All Over Creation Read Online Free PDF

remembered the room as it used to be, with shelves of books and a plastic record player and albums in stacks on the floor. Flower Power decals on the walls, the ceiling speckled with constellations that glowed in the dark. The room’s only ornament now sat on top of a white wooden dresser. It was a small framed photograph, in black and white, of a solemn Indian princess standing in front of the screen door of the farmhouse, hand in hand with Lloyd. Noble Pilgrim. The tip of her feather barely reached his hipbone.
    Cass opened the dresser drawer, expecting to find the good linens or Lloyd’s spare winter underwear, but it was filled with Yummy’s old clothes. Socks, some underpants, T-shirts and jeans, all neatly folded, but musty. Cass lifted a T-shirt speckled with blue paisleys and held it to her nose. A familiar smell clung to the fibers—a little animal, some sandalwood, a hint of patchouli. A mother would hide things here. Cass dug beneath a pile of underclothes. Sure enough.
    It was a small bundle, carefully wrapped in a worn freezer bag and secured with a thick rubber band. Inside, wrapped in yet another plastic bag, was a collection of photographs and letters. Cass set the photos aside and flipped through the envelopes. There weren’t many, maybe two dozen or so, all addressed to Momoko in Yummy’s wild, loopy handwriting. The earliest was on the bottom, dated April 1976. The most recent was from 1997. Cass slid her fingers under the rest of the clothing but found nothing more. As she leaned on the drawer to close it, the blue paisley again caught her eye. She pulled out the T-shirt and held it up against her. She’d lost so much weight, it might fit her now. She tossed it around her neck like a gym towel and went downstairs.
    Will sat at the old rolltop desk. Cass draped her arms over his broad shoulders and laid her face against the plane of his jaw. She waved the letters in front of his face.
    â€œGot ’em.”
    â€œGood girl. You find an address?” He was poring over a ledger of old farm reports, handwritten in Lloyd’s antique script. “Poor old guy. What happened in ’75?”
    â€œâ€™Seventy-five?” Cass started flipping through the letters in her hand.
    â€œThe year he leased out over half his acreage to your father.”
    â€œI don’t know. I was just a kid. Why?” She checked the postmarks: San Francisco, Berkeley, several from Texas—all places that Cass could imagine.
    â€œHe was doing so well up until then. Look at this. Those Nine-Dollar Potatoes in ’74, and then next season he goes and leases to your father. How come?”
    Cass looked up. “That was the year after Yummy ran away. He had a heart attack. His first one.”
    â€œWeird. Look at this. Two years later, after he took the acreage back, he was fighting soil contamination more or less constantly. From what he was spraying, he must have had a problem with leafroll.”
    â€œHe did. I remember Daddy going on about the aphids. Lloyd hired Daddy on to run the operation for him, but they never saw eye to eye. Daddy was a lousy farmer and lost a lot of the crop to net necrosis. He blamed Momoko’s peach tree for attracting those aphids. Wanted to chop it down, but Lloyd wouldn’t let him. Momo means ‘peach’ in Japanese.”
    â€œI’m with your Daddy on this one. That tree’s just asking for trouble. Do you think I can take these records? It’s helpful to know.”
    â€œYou mean, do I think it’s stealing? I don’t care if it is, Will. Anyway, we own the land now. We got a right to it, I should think.”
    â€œI asked him to show me these way back in ’83 when we started leasing. But he kept putting it off.”
    â€œWell, now you know why.”
    â€œHe’s a proud man.”
    â€œDaddy said he was a cheat.”
    â€œOrnery, maybe. You know he’s not a cheat.” Will would always