On the Road to Mr. Mineo's Read Free Page B

where she had heard the faint rustle. A little brown dog stood knee-deep in the hay, looking up into the rafters.
    Ethel shined the flashlight into the hayloft above her. A pigeon sat nestled in a deserted barn-owl nest where the rafter met the roof.
    â€œWho invited y’all into my barn?” Ethel called, stepping through the door.
    The pigeon flapped and fluttered in the rafters overhead, then landed on the rotting floor of the hayloft and hopped frantically on one leg before swooping out of the large opening near the top of the barn roof.
    The little brown dog dashed across the barn past Ethel, nearly knocking her off her feet as he scrambled out the door and disappeared into the darkness.
    The faint pitter-patter of Ethel’s heart turned into a ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom . She staggered backward, tripped over that ancient milk bucket she had told Amos to move about a million times, dropped the flashlight, and landed with an oomph on the dusty barn floor.
    And while all the rustling and fluttering and dashing and swooping and oomphing was going on out in the barn, a loud, steady zzzzz drifted out of the Ropers’ bedroom window, swirled over the path to the barn, and irritated Ethel.

 
    CHAPTER EIGHT
    Pigeon in the Moonlight
    Fee fi fo fum
    Fee fi fo fum
    Fee fi fo fum
    Stella whispered words through her bedroom window.
    The words swirled around in the still night air and danced dreamily up Waxhaw Lane.
    Across the street, in the big white house with blue-striped awnings, Gerald stared at the ceiling and worried.
    He had never said no to Stella before.
    He tiptoed to his window and peered out into the darkness. Somewhere in the distance a cat was yowling. The mournful sound echoed up the empty Main Street of Meadville.
    While Stella whispered and Gerald worried and the cat yowled, a little brown dog trotted along the side of the road.
    And high above the fields and road signs and telephone poles on the outskirts of town, a one-legged pigeon flew silently in the moonlight.

 
    CHAPTER NINE
    The Boy Who Cried Wolf
    Just beyond the Ropers’ small brick house, there was a long dirt driveway. At the end of the driveway was a cluster of ramshackle houses. Living in each of the ramshackle houses was a family named Raynard.
    Earl and Maude Raynard and their tiny baby, Earl Jr.
    Jackson and Yolanda Raynard and their five kids, whose names all started with the letter B .
    Emmaline Raynard and her three dogs and four cats and a ferret that smelled bad all the time.
    And Alvin and Celia Raynard and their son, whose real name was Lawson but whom everyone called Mutt.
    Mutt Raynard was a liar.
    Everyone knew it.
    Mutt lied about almost everything.
    What he ate for breakfast.
    Where he caught the catfish he brought home for dinner.
    How he lost his shoes.
    Almost everything.
    Maude Raynard called him the Boy Who Cried Wolf. “Look, Mutt,” she told him. “Nobody’s ever gonna believe one dang thing you say, even when you tell the truth. Like the Boy Who Cried Wolf.”
    But that didn’t seem to have much of an impact on Mutt.
    Sometimes he told the truth.
    And sometimes he lied.
    And nobody knew which was which and nobody really cared anymore.
    So when Mutt told everyone that a one-legged pigeon had landed on his head, nobody paid any attention.
    The next day, when he told them it had happened again, nobody paid any attention.
    â€œI swear ,” he said. “A one-legged pigeon. He came swooping out of nowhere and landed right on my head.” He patted the top of his head. “Up yonder by the lake.” He threw his skinny arm out in the direction of the lake.
    But nobody paid any attention.
    So Mutt was going to go to the lake every day and wait for that pigeon to show up again. And when it did, he would catch it. He would put it in a cardboard box and take it to each of the Raynard houses and say, “See? I told you a one-legged pigeon landed on my head.”

 
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