Lime Creek Read Online Free PDF Page B

all four of their hands grasping the handle they almost walk over one another with each awkward step that also casts a tongue of glinting water up their legs. And so by the timethey reach the tub the pail’s only about a third-full. And you tend this fire too, Spencer says, before it gets too dark and cold. Hear?
    I’m gonna get me some supper. And boys, he says, raising his voice so they pause and turn with the uneven light playing on their faces and making menacing shapes of all the trees, don’t even think of bringing those sheets home until they look as clean as you found them. He watches their blank downturned expressions and then turns behind his hand again, releasing them to clatter back down to the water. Mind the fire now, he yells, and turns to go.
    It takes them a long time to get the tub filled and to keep the fire going too. And while they’re still gathering brush and anything else that’ll burn, Lemon rushes up to them with little points of the pitiful flame reflected in his eyes and starts licking Whitney’s arm that must still have some of that cherry flavor from the pie adhered above his elbow. Whitney grunts and pushes Lemon away, and still wagging his tail like one of those piano metronomes Lemon runs over to Luke who’s on his hands and knees in search of whatever fuel he can find, and turns him too by licking the side of his face. Just as Spencer’s legs come up in the dark and then kneel down behind the rosy glow that’s nearly expired.
    He must have brought something combustible withhim because when both little boys look up again he’s built a pyramid of kindling and branches that when he blows on it makes the fire jump up brighter and more welcoming than anything they can ever remember. Or at least right then anyway. Lemon runs back and forth between them with the fire dancing in his eyes and his tail going a mile a minute, and then when Spencer pats at the ground beside him Lemon sits and kind of collapses in stages against Spencer’s leg.
    Well that tub’s full enough I reckon, Spencer says, but I still don’t see anything getting washed in it. He’s sitting against the tree with his legs spread out before him while he undoes the top of a brown paper bag. Your ma says them boys need some supper so they can get their work done. And I say I don’t know as they deserve any supper. And she says to give’em this to keep their strength up. And to give’em their sweatshirts too.
    Both boys come and sit in the dirt on either side of their father’s legs with their backs to the bright cheery flames as they pull over their heads the long-sleeve shirts that he hands them. Then they shyly accept the sandwiches that he offers, almost with a deference that’s clearly in obverse ratio to the ferocity with which they fall to eating. Bacon and lettuce, Spencer says. Your ma apologizes for the missing tomaters to make’em tasteright. Which is lost on them anyway as they chew mightily to clear their full cheeks, like chipmunks that can’t hardly swallow fast enough. Spencer makes himself cough again so he can turn his head all the way around this time and silently laugh outright.
    Because maybe it’s just them durn sneakers, he thinks. But no, when he can watch them again of course it’s their faces, with dirt and cherry and doglick and black and fair thatches of hair stuck up everywhere. And yet still contentedly just chewing away, having already forgotten apparently the actual reason that they’re there in the first place. Until Spencer’s voice says, with his face out of the firelight, When’re them bedsheets gonna get done, boys? Cause eventually I need to get me some sleep. You boys, he says again and shakes his head. I gotta full day’s haying in the morning and here I am having a picnic in the middle of the night with two actual outlaws. And he thinks, and with their wanted-posters on every laundry-room wall too.
    And so finally there’s nothing else for them but their waiting