Mrs. Kimble Read Free Page A

soft from sitting out in the heat. He filled his pockets with the kibble. He felt bad stealing from the Hogans, but Queenie was fat and lazy. Anyone could see she had too much food already.
    From the Hogans’ he went through the Arnetts’ yard and into the woods. The path ran along a shallow stream. Earlier that spring a gang of older boys had built a dam there. He’d been watching the dam for weeks to see if more mud and sticks and rocks were being added. One of the gang, a mean, freckled boy named Jeffrey, had moved away; Charlie had seen the truck drive up to Jeffrey’s house at the bottom of the hill. Since then the boys had neglected the dam. Charlie hoped that if he watched and waited long enough, they would forget the dam completely and it would be his.
    He knew about moving. When he was little they’d moved to Richmond from Missouri. He remembered the kitchen full of boxes, his mother wrapping dishes in layers of newspaper. His father had driven the truck. Charlie had sat next to him on a box of books.
    There had been no truck when his father went away, no boxes of dishes and newspaper that Charlie saw. He wasn’t there when his father left. He was riding the bus to Pappy’s house with Mama and Jody. When they came back his father was gone. Charlie was six then, had since turned seven. His father hadn’t come back for his birthday. He hadn’t come back at all.
    He followed the creek upstream, to where six big rocks lay end to end, making a bridge across the stream. If he was careful he could cross without getting his sneakers wet. He’d always wondered if somebody had made the bridge, carried the heavy rocks to the middle of the stream, or if they’d simply been there forever.
    On the other side he ran downstream to where the ground got swampy under his feet. He crossed the swamp to the empty house—old,falling down, its windows covered with boards. Under the front porch lived a mother dog and her four puppies. He’d found the puppies when they were just born, silky, mouselike things with pinkish eyes and small, slick heads, snuggled in close to their mother’s belly. He visited them every day.
    He ran around to the front of the house. “Here, boys,” he called softly. The black puppy, the friendliest one and Charlie’s favorite, came first.
    He reached into his pocket for a piece of kibble. The puppy came to him and mouthed it, its moist tongue sliding over his palm.
     
    T HE THING to do was make a list. In the past Birdie would write down everything: milk, hamburger meat, potatoes. Her husband would drive her to the A&P and walk down the aisles with her and they would talk about the prices of things; he’d lived on a farm as a boy and knew what was in season. Afterward he’d carry the bags into the house and place cans and boxes on the shelves; she’d separate the Green Stamps the cashier had given her and paste them into books. She had saved Green Stamps for years, redeemed them for a carpet sweeper, an egg timer she kept by the stove.
    She’d kept busy then. She’d cooked his breakfast. Eggs, she wrote carefully. Bacon. She’d read to the children and made their lunches. Cheese slices. Tomato soup. While the baby slept she would dust or sweep or wash clothes. Oxydol. Clorox bleach. Every few days she’d wash two dozen diapers; the new disposables were too expensive, her husband said. After the laundry she’d start dinner. It seemed impossible, now, that she’d ever done so many things in a day.
    Birdie looked at her list, written in wavy letters on the back of an envelope. The ink had begun to smear onto her sweaty hands. The complexity of the plan overwhelmed her: the driving across town, the finding of things in the bright aisles, the carrying of heavy bags from carport to kitchen. She sat for a moment with her head in her hands, her eyes leaking tears.
    Jody appeared in the doorway. “Whata matter, Mummy?”
    Birdie rubbed her eyes. “Nothing, button.”
    “What did you got on your