Lime Creek Read Online Free PDF Page A

the back of the house, and with the kitchen window now high above them they suddenly stand before those great bright unsulliedsurfaces that call to them not so much with their emptiness as with all the wondrous possibilities for filling it.
    They both crouch down resting on their knees and then leaning onto their elbows like supplicants until the tomatoes roll off them and onto the ground at last, where they form them into two even and equal rows. All summer long Lonny had been throwing a hardball at a wooden crate that had been nailed to the outside of the barn, and even though its sides were all splintered and shattered away, its outline was still fixed there for a target. And now Luke and Whitney had targets of their own. Big and snow-white and so inviting that even if they couldn’t throw as good as Lonny, they still couldn’t miss.
    They alternated back and forth and from one to the other. Luke first, the shocking red blossom of his tomato exploding against the sheet dead-center, and a moment later Whitney’s right beside it. Understanding as they took aim that they must also take their time and concentrate on every pitch so as to fully take advantage of such a gifted opportunity. And so as the spectre of each imaginary batter flailed away unsuccessfully, rosy starlike murals began to emerge from their works-in-progress, crowning the meadow and celebrating the mountainsand obviously birthing a virtuosity in both of them that hitherto hadn’t been foreseen. But that never was appreciated either.
    They were up in the hayloft with the compass again when Spencer comes into the barn and says, You boys get on down here. Not loud but hard enough so they know it isn’t about supper. They climb down the ladder and when they turn at the bottom, Spencer’s standing in the door with those sheets that they’d already forgotten about hanging over his shoulder. He also has suspended from one hand that big galvanized tub that Elizabeth gives Lemon his bath in, and a loop of harness-rein still neatly coiled in the other as if he had just gotten it down from in the tackroom. His head keeps shaking slowly from side to side. Boys, he says again. Lonny isn’t with him. Get that sawhorse.
    Which they do, one on either end. And which is how they position themselves too, draped over at the waist with their heads and arms hanging over one side and their legs over the other. A second sawhorse, with a bull’s skull attached to one end that Lonny practiced his roping on, stares at them with its great hollow eyesockets. Free of judgment of course, but still watching them as if to divine by the severity of the punishment the magnitude of their crime.
    Each time the harness-strap falls, cracking like a whip beside their inside hips, they flinched up so bad that they nearly sprang off the hard two-by-four crossbar from which they hung like little soiled upside-down birds. But the strap always miraculously missed them, each sharp report detonating beside one little boy and then the other and then back and forth again. And then again. Until finally after the fourth go-round Spencer says, Alright. Get up. And at the same time hearing Elizabeth in his mind just as clear as if she were standing next to him saying, Well I don’t guess that poor sawhorse is gonna cause any more trouble. After that.
    They slide backward until their feet touch down and then stand there watching at their sneakers as if fascinated by the tomato stains that have turned their shoes pink as well as by the constellations of little seeds that are stuck to all the laces. You boys carry this tub, Spencer says. They don’t ask where. And get that grain-bucket too. Give it here. He drops something hard in it, and while they carry the tub between them, Spencer holds the pail with the block of soap. And under his other arm, the old washboard that Elizabeth keeps behind the washing-machine. And with both of the soiled sheets still hanging over his shoulder.
    By the time they get to