Lime Creek Read Online Free PDF

the creek it’s dark on the ground through the trees. They have to keep stopping torest the tub down as they go, and once or twice they try to drag it along the ground but that just makes it even harder because the bottom keeps catching in the dirt. Heavy, ain’t it? Spencer says. Maybe you boys shoulda thoughta that before making such a mess. And them tomaters, you can give your ma your Christmas money for them tomaters. Least if you’re rich enough, which I’m guessing you’re probably not. I just don’t know, he says shaking his head.
    They try to drag the tub once again and then Whitney picks up his end and Luke his. It’s dark and fixing to cool off even colder because when the sun goes down the temperature falls nearly thirty degrees no matter what time of year it is. Finally they can hear the water on the other side of the trees. Spencer drops the sheets on the ground in a pile and then the bucket so the brick of soap bangs against its side. And then the washboard.
    Now that soap doesn’t ever get near that water, he says, because no fish anywhere has to get sick too because of you boys. Understand? They both look up and whisper, Sir. And Spencer has to quickly turn his head to pretend to cough behind his hand so they can’t see his face, which has to smile when he looks at them whatever they’ve done. Like two little soldiers in short-sleeve jerseys with filthy faces and miniature jeans and crushedfruit all over their sneakers. As if that was that day’s image of love. Two little soldiers of love, one with black hair and the other sandy-colored and sticking up every which way like roostertails, with streaked faces and eyes afraid to look up at him as he coughs and turns away again to hide his open smile and also to get his voice back to where it still sounded the way it should.
    Understand? he says again. You keep that soap away from that crick. Sir, they say again. You can take turns, he says, filling up this tub. No, you better go together because a bucket that’s filled up is heavy enough for two. You get this tub filled up and get them two godawful sheets as clean as you found them. You hear me? They look up from their shoes again, this time just nodding their heads. Now get, he says and turns away.
    They place the soap on the jumbled mass of bedsheets and then take up the bucket with each of one of their little hands clasped together on the handle, bumping and clanking through the shore trees and down to where the bank juts out and forms a protected shoal where they’d always previously only gone to swim. There’s a huge cottonwood tree overhead, the biggest one that anyone around there had ever seen. It was actually two trunks that had grown together and become one, and there was a fire-circle of big stones at its base.
    Lonny had once read them the story about the old couple long ago who, having been the only hospitable humans that the gods disguised as vagabonds had encountered when they came down to earth, were granted any wish that they desired. And without hesitation, they both replied that their only fear was that one of them would die and leave the other one alone. And so if the gods could arrange it, all they really wanted was to depart from this life together. Zeus and his sidekick Mercury bowed and went on their way. And behind them, where the old folks’ hut had stood, two great trees grew up as one with their trunks intertwined and their branches holding each other for all time. And to Luke and Whitney and probably to Lonny too, their cottonwood was that tree.
    But just then Whitney and Luke aren’t thinking about stories or even about trees, and when Spencer hears them clashing the bucket again against the ground he’s already built up a little peak of orange and yellow flames to greet them. Half a bucket isn’t gonna be so heavy, he says. And we got all night now, don’t we boys?
    They don’t look up as they lug the bucket with contorted grimaces on both of their faces. And with