Hold Fast Read Free

afraid,” I said.
    â€œA lot?”
    â€œYeah … when I thinks about it.”
    I could see his eyes starting to fill up.
    â€œI mean, they won’t send us away, will they? Like to an orphanage?”
    â€œNo, they wouldn’t do that.”
    â€œCause if they do, I won’t go. Aunt Flo won’t send us where we don’t want to go, will she?”
    â€œYou knows Aunt Flo wouldn’t do that.”
    â€œShe might. She might. Nobody wants us. We got no mudder or no fa…”
    â€œShut up!”
    Then the water really started to come.
    â€œI’m sorry. Stop it now. Com’on, stop it. Nobody is goin to take you anywhere.”
    â€œYou don’t know.”
    â€œYes, I do.”
    â€œNo, you don’t.”
    â€œStop your cryin. You’re not that big of a baby anymore. Look at ya. Like some two-year-old.”
    â€œYou’re someone to talk. You was bawlin too. I heard ya.”
    â€œShut up. Everybody’ll be upstairs if you keeps that up.”
    â€œI don’t care.”
    â€œShut up!”
    He wouldn’t stop.
    â€œCry baby. Cry baby. You big sook!”
    â€œShut up,” he said.
    â€œCry baby! Sook!”
    â€œShut up.”
    â€œMake me.”
    â€œI’ll hit ya.”
    â€œYou might try, sook.”
    â€œI said shut up or I’ll hit ya good and hard.”
    â€œHit me. Com’on and hit me.”
    â€œI really will. Hard.”
    â€œCry baby!”
    â€œShut up!”
    He wrung up his fist.
    â€œSook!”
    And I let him hit me really hard. As hard as he darn well liked.
    The next morning the sunlight came pouring in through the bedroom window. The heat spread all over us across the bed. I was already hot and sticky with sweat, stuck and twisted in my clothes. Not so much as a draft all during the night because I never had the mind to get up and open a window. Brent was next to me, sweaty the same way. The poor kid. He cried till I gave up trying to make him stop.
    All that night I had tried like crazy to sleep. I had turned in the bed a thousand times. It came back to me, back and back and back to me all night. I got stomach sick. But if I had throwed up my guts it wouldn’t a made me any better.
    I looked at Brent. “You think it’s going to be easy,” I said, waking him up. “The hell with you buddy, it’s not. Get outa bed. Go get some clean clothes on. Go on.”
    When Aunt Flo came and looked in the doorway to see if we was awake, she got an awful surprise. I never gave her so much as a chance to say anything. I just told her we’d soon be down to breakfast. Then I hauled on a cleanpair of jeans and a red and white T-shirt. One with leaves on it. It was the best one I had. And I made sure that Brent had himself washed good and dressed like I told him to.
    See, I’m pig-headed. Dad always said I was pig-headed. No more than he was. Well, I was trying to take all that had happened square in the face. I was trying. They both would a told me to do it that way. They would a said see what you can make of yourself.
    It wasn’t going to be that easy. Downstairs, me and Brent walked in on a kitchenful of miserable silence. Aunt Flo, Uncle Ted and Aunt Ellen, even Grandfather, neither one of them was saying a word.
    â€œWhas we havin for breakfast?” I asked right away. Loud, like a dish smashing across the middle of the floor.
    They sat there dumb. Probably they expected me to bawl for them.
    â€œAny eggs fried?” Loud again.
    â€œMichael, I didn’t think you’d want eggs this morning,” Aunt Flo said, almost stuttering it out. “I made you some pancakes, just like you likes them. But you wait a minute. If you wants eggs, I’ll fry you some. You’ll have some too, won’t you, Brent?”
    â€œSure he will,” I told her, and looked at Brent as much as to say that he better not say no, if he knew what was good for