Once Upon a Misty Bluegrass Hill Read Free

to escape without waking up Aunt Paula.  Goodness kn ows you didn ' t want to wake Aunt Paula after a party night.
    But she especially had to avoid waking up Travis .  He had even hit her several times lately for contrived reasons .  Jolene shivered and pressed the screen under the rubber holder.
    Pleased with her ability to temporarily reset the screen, Jolene carefully pushed the screen door open for her dogs to race out quietly with their own apparent ability to understand hiding from Aunt Paul a .  Jolene held the door to a gentle close once she was on the other side. 
    What was the point of her taking precious time to fix a screen that had so many darned holes anyway?  She wished she could ask her friend Flint to come over with his tool box.  They would have go ne to the junk yard and found some new screen.  She knew how to use his tools better than him but she never did say so . 
    She was grateful s he had never said that to him now that he was dead at 1 9 years old.  He had killed himself wh en his girlfriend wrote him a "D ear Flint" letter while he was in Afghanistan.  The last time he was home he had helped her fix the dog houses so that she could hide money from Aunt Paula in mason jars and bury them under the houses.
    He had seemed to have such purpose that last day she saw him .  He had told her a story about Afghanistan and the ' hour of the lamps ' ....he told her how beautiful it was to see all the lamps lighting along the hillsides when it grew dark. 
    Two weeks later, he was dead.  The beauty of the hour of the lamps was not enough to keep him going when his girlfriend dumped him.  If only Jolene had known he was that fragile....she might have said something.  Written him more often.
    But it was too late.
    His mother had given her his tools.  S he would put the screen right again.
    Even though nothing would ever be quite the same without her best friend Flint.
    But she could not let herself hurt right now.  She could not afford sadness lest she drown.
    Down the paint- flaking steps she went on the heels of her dogs, to break into a run when she hit the cool wet green grass.  Her lungs instantly filled with freedom and fresh fall air.  The pups nipped at her flapping shirt laughing up at her.
    Mission accomplished.  
    If Jolene was gone by the time Aunt Paula got up to stop her to complain and grouch, she would be safe for those few hours. 
    On freedom ' s feet, she passed by the smattering of houses that sprinkled the countryside . M ost of the house s sported pots filled with early spring flowers.  
    At Old Man Jenkins ' place Jolene picked up a few apples from the road and stuffed them into her pockets.
    She nearly ran the whole mile and a quarter to her family farm.  She was not sure how she could survive Aunt Paula and Travis without her visits home to see Storm.  She surely would have run away by now except that it would likely put her too far away from her family farm and Storm. 
    And she fully intended to get it all back someday though she didn't yet know how .
    When she arrived at the back pasture fence, behind the new big brick fancy house put up by the new owners who bought her family farm when her parents died, she stood up a nd looked across the misty blue- green hills. Her breath caught.  Was there anything more beautiful than this?  Green, green grass with the mist rising. Just like in a novel.  You just knew something magic al was going to happen.
    " Yoo - hoo, Storm, " she called out softly.  Her faint whistle hit the wind and kept going.  A few seconds later the young big gray horse pranced out of the mist and toward her, delicately neighing his greeting.  Finnegan and Oliver plopped down in the grass next to her panting from their run and smiling as if they too felt the ease of the world .
    " So how is my big boy then? "  
    Jolene held out the apple for Storm .  His lips gently pulled the apple from her hand and he gave her a soft blow of approval.
    Finnegan