Hound Dog True Read Online Free PDF Page B

thinks.
Tell us to come play cards. Say the house is on fire and we need to evacuate.
    Uncle Tommy slams his cards to the table. "You're in deep now," he tells Uncle Potluck.
    "I don't say it all the time," Mattie says.
    "Habits are things you do all the time," Quincy says. "Like my dad smokes all the time. Even in the bathroom. And my mom makes the sign of the cross every time an ambulance goes by. She doesn't believe in God anymore, but she crosses anyway. It's a habit from when she went to Catholic school."
    Mattie nods. She has done it again, that Quincy Sweet. Secrets about bathroom smoking and God, all plunked out matter-of-fact. Mattie tries again to match her voice to Quincy's.
    "I used to say it all the time, I mean."
    "Why?"
    "Because..." Mattie thinks about Moe. Where he is and why he's there. But Quincy is staring.
    "It's dumb," says Mattie. "It's just a thing I say. Like some people say
Darn!
or
That stinks!
I say
Poor Moe!
You know, um,
Poor Moe! I stubbed my toe!
Or
Poor Moe! I wish I didn't have school today!
Like that."
    "Yeah?" Quincy squints at Mattie. Tilts her head.
    Mattie swallows. "Yeah."
    There's a clock in the living room. It's behind Mattie and she can't see it, but she hears it now, loud as gunshots.
Tock Tock Tock Tock.
Finally Quincy speaks.
    "How old
are
you?"

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    U NCLE POTLUCK SAYS they can watch a movie, and when Quincy asks, "What do you want to watch?" and Mattie says, "I don't care," it is the first time that night Mattie's words sound solid and flat,
plunk plunk plunk,
like for true she does not care. But in her head there are other words. Wobbly ones she wishes she could say.
    I'm sorry, Moe.
    So Mattie waits.
    She waits through two bowls of popcorn and one movie and Quincy snoring quiet
swee swee swee
three hundred times. Uncle Tommy driving away on his motorcycle and Uncle Potluck humming "Taps" and Mama saying
Good night.
Waits until she is sure that everyone is sleeping.
    Then Mattie sneaks to her room.
    Finds her notebook.
    Writes the truth.
MOE
by Mattie Breen
Once there lived a button named Moe. Moe Was a mouse-shaped button. He Was stitched to some pajamas With strong thread.
The pajamas belonged to a girl. She Was not strong. Sometimes at night she Worried. When she Worried, she twisted Moe on his thread until she fell asleep.
Moe did not mind.
One night the girl could not fall asleep. The girl Worried and Worried. She tWisted Moe for a long time.
The next day, the pajamas Went to the Laundromat.
Moe was in a washing machine. Water flooded in. The other clothes pulled and tugged at him, and Moe's strong thread snapped.
Then everything started spinning, and Moe got washed away into the tubes and wires of the washing machine. It was dark and noisy.
Moe was alone.
He didn't yell for help. He knew he would never be heard.
Moe was lost forever.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
    M ATTIE POKES AT A PANCAKE, feels her eyelids window-shading up and down. Yawns.
    She got up early, dressing in private before Quincy woke. Now Quincy is up, too, changing in Mattie's room, while Miss Sweet sits here at the kitchen table, telling Mama yes on more coffee, saying soon as Quincy gets dressed they'll be out of Mama's hair, asking
Where is Potluck and what is his deal, anyway?
    "He never talks to me," says Miss Sweet.
    "Potluck?" says Mama. "You've got to be kidding."
    Miss Sweet swats the air with her hand. Her fingernails are long and purple. "Well, he talks. I mean, whatever. He just doesn't
say
anything. Do you know what he told me yesterday?" Crystal Sweet asks Mama.
    Mattie perks up. Maybe Uncle Potluck said something about Mattie helping him at the school.
    "He said he met a psychic in the army who taught him how to tell a person's future by the way she eats corn on the cob."
    It is not about Mattie. But she cannot help but be interested, wondering what her corncob would say if somebody fortune-told it.
    "What did you say to him?" Mama asks Miss Sweet.
    "I told him I didn't like corn."
    Mama