Red Dirt Heart 3 Read Online Free PDF Page B

Has it aged, or is that the state you got it in.”
    Ma huffed. “He wore it in the mud, the dirt, the creek. Then his father ended up cutting it off here, because it stunk so bad.”
    I snorted. “Yeah, it smelt like roadkill.”
    Travis looked over the jagged cut down the length of the cast. “Your dad cut it off?”
    “Yep, with a pair of shears.”
    “Dear Lord,” Travis mumbled.
    I laughed at his expression. “And look, here’s the throttle grip to the bike I was riding when I came off,” I said, pulling out a motorbike throttle grip that used to fit my peewee fifty. It was black, the rubber now degraded and crumbling. It was an unusual keepsake. “Why the hell did he keep that?”
    “Because it was your first,” Ma said with a shrug. “And you loved it.”
    I thought about what that meant. My father hadn’t really kept these things for himself. He’d kept them for me.
    I didn’t know what to make of that.
    Next I pulled out an array of things, from a small jar with my first tooth, first pair of baby boots, an old Bunnykins plate and a matching plastic, now cracked cup.
    Toward the bottom of the box were books: a scrapbook, a baby book and a photo album. I pulled them out and set them aside and reached in for the last few things in the bottom. It was some laminated certificates from my home-schoolin’ days and a plastic bag with folded newspapers.
    I moved the first empty box to the floor and looked at all the things covering the table. My childhood mementos. It was shocking and wonderful that my father had kept these things. I ran my hand over my face and tried to collect my thoughts. Still too scattered to put into words, I sighed instead.
    But I was smiling.
    “Wow,” I finally said, sitting down. “I had no idea.”
    Travis ruffled my hair, then kissed the top of my head before sitting down beside me. He seemed just about to burst. Whether that was out of relief or happiness for me, I didn’t dare guess. It didn’t matter.
    I slid the baby book over first. It was blue, small and had aged yellow. I opened the first page, where in fluid handwriting I didn’t recognise was my full name, date of birth, weight, length, hair colour, and also a small square photo of a baby’s crying face, presumably mine.
    “You haven’t changed,” Travis joked.
    I could only laugh. The next page was recorded dates with weights, heights, milestones. I got my first tooth when I was seven months old, apparently. And it was written very plainly, underlined and everything, that I did not like oatmeal.
    Ma snorted out a laugh. “Now that hasn’t changed.”
    I laughed with her, but the next page made my smile die right there.
    There I was, all of maybe two years old, sitting on my father’s knee. He was laughing at something, his face all lit up, looking at someone or something the camera didn’t show.
    He looked so much younger than the man I remembered. Happier, too. He looked so happy. The clothes we wore were indicative of the times—late eighties—the photo itself a Polaroid, yellowed with age.
    Travis’s hand on my knee made me look at him. “You okay?”
    I nodded. “I am.” And I was. This wasn’t what I was expecting, to find these things from my childhood, and a reminder that my father hadn’t always been so angry. I turned back to the photo and absently traced over the picture with my finger. “He looks so happy.”
    I could feel Ma’s eyes on me, and when I looked up at her, she stared at me for a long while. “He was happy, love.”
    “I must remember him differently,” I mumbled.
    Ma sighed. “He wasn’t always so…” She seemed to struggle for the right word.
    “Angry?” I suggested. “Bitter?”
    “Lonely,” she finished.
    I didn’t have an answer to that. I let it settle over me instead, like a heavy blanket of regret. “I was too busy being a brat to see that,” I admitted.
    Ma smiled warmly. “You were a teenager, love. You can’t be blamed for not seeing, especially