The Five Pearls Read Free Page B

touched the wound. “I think I can control the infection, but you’ll need a few days of bed rest if you expect to fight another day.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Powell.”
“You are most welcome, Mr. Battle. Think we can manage these stairs?”
“We can try.”
She took his shoulders and pulled him to his feet. “How much do you weigh?”
“In Mexico, I was one sixty.”
“Before or after the sale of your organ?”
“Before.”
Mrs. Powell clucked her tongue. “You are quite a prize, I expect.”
She pulled him up the long stairway one step at a time. John Battle was surprised by the white-haired woman’s strength.
CHAPTER THREE
    The mid-afternoon sun brought no warmth. Crisp red, orange and yellow leaves were falling. In a few weeks, all but the sturdy gray green pines would stand bare and exposed.
    Amber Beulah stood at the guardrail of the footbridge, studying the streambed below for signs of life.
She was barely seventeen, but the weight of the secret baby ball inside her skinny kid belly made her feel thirty. What have I done ? Two minutes of a strange new terror and pleasure while I leaned against a dead tree. What have I done? I’m a mistake. Worthless.
She pressed her arms against the pair of library books that were now a month overdue. She adjusted her flimsy black waistcoat, pulling it down. It was a good buy. Two bucks at the secondhand store, according to the price tag. What made it even better was that she stole it. She just slipped it on and walked out the door. Amber didn’t like stealing, but there was no job, no allowance. You didn’t get an allowance at the group home for wayward girls.
Winter’s coming , she realized.
Below her, two of her friends darted into view from under the thin-laced canopy of Cottonwood trees that lined the narrow banks of Shooks Run. Toby was catching a lobbed pass from Matt.
Better check in with the gang , she decided.
She made her way down the narrow, muddy red path that led from the Shooks Run bridge to the old log by the creek’s edge. The log was maybe a hundred feet from the bridge, somewhat hidden under the shade of the grandfather Cottonwood. It was the biggest tree along the creek, as far as she could tell. Its trunk was nearly ten feet wide, its height at least eighty feet, with branches spreading out just as wide as the tree was tall.
She and her friends had rolled the dead log down to the creek three years ago. The bark was stripped, burned or chipped away. Knives had found their marks in the way of inscriptions and symbols.
Toby reached the log at the same time as her, football in hand. He was tall, a medium-skinned black teenager, the color of a football , someone once said. Pigskin .
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
Toby saw the books in Amber’s hand. “Didn’t make it to the library again, huh?”
“That’s just my excuse to get me out of the house,” she lied.
The truth be told, Amber had read every word of each book twice already.
Toby tossed the football back to Matt and sat down. He was done with football.
“Anything happen yet today?” Amber asked the boys.
“Naw,” Matt said on approach. Also finished with football, he plopped himself down alongside Toby. “Just chillin’.”
Two more kids appeared on the bridge above. Julio and Marie.
“Say, fools,” Julio yelled down. “Anybody want a beer?”
“Julio stole another twelve pack!” sidekick Marie said with triumph in her thin voice.
They scooted down the path to the old log. Julio tore open the beer box for distribution.
“I’ll pass,” Amber said.
“You pass ?” Julio guffawed. “Since when does Baby Beulah pass on beer?”
“Winter’s coming,” she said.
“Winter always comes,” fat ass Julio yelled. “Just like last year and two years before that.”
He wasn’t just fat. Julio was a smart aleck, too. Amber wanted to swear at him, but then Julio would just swear back. Then, as usual, they would fight on and on just for the sake of arguing. But not today for Amber. Winter