, like lemon juice rubbed into his cuts. Outside, the Old Man’s shovel was scraping on stones. “You should help your father sometimes, Danny. And you too,” said Mrs. River, raising her voice so that Beau would be certain to hear. He was in the living room, and the TV was on.
    She made brownish, rusty streaks across Danny’s knees and his palms. “I don’t know what he’s doing out there, but I don’t like him doing it on his own. He’s like a crazy man, all that digging.”
    “A dog could help him,” Danny said. “If we had a dog, Dad could just show him where to dig, and then stand back and—”
    “Fiddle-dee-dee, is that all you ever think about?” said Mrs. River, suddenly smiling. She gave Danny’s head a little push, and he saw how her eyes were shining, and it made him happy inside. “One day we’ll move to the country,” she said. “We’ll move down South, and the first thing we’ll do is get you a dog. That was always the plan, to live in the country. To have dogs and horses.”
    “Then why don’t we move there?” said Danny.
    “Not enough work for your father.” She looked out the window, then dabbed again with the iodine.
    “But the Hollow’s like the country,” said Danny. “It’s
nearly
the country.”
    “Oh!” she said with a little laugh. “Now don’t you sound like your father? He said the same thing years ago, when we first came down here. He found he could park his truck out front, and to him this
was
the country.” She put the dipper back in the iodine bottle and tightened the lid. “Well, he’s never known what it’s like to have your neighbor a mile away. Sometimes I think this is as close to the country as your father ever really wants to get.”
    The Old Man came in then, so suddenly that Danny jumped at the sound of the door banging open. But the Old Man didn’t look angry. He only got himself a glass of water, and he rubbed Danny’s head on the way to the sink, and again on the way back. At the door, just before he slipped out, he said, “I found a burial ground out there, Flo.”
    Beau was gone in an instant, but Danny had to wait as his mother covered his knees with Band-Aids, all that were left in the box. She crossed them over each other, until his knees looked like pink baskets. Then Danny leapt down and ran out, his mother shouting after him not to get himself dirty. He scrambled to the top of the pile, and from there saw the bones right away.
    Three skeletons lay in the ground, in a row that wasn’t quite straight, and not level at all. The Old Man had uncovered them carefully, so that Danny could see how the yellow bones had once been joined.
    The tiniest little body, with its tiny little