Ragged Man Read Online Free PDF

father didn’t come for her. She was sure he didn’t run away, but if he didn’t, where was he? And she was afraid for her mom. The things that had chased her into the woods were bad and now they were coming after her. She burrowed farther up the tree.
    She saw something move past below and she squeezed her eyes shut till it passed, but it didn’t go far before it turned around and came back. She opened her eyes. She felt it getting closer. Then she saw her arm and the blood. Strange, she didn’t feel anything. It didn’t hurt. It should hurt. Always before whenever she cut herself it hurt.
    She looked down.
    “ Oh, no,” she cried, “it’s one of the monsters.” She tried to climb higher, but couldn’t.
    The dog-like animal raised its head and Janis saw into its deep red eyes and right into its mouth, all the way to its belly. It had teeth longer than her arm. She hoped that it couldn’t climb trees.
    It could.

Chapter Three
     
     
    J.P. sat on the cool beach sand and wondered if he’d see his birds again. Good racers homed for life and these had been born a long way from the Northern Californian town of Tampico. The five birds were sixteen months old and had never flown free. He hoped that because they were only six months old when he and his mom moved, that they would home to the new loft. There was no loft left in Toronto, fifteen hundred miles east, for them to trap into.
    At one time he thought about keeping them caged forever. They were his best birds and he didn’t want to lose them, but Rick told him they were bred to fly and he had to agree, keeping them caged would be cruel. He couldn’t put it off any longer, if they wouldn’t home by now, then they never would.
    He got up, dusted off, reached into the gunny sack. He liked the smell of the bag. He associated the dusty bird smell with the far away poster places on the dusty walls of Tampico Travel. He liked to imagine that he could fly to those places with the birds. His small fingers found Dark Dancer with natural ease. He wrapped them around the bird and pulled it out of the bag.
    Dancer was his favorite, a big, black check racer whose sire was a hammer tough bird that had heart. J.P. would find out soon enough if the bird was made out of the same stuff as his father. He hoped so.
    He smoothed back Dancer’s feathers and thought for the thousandth time that the white corn on his beak and around his black eyes contrasted with his dark face to make him look like a dark hooded terrorist. Then, with clenched lips, he whispered, “Go, Dancer,” and he lowered his right arm, hand holding the racer, bringing the arm behind his back, parallel with the ground, stretching his muscles, feeling the strain. Then he whipped it forward in a fast arc, releasing his fingers as the arm flew past his eyes, letting the bird slide out of his hand. He felt the burst of wind caused by the strong beat of Dancer’s wings.
    Four more times he repeated the ritual. Four more birds, Ballerina, Cyclone, Thunder and Lightning, followed Dancer into the air, forming a great circle above J.P., stealing his heart as he tried to keep them in sight. He watched as they circled for bearing and smiled when they headed south, into the wind, toward home, Dancer in the lead.
    J.P. turned and saw a large black man standing on the boardwalk. He was watching J.P.’s birds with a smile on his face, so that made him okay as far as J.P. was concerned. The man waved. J.P. waved back, wondering if the man had had pigeons when he was a boy. Rick had told him that a lot of people did in the old days.
    He turned from the black man and picked up his binoculars. He tried to follow the birds, but it was too hard to keep them in sight, so he faced the binoculars toward his mother. He yelled and waved, but she was too far away to hear.
     
     
    * * *
    Down the beach, Judy Donovan wandered listlessly, occasionally picking up a shell or two and dropping them into a fringed straw sombrero. She had