Running Out of Night Read Free Page B

for now, so long as she stayed put and kept quiet. Why should I worry about easin her when I were nervous as a hen in a fox den? What did I care if she were scairt down there? I were gettin mad just thinkin about the fix she’d put me in.
    I spun round, went straight to the bench, and clunked it on the floor as I moved it. Maybe put the scare into her, maybe so much of a scare she’d take off and head for the … the what?
    I lifted the trapdoor just a sliver. I needed to make sure I could put things to rights if the boys surprised me.
    “You in there?” I asked as I bent over the hole and squinted into the blackness.
    “What you think?” she answered.
    That made me mad. “Don’t go smartin off, or you’ll be sorry,” I barked. Oh sweet Lord. I sounded like Pa.
    I knelt down and leant forward. “You gonna have to stay quiet here till tomorrow mornin. You cain’t go out yonder with all them hunters and dogs runnin the woods.”
    She snuffled loudly but didn’t say a word.
    “I’m goin to do some pickin and my chores, but I’m not goin to take any chances talkin to you again today,” I said. “Don’t cry. And don’t you move and knock into anythin else. Understand?”
    “Bless you,” she whispered. Her words made me feel like the mud Pa had knocked off his boots.
    I passed a crock of water and a tin cup down to her and let the door drop. I set on my haunches, rocked back and forth, back and forth, and tried to imagine how I would feel down there alone. Alone, in the dark, knowin that traders and slave catchers and packs of dogs was searchin the woods and fields for me.
    I almost cried for her.
    And then she sneezed.
    I stomped on the floor, then knelt down till my lips almost touched the crack around the trapdoor. “One sneeze like that when everyone’s to home, and you’re dead. Dead like the possum Pa skinned last night.” I glanced up at the window to make sure nobody were lookin in, then blew on the sand and watched my handprints disappear.

A lways carry a buckeye in your pocket as a good-luck charm
.
    I worked among the poles of greasy beans, tugged, twisted, and dropped the plumpin pods into my fanny basket. The beans was just startin to lose their green—I needed to string and hang ’em afore I missed my chance to make our winter supply of leather britches. I don’t know why, but stringin and knottin those beans, well, it makes me feel like I’m settin my world to rights. I love hangin them beans on the back porch, line after line, like so many pairs of narrow green socks.
    “Thank ya, beans, y’all be mighty good eatin,” I sang to them. Then a layer of tomaters. “Thanks, all ya beauties.Y’all redder than a maple leaf.” As I worked, I forgot all my worries, all my sorrows. The garden does that for me, makes me feel as healt up as the arnica and comfrey poultices the preacher’s wife made for me once after I angered my pa.
    From the field nearby, I heard the sweet slurried song of the lark. I answered with my own whistlin song. He were confused, sang right back, and I whistled again and smiled. I’m a right good whistler but most never do it in front of anyone.
    All around me the barn swallows wove and dipped, chittered and dived. Under the eaves of the shed, their mud nests overflowed with gape-mouthed babies beggin for their suppers. A phoebe, tail dippin up and down like the handle on our water pump, left his perch and snapped a moth out of the air in front of me.
    Maybe I were feelin too good, too right with things, but the next minute I looked up and there she stood in the doorway. Her brown hair stuck out in tufts like the pinfeathers on the baby swallows. The dirty gray bandanna in her hand bulged with a passel of Pa’s victuals. She took one look at me and started to jump off the porch and hightail it.
    “Stop!” I shouted, and ran toward her. “You cain’t run when they’s so close to you. Them dogs’ll catch your scent.”
    She turned toward me and her golden