Darby Read Online Free PDF Page B

don’t even know he’s dead yet. For nothing, I wouldn’t step in that mansion during the day or night. The problem is, sometimes I wonder if Ellan isn’t haunted the same way, because in the dark it can scare me so that I nearly have to holler for help.
    Just a few hours after I talked with Great-Uncle Harvey, my mind stirred with all sorts of frightening things. Sitting up, I imagined ghosts whooshing between the tree limbs outside, floating past my daddy’s camellia bushes, with shoulders that were almost see-through.
    Searching about the room, I wished our dog, King, was nearby. King wouldn’t be scared of a ghost, plus his teeth are sharp enough to cut through just about anything. If I’m walking alone near McPherson’s Pond, I usually take King in case I run into a mean person or something rabid or an alligator. Being a German shepherd dog, King’s nearly as smart as a college teacher, too. When I talk to him, his big, triangular fur ears do all sorts of shifting and adjusting, like he’s listening as hard as he can. Sometimes I even practice the finger trick for him. It’s the only thing he doesn’t understand real well, and I’m glad. He never recognizes when I mess up and my finger doesn’t look cut off.
    The other good thing about King is that he walks Annie Jane home at night. After arranging and setting out our dinner, Annie Jane takes off her apron and starts out the back door, where he waits for her. Then, side by side, the two march toward town and Annie Jane’s little home with its skinny rooms that go straight back so that you can run from the front door to the back without ever turning, not once. Daddy calls it a “shotgun house.”
    Awake in the night like I was, I wished my mama allowed King to come upstairs, but she doesn’t. She says letting a dog in the house would be like letting a muskrat make himself cozy. From time to time, I feel like saying that a muskrat can’t protect a person against ghosts, not like a dog with extra-pointy teeth and lots of brains.
    I slid under my sheets and squeezed into a tight ball so that all a ghost might see was a bundle of blankets and bed sheets. Sucking air real slow, my heart thumped in my body, and I started to get as hot as a wagon in the sun. Lying that way, so still and warm, I didn’t have anything to do but wonder why I was nervous. I thought and thought. Then, as slow as a snail, I realized that it had to do with Evette, and understanding that made things less scary. On account of being nasty to her, I was feeling crummy. It wasn’t that I was frightened. Guilt had woken me up. It was like the time I’d fetched a farm hand’s thrown-away cigarette and took a puff. I knew I’d been a bad person, and I wondered what God thought.
    The next day, as McCall drove us home from school, I sat in the back seat while his friends jumped off the car like always. I didn’t say anything about how girls were better than boys or how I should sit up front. Instead I stayed quiet so I could concentrate on being ashamed.
    At Ellan, I changed into a play dress and ran out back. Stumbling through the rows of cotton, I sat half-hidden and looking at Evette’s front door and the tiny garden that her parents had planted full of scrappy vegetables. I sat for more than an hour, picking at cotton leaves and throwing pieces of dirt before I finally saw Evette and her younger brother start toward me down the long, unpaved road that connects their house to the highway.
    As they got near, I could hear her brother, Joebean, say, “He got his ankle broke and both wrists, and his whole face and neck swelled up.”
    Evette answered. “He wasn’t thinking. You get caught grabbing one a them chickens and you might get kilt.”
    After a few steps, Joebean answered, “Yeah, he almost did.”
    When they were close by, I stood so they could see me. “Hey, Evette.”
    She stared for a second before answering real softly. “Hey, Darby.”
    “I gotta tell you