Bloodroot Read Online Free PDF

up and eat supper with us tonight?” Mammy asked. Her voice still sounded far off. “It’s the least we can do to thank ye.”
    “Maybe tomorrow night,” Clifford said, and I could tell Mammy was disappointed. She probably figured he never would come.
    Sure enough, the next day when I got out of the bed my thresh had cleared up. I was feeling better, setting out on the porch playing with a doll, when I looked up and seen Clifford coming. He waved his hat and I ran to tell Grandmaw and Mammy.
    “Well, I’ll be,” Grandmaw said. “I never dreamt he’d turn up.” It was true Clifford was backward, but he was so struck on Mammy he couldn’t resist her. Pretty soon he was coming to supper just about every night, and bringing me and Mammy presents. He took us to town and the fair and all kinds of places. I got to where I loved that man just about better than anything, and so did Mammy. When he asked Mammy to be his wife a few months later, I reckon I was more tickled than she was. I got to wear baby’s breath in my hair to the wedding. After the knot was tied, I figured I had a new daddy. I started calling Clifford “Pap,” and all of us was happy.
    DOUG
    Besides Myra, Haskell Barnett was my only friend. After he pulled Myra away from that cistern, we were allies in my mind. The Barnetts’ grown children had moved up north and they were lonesome for the sound of small voices, so they treated Myra and me like their own flesh and blood. We loved playing at their house. Mrs. Barnett was always baking and Mr. Barnett showed us how to build forts and shoot with slingshots. Mark stopped visiting once he got older, but Myra and I still went there even after we were grown. Sometimes Myra and Mrs. Barnett embroidered or cooked together while I helped Mr. Barnett with the outside chores. He paid me but he didn’t have to. It was nice being alone with him. He was quiet when I needed him to be, but he also told good stories.
    When I was eleven, we took our first walk together. All afternoon I had handed him tools as he worked under his truck, until he slid out into the springtime sun and said, “I need to stretch my legs. You want to come with me?” We went far up the mountain, but not to the top because the way was too rugged and steep. Not even Daddy ventured to the summit anymore, after breaking his leg as a boy. Daddy said there was a grassy bald on top of Bloodroot Mountain where his grandfather used to drive his cattle to. It was a dangerous trip but the high mountain grass was better for the cows and it was cooler up there in summer. Walking with Mr. Barnett, I wondered if my greatgrandfather’s motivations had less to do with his cows and more to do with spending time alone where it was quiet, away from his duties onthe farm. I thought about Daddy’s story, how one day he decided to see the top, even after he’d been forbidden. He fell trying to scale the steep cliffs and lay for a day and a night before he was found. He claimed to have seen some frightening things while he was lying up there but wouldn’t say what, only that if I ever went farther than the big rock over the bluff, he’d skin me alive. I never would have risked it, but sometimes I dreamed of my great-grandfather driving his cows up those rocky slopes to reach a meadow that must have been like paradise to him.
    The woods looked different walking with Mr. Barnett than when I was alone. At the time the change was hard to understand, but looking back I see why. It was because he still observed the mountain with wonder, even though he knew it better than I did. As we passed through dark patches of shade into clearings like rooms of light, he paused to touch ridges of fungus growing on bark, stopped to catch a moth and study its wings, bent to pick up an arrowhead. When I was with him I saw it too, how magical everything was.
    We came to a place where the cottonwoods were thick, shedding their seeds in drifting white tufts. Small clouds floated all