The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter Read Free

of em? You wouldn’ta even knowed who was the father.”
    â€œThey made me. I didn’t want it.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œThey made me! I didn’t want it!”
    â€œBaby made from that much meanness, it don’t need to be out in the world.”
    â€œI was a sergeant. One of the privates salutes me before.”
    â€œWaaaah!”
    â€œSaluted me an laughed. Then he done it.”
    â€œThat thing had to die. One way or the other.”
    â€œWa’n’t a thing! A baby! I kilt it! Wa’n’t a thing!”
    â€œOne way or the other.”
    â€œ That boy died. ” My father’s words snap me back to the present. His eyes far away. “From flu! He woulda got along fine on the one leg, he hadn’t caught the bug in the infirmary. I met him two days before he passed. ‘How old?’ I go. Him: ‘Eighteen.’ Then, hour before he expire, cleanin up his sins nick a time he confesses. ‘Sorry, I lied before. Fifteen.’”
    My mother comes walking through with B.J. Smiling, touching his face. “Good boy.” He grins back. “Take out the trash, he do it without a fight. Mow the lawn, flip the mattress. Anything you ask, he’s the good one.” They’re gone, upstairs.
    Pa snaps his paper back to reading level, disappearing behind it, so I know story hour’s drawn to a close. I go back and pick up Mr. Hemingway and his Great War. The bookmark fell out when my father summoned me so I have to flip through to find my place.
    Who’s the good one. I do what I’m asked, and I never throw tantrums. But we all know B.J.’s her favorite. Mostly I’m not resentful. And what she just said was no cut to me anyway, I know it was aimed at my father who she’s still mad at about Christmas dinner.
    â€œSo what he do his chores when he told.” I look up, see my father’s folded his paper on his lap, his eyes on me. Take a sec fore I realize he’s referring to B.J. “ That we coulda got from a trained seal.”

 
    3
    She sits one desk ahead of me, inches away, whisper-giggling to Suzanne Willetts. “Miss Laherty,” says Mr. Holcomb, “could you please in your own words explain to the class the concept of the Magna Carta?” Wish I could help her out, slip it in her ear: England , 1215. Prior to this, if the king didn’t like your looks he could have you beheaded, all his whim. Now justice for everybody, something new and radical. But no way could we get away with it, and anyway, despite her going all agape, something about Margaret Laherty always seems to charm the teachers from being too hard on her. I’ve known her since first grade. Red-brown hair halfway down her back, think you call that auburn. When the lunch bell rings, she gathers her books, walks out slapping Suzanne on the back, some powerful private joke. Margaret’s eyes big and brown. Twinkly.
    I stay behind. Sitting alone to catch up on some biology growl . Smell it: egg-olive sandwich and cheddar corn muffin, baked apple growl . I drink my tin cup of water, trying to appease my roaring empty stomach. Concentrate: Blue eyes can only make blue eyes, but brown-eyed recessives can make brown and one out of four blue, plus earlobes! Genes dictate whether yours’re hanging free or attached to your neck GROWL .
    Fourth grade when the Works Progress Administration started school lunch, I was all in favor. But its novelty’s definitely worn off. I asked my mother about packing. “We are not poor country bumpkins, I think we can afford a nickel for hot dinner, penny for the milk.” I started to argue and she, “And that is that. ” I can’t tell her first day back after Christmas Danny Rice pitching his peas at me, amusing half the school. Sitting alone not bothering nobody and still the humiliation, finally I make it all alone: empty classroom. I don’t like deceiving my mother but