A Simple Song Read Online Free PDF Page A

it to your face, but everyone there thinks your voice is beautiful.”
    Katrina felt the same old guilt all over again. “But that’s not right,” she said quietly.
    â€œWhy isn’t it right?” Bekka demanded. “God gave you that voice, Katrina. I want to know—what is wrong with using it?”
    Katrina had no answer for her. All she had were questions. Lots and lots of questions.

3
    As badly as she wanted to, Katrina couldn’t stick around and talk to Bekka about all the questions racing through her mind right now. Instead she asked to stash her bag of mysterious treasures in Bekka’s “office.” Naturally, Bekka agreed.
    â€œI promise to keep my nose out of it,” Bekka said as she tucked the bag into a space behind a big box of paper, “as long as you promise to come back and show me everything that’s in it.”
    â€œDon’t worry,” Katrina assured her. “I haven’t even had the chance to go through it all myself. That reminds me”—she reached back into the bag, feeling around for the little bundle and pulling it out—“do you know what this is? I don’t think it’s a cell phone, unless it’s some old one.”
    Bekka examined the small box and cord and read the words on the front. “Realtone . . . Transistor . . . Want me to look it up?”
    â€œ Ja . If you don’t mind.”
    Bekka pushed more buttons. “Oh, it’s a radio,” she told Katrina. “A small portable radio that was popular in the 1950s and 1960s.”
    Katrina turned one of the knobs, and suddenly—to her amazement—music was coming out of the little box. “Listen to this.” She held it up.
    â€œIt must be an old-fashioned iPod.”
    â€œAn I what?”
    â€œNever mind.” Bekka studied it. “I wonder if it’s valuable.”
    â€œI don’t know, but Aunt Alma said that Mammi sometimes had it with her. She put this thing in her ear.” She looked around for a place to stick the end of the wire into, and after finding a hole that fit, she stuck the little round piece into her ear. “I can hear it,” she told Bekka.
    â€œIt really is just like an old-time iPod.” Bekka nodded knowingly.
    Katrina wanted to ask her how she knew about all these things but then realized it was due to “working” on the computer.
    â€œDo you want to leave that with the bag?” Bekka asked.
    â€œNo.” Katrina shook her head, not wanting to part with what was pouring into her ear at the moment. “If Mammi could listen to this, then so can I.”
    Bekka gave a firm nod. “ Ja . We’re always being told to follow the examples of our elders. That’s what you are doing.”
    Katrina grinned at her. Then she tucked the little radio up into her sleeve so no one would see it, told Bekka thank you and goodbye, and left for home. Once again, she cut along the fence lines, but she walked more slowly this time. It was wonderful to walk through the beautiful green fields with the blue sky and smatterings of clouds overhead—all the while listening to this beautiful music. Even when a man’s voice came on after a song finished, talking about the singers and other things, she didn’t mind. By the time she got home, sheknew that she was listening to WODZ, the station that played the golden oldies twenty-four hours a day. It comforted her to think this was the same station that Mammi must’ve listened to when she was alive.
    Katrina made it home in time to tend to her evening chores and to help Mamm and Sadie fix supper. She’d found a spot to hide her radio, up high on a shelf in the garden shed, and she felt it would be safe there since she was the primary gardener. She decided that if she was found out, she would simply tell the truth. Mammi had left the radio to her, and she was only following Mammi’s example.
    As she’d