Hound Dog True Read Online Free PDF Page A

be dead.
    Mattie keeps thinking this, hoping Mama will move to some other topic, but her eyes stay on Mattie. It's Uncle Potluck who shifts Mama's look, asking how her new job is going.
    "It's good," Mama says, finally. "I felt comfortable right away. It helps to have worked at a hospital before—not like my first job at St. Andrew's. Did I ever tell you about that, Potluck?"
    Mattie has not heard about it, either.
    "It was when I was pregnant, right after I moved out—just before you came back from the army. Anyway, it was my first real office job, and I was worried I'd make a mistake and mess things up. That whole first day I said about three words, I was so scared."
    Mama scared? Mattie can't even picture it. Imagines a room full of doctors and nurses and ringing telephones, but soon as Mama drops into the scene, she's charging through it, answering phones, fixing patients. Doctors and nurses rush around begging Mama for help.
    "That night, I watched that old TV show
ER.
Everyone on that show was so strong and smart. The next day I played pretend—l ike we used to when we were little, Potluck. I pretended I was one of those
ER
characters." Mama laughs at herself, takes a swig of iced tea. Mattie stays quiet, wanting Mama to tell on.
    "I stood straight and talked tough and wrinkled my forehead to show I was thinking about things. And what do you know? After about a week of pretending, people were thinking that I was strong and smart."
    "You are," Mattie says, but right then Mama pops out of her seat and clatters the dishes over to the sink, and Mattie is not sure she has heard. Mama hops to the telephone when it rings, too, but Uncle Potluck is closer. Answers, saying, "Hello, Crystal" and "We were just finishing" and "Now, we were just talking about that," which Mattie knows is him getting ready to tell Miss Sweet that Quincy can't do a sleepover because of his niece who is pretending to have a stomachache.
    The drawing time with Quincy had been fine, but as soon as they got to the kitchen, Quincy had started in peeling ten times as many carrots as Mattie could. Talking, too, telling Uncle Potluck about the Fourth of July. Telling him how her daddy, Duey Sweet of Sweet's Trucking, stayed late at the baseball game and needed a designated driver and how when he got home, her mother, who Quincy called Nicolette instead of Mom or Mama or Ma or something, how Nicolette made Duey sleep outside in his canoe with only a plastic tarp for a blanket.
    Didn't sound upset about it, either. Quincy had a way of talking—flat and dull, like stones dropping
plunk, plunk
in a puddle. Matter-of-fact, Mama called it.
    Mattie had looked it up soon as Quincy left.
    Matter-of-fact. Relating to or adhering to facts. Literal. Straightforward or unemotional.
    What would it be like to be that way? To tell a story
plunk, plunk, plunk,
not caring what people think?
    Just like Mama pretending to be an
ER
person, Mattie tries on being matter-of-fact. Sits tall in her kitchen chair, puts a
plunk
in her voice. "She can come," Mattie hears herself say.
    "What's that?" Uncle Potluck looks at Mattie. He heard, too.
    "For a sleepover," says Mama, grinning. "Mattie said Quincy can come for a sleepover tonight."
    Uncle Potluck's eyebrows send a
you sure?
to Mattie, but Mama is already saying, "Good girl," and it is too late, too late, too late to say she is not.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    U NCLE P OTLUCK GOES OUTSIDE to gather the last of the tomatoes from the garden.
    Mattie should help.
    She should.
    But instead, she sneaks to her room. If she puts on her pajamas now, before Quincy gets here, she can change in private. Won't have to worry if she ought to be wearing a bra already or if her underwear looks too baby or if there's something else she doesn't even know to worry about just yet.
    She buttons her pajama top.
    Eenie.
    Meenie.
    Miney.
    "Poor Moe."
    Outside, she can hear Miss Sweet's laugh cracking like glass, Uncle Tommy's motorcycle roaring up the