The Devil's Paintbox Read Free

We had Jane Austen and Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein
and
The Swiss Family Robinson,
and
Aesop's Fables.
But most went for trade again, and the mice got to Aesop.”
    She knelt down by the pail and poured the creek water over the cloth. “It won't take long to strain out.” She got up, went to the flour canister and took out a pair of spectacles.
    “Don't do that now!” Aiden whispered fiercely.
    “Why not?” Maddy whispered back. “I don't like grass hoppers raw!” She smiled at Jackson. “These were my grandma's,” she explained, holding up the thick lenses. “In Ireland. She died in the famine. You heard of the famine? When all the potatoes went bad?”
    “I have.”
    “Our ma and pa came over then so not to starve, and brought the glasses along. The print in some of the books is real small, especially the Shakespeare one.”
    “You got a book of Shakespeare?” Jackson's face brightened.
    “That big one.” She nodded at the pile. “Ma stole it.”
    “She didn't steal it,” Aiden snapped. “Took it for wagesdue. Before we came west.” He looked steadily at Jackson. “My parents were indentured servants in Virginia. They worked off their time.” It felt important to him that Jackson understood this. “Regular seven years, plus two extra for the children they brought over with them, though those boys worked from the first day. My parents had skills. The owner asked them to stay on but then cheated their wages.”
    “Said more was owing for Ma having three more babies,” Maddy added. “So we took all of Shakespeare.”
    “Sounds like a fair trade to me,” Jackson agreed easily.
    “The people never had read it anyway, pages weren't even cut. We took the
Atlas of the World
too. That's our favorite.”
    “Was a lot of wages,” Aiden said defiantly.
    “No doubt.”
    “We read from it every night,” Maddy went on. “It is ‘a complete survey of all the geographical divisions of the world and all the various peoples comprised therein,’ “ she said, easily quoting the subtitle from memory.
    “Well, I guess that's nice to know,” Jackson said.
    “There are illustrations, maps and exceptional rare photographs of native peoples. Would you like to see the curious custom of Chinese foot binding?”
    “Maybe later,” he sighed.
    Maddy led them back outside to a flat rock, where she squatted down, held the grasshopper in one hand, then neatly pinched off its head. She laid it out on the rock as if at some kind of pagan altar, then held the spectacles so the sun shone through the lens, focusing a white-hot beam of light on the insect. The ray first made a tiny scorch on the grasshopper's wing; then there was a sizzling sound, anddark bubbles boiled up out of the headless body and around the leg joints. She picked up the roasted insect by a hind leg.
    “Careful, it's hot,” she said as she offered it to Jackson.
    “Thanks, but I ate my breakfast,” he replied.
    Maddy broke the grasshopper in half and handed one piece to her brother. Jackson, who had seen all kinds of murder and mayhem in his life, shut his eyes.
    “Look, you two're bad off,” he said. “That's clear. I'll take you into Sweetwater. There's missionaries there now will feed you, and a government man signing up relief. Half the state is bad off and starving.”
    “We don't need relief,” Aiden said. “I mean to join the army.”
    “War is over,” Jackson said.
    “Over?” Aiden knew he should be glad, but it felt like the last step had been kicked out from under him.
    “Who won?” Maddy asked excitedly.
    “Union Army and General Grant,” Jackson said. “A couple of weeks ago, April ninth. They signed a treaty at a place called Appomattox.”
    Aiden, unsure where the man's loyalties lay, just nodded, but Maddy clapped her hands and gave a cry of delight.
    “That means all the slaves are free now?”
    “Suppose so.”
    “So they can go home?”
    “Home?” Jackson frowned. Aiden kicked her ankle. There had been