Sunshine and Shadows Read Free Page B

elbow into Pedro's ribs.
    "I wanna see the rattlesnake," Jean-Claude demanded as he slid off his chair.
    "Sorry, no one gets to see it. I chopped the snake's head off with a hoe and threw it in the canal."
    "Both pieces? The head and the tail?" Serafina asked in an awed voice.
    "All of it," Jay confirmed.
    This statement was first greeted with silence and then expressions of dismay.
    "We wanna see that snake," Pedro said indignantly.
    "Yeah, I heard that they wiggle around after they're dead," Connie said.
    "You could have drawn a picture of it," Pedro reminded her. "You're always drawing some kind of picture."
    "Not of headless snakes," Connie said scornfully. "My pictures are for making people understand things. For making them see beautiful or sad things about something."
    "The sad thing about a snake with no head is that it's got no head," Jean-Claude pointed out.
    "So why should I draw it? Come on, let's go look for the gopher tortoise that belongs in that hole," Connie said, jumping up.
    "You kids stay far away from that gopher hole. You never know when another snake might take up residence," Jay told them as they were on their way out the door.
    "But Jay—"
    "I mean it, kids. Go water the sunflower seeds we planted last week. The gopher hole is forbidden, and if I find out any of you have been playing near there, I'll tell Sister Ursula."
    "Sister Ursula! Oh, no!" said Pedro, and that was apparently enough warning to scare them away from gopher holes for the time being. The door slammed after them, and soon the group was running toward the fenced garden.
    "Sister Ursula must be a real deterrent," Lisa said.
    "All she has to do is frown at them, and they back off. It makes her a great disciplinarian. Say, do I get any ice cream for my efforts?" He smiled down at her.
    "You bet," she said. He followed her into the kitchen, where he looked around at the institution-size refrigerator, the big shiny range, and the wide, stainless-steel sinks, all specially installed for the new nutrition program.
    "Chocolate, vanilla, or lime sherbet?" she asked, bending over the deep freezer.
    "Vanilla," he said, and she sensed that he was studying her as she reached deep inside the freezer to get the ice cream. He wasn't the type to strip her with his eyes, but she was pleased to see that he was regarding her with a certain speculation when she turned around. She was amused at how quickly he masked it.
    "Let's go into the dining hall," she said. "It's more pleasant in there."
    They sat down across from each other at the table. "I like what you've done in here with the curtains and things," he said approvingly.
    "The place was pretty dismal when I checked it out last week," she agreed. "My housemate and I worked hard on the curtains. And this room will be my classroom when I teach nutrition classes, so I wanted it to be bright in the daytime—the curtains don't shut out the light. The one thing I still don't like is that the walls look so bare."
    "One of my students has already suggested painting pictures for this room on plywood panels that we had left over from building the garden shed."
    "What a good idea! Tell me more about it," she said, glad to have something to talk about.
    "Connie Fernandez—the girl who came in to tell me about the snake—has made a few sketches. Would you like to see them tonight after dinner? Will you be here then?"
    Lisa heard a clatter in the kitchen, which meant that Sister Ursula and Sister Clementine had arrived to cook the first meal to be served in the new dining hall.
    "I'll be here," she said.
    He scraped the last bit of ice cream out of the cup. "I'd better get back to the garden. We're supposed to be painting designs on the fence today, and when I leave the kids alone for a minute or two, they always seem to get into mischief, like poking sticks down gopher holes. I'll see you later." He smiled at her again and she thought irrelevantly that he had a kind smile. He had a kind voice, too.
    She headed