Night Wings Read Online Free PDF Page A

darkness that were not there when the sun went down. Furry things drawn by the smell of our garbage pails that are locked securely in the little shed. Raccoons are not so bad because they’ll back away as soon as a human comes close. Skunks, though, are either too confident or stupid to leave, and I do not want to upset a skunk! There is also the chance that a bear might be out there. Again, nothing to worry about if you give the bear fair warning, but bears do not take kindly to being surprised. Not that a bear will usually try toattack, but if a bear feels cornered and you are between it and its preferred escape route, well, too bad for you.
    I sweep the light from side to side as I walk slowly around the trailer and out back. No midnight garbage snackers. Not even a mouse. Probably discouraged by this noisy wind, which is bending the birch trees up and down like someone trying to string a bow and then changing his mind.
    I get down on my knees and elbows and lift my chin to direct the beam under the trailer. Grampa Peter has all his spare building and repair supplies stored in precise stacks in the twenty-eight-inch-high space between the concrete slab and the floor. Cinder blocks to the left. Patio blocks next to them. Bags of sand and mortar mix up on pallets and covered with plastic. Lumber to the far left. A pile of two-by-fours, another of pressure-treated planks, and a third pile of miscellaneous lumber. There, right on top of the third, is just what I remembered: a six-foot-long by four-foot-wide piece of three-quarter-inch plywood. I can make my bed longer by putting this piece under my mattress so that it sticks out at the bottom. Then if I put two couch pillows between the wall and the top end, I will have solved my sleeping problems.
    I can’t help smiling, the circle of light bobbing up and down as I nod my head. I’m a genius.
    I bend low and crawl in. An orb weaver spider has made her web across the upper left-hand corner of the opening. Grampa Peter pointed her out to me with a nod of his head when I arrived here. He didn’t have to tell me to respect her. We don’t have some of those stories that the Indians in the Southeast and the West have about the spider being a grandmother, but we know that spiders catch those little insects that like to bite us, so we show them respect.
    There’s plenty of room for me to get under the trailer without disturbing her intricate weaving, and I’m sure I’ll be able to shove the plywood out underneath the web when I work it free.
    But it may take some doing. That three-quarter-inch piece of plywood is heavier than I thought. I grab it with one hand and pull. It doesn’t budge. I try taking hold of it with both hands. I don’t have any leverage at all and once again the plywood stays put. But I don’t. I lose my balance and fall forward, scraping my hand against the rough edge of the plywood sheet.
    Double dang! I hold my right hand up tomy mouth so I can use my teeth to pull out the splinter I’ve just stuck an inch deep into my palm.
    As I suck on the wound, I try to think. What is it that Mom always says? If you can’t make things work one way, try doing the opposite? Yes! I roll over onto my back, hook my feet under the edge of the trailer, and reach back over my head to pull the plywood toward me. One, two, hup! Success! The plywood comes free from whatever was holding it, slides smoothly forward, and then stops. Right on top of me!
    I’m sort of stuck. Also the plywood has hit the switch on my Maglite, and I am now in total darkness. I pull my legs in so I can wiggle onto my side and get out from under the wide piece of pressed lumber that is making me feel like the cheese in a sandwich.
    I try to do it as quietly as possible, without knocking against any of the supports under the trailer floor. The wind has suddenly died down and the night is quiet.
    Or is it? Are those boots crunching the gravel of our walkway? I hear the thud of feet hitting the