Zeely Read Free Page B

“I won’t touch anything.” She crept inside, careful not to make a sound, nor to bump against any furniture. Uncle Ross’ room was much larger than hers and Toeboy’s. He had a long, wide desk by the windows. There were many photographs on it, too. Geeder was pleased to find a picture of herself and Toeboy. “Now when was that taken—and who took it?” She couldn’t recall posing for the picture. But she noticed at once that she and Toeboy were no bigger than babies. “Oh, the last time we were here,” she whispered, “when we played silly games!”
    Geeder walked around Uncle Ross’ room several times, taking in everything she saw. All around her was a faint scent of sachet. It smelled the same as the photographs on Uncle Ross’ desk looked—old, dry, clouded and dusty.
    “I smell cigars, too,” she whispered, “and soap and—my goodness—hay!”
    Geeder stood still in the room, then slowly backed out of it. A chill crept up her neck.
    “Oh,” she said. “Old things. Waiting for something new to happen.”
    She walked slowly down the winding staircase, gently holding on to the cherry-wood banister. Downstairs, she stopped in the pump room for a drink of water. When she had finished, she sighed with satisfaction and went quickly outside.
    Sunlight hit her full in the face. Heat, with the scent of grass, blew in her nostrils. “Toeboy! Where are you? It’s hot as blazes!”
    She found Toeboy digging in the rich, black soil by the barn. He had found a squirming colony of earthworms. “Here, let me attach them,” Geeder said. She tied the worms together, carefully, so as not to harm them. The worms wiggled. She and Toeboy laughed.
    “They’ll make a nice octopus for Uncle Ross’ pond,” Toeboy said.
    “The pond!” Geeder had not remembered it. “Toeboy, let’s get going!”
    The pond was far back on Uncle Ross’ land, in a pie-shaped section behind his west field. The section had never been much good for farming. Sycamore trees grew at random in it, and in the middle of these was the pond. It was not a deep pond, but it was good for wading up to the waist. They took off their clothes and waded in, heedless of the cold. When they had had enough, they put on their clothes again and sat dangling their feet in the water.
    Geeder looked out through the trees, listening to sounds of trucks on the road which passed the house. She could even hear people talking a long way off. She imagined she heard what went on in town—people shopping and saying hello. It was then that she thought to rename the town.
    “I’ll call it Crystal,” she said to Toeboy. “If you stand on the road, you can probably see the beginning, the middle and the end of it, just the way you can see through a piece of glass.”
    Geeder thought about the road. It curved for a mile through Crystal and then wound away from the town around a forest of catalpa trees to Uncle Ross’ farm.
    “Leadback Road! That’s what I’ll call it,” she said. “Because where does it lead to?”
    “Here!” Toeboy said.
    “That’s right!” Geeder said. “Crystal has a crack in it, Toeboy, and the crack is Leadback Road!”

4
    THE FIRST DAY AT the farm, Geeder and Toeboy looked over the hogs in Uncle Ross’ west field. These were no ordinary animals, but prize razorback hogs owned by a Mr. Nat Tayber and his daughter, who rented the land from Uncle Ross.
    “Look at the size of those hogs!” Toeboy said.
    “They’re big, all right,” Geeder said, “and they’re mean. I wouldn’t get too close to them even if I had to.”
    They leaned on the fence, looking in at the hogs. The hogs wallowed around, eating and rooting in the earth with their snouts. Often they came close to the fence but veered away as they caught the scent of Geeder and Toeboy.
    “Let’s go,” said Geeder. “I don’t believe they like us here.”
    They fed a bit of corn to Uncle Ross’ two hundred leghorn chickens. They could feed them as much corn as they