Sweeping Up Glass Read Online Free PDF Page B

end of the month.
    “There you go, Olivia,” he said, handing it to me with a paper napkin.
    “Thank you, Mr. Dooby.” I got down. Then I went out the frontdoor and gave the cone to Love Alice. I looked back through the glass to make sure Dooby was watching.
    Love Alice got up and stood looking at the thing, till it began to melt and run down over her hand. I smiled at her, showing my teeth, then turned and walked away. At the end of the block, I looked back. She was standing right where I’d left her. Then she stepped into the road and dropped the cone. With her bare foot she ground it into the iron grate. It sucked the breath right out of me, and it came to me as I stood there, that if there were such a thing as honor, Love Alice possessed more of it than I ever would.
    I wanted to run back and put my arms around her, tell her I was sorry. Wanted to rush into Dooby’s store and beat him with my fists. But all I could do was hide around the corner, lean my sorry face against the sooty bricks, and wish I’d never been born.

7
    E very July Reverend Culpepper took his flock down to Captain’s Creek for fried chicken, buttered corn cakes, and renewal of the spirit. The creek itself had happened by accident.
    A long time ago, our town was discovered by Frank and Aurora Solomon, who steered their boat down the Capulet River, probably meaning to catch a fish for their supper. They built a dock so they could tie up their boat, and a shack for bad weather, and pretty soon folks came behind them, setting up houses and opening shops. Then one night by the light of the moon, Aurora packed up their things, and they moved on in search of some other place where nobody was.
    Over the years the Capulet sprouted arms and legs. Now folks from Aurora picnicked in the elbows of those creeks, their babies playing in the shallows, toddlers catching minnows. Reverend Culpepper used Captain’s Creek for baptizing. This was an event I had never witnessed, but by the grapevine I’d heard that more people drowned than came up saved. In the first place I wasn’t sure what salvation was, except that the Lord Jesus was involved. Maybe He came out of the clouds and spoke to the Reverend in a voice the rest of us could not hear.
    I’d once seen a picture of a courtroom in a book, with thejudge seated high up in front, and the guilty man standing before him in chains, pleading for mercy. I wondered if baptism was like that, and if each man went before the Lord—or the Reverend—and stated his case. And if, in this life, baptism was the only chance he got to do that. I asked Pap if I could go down to the creek and watch. He said to mind my manners and not get in the way.
    In an elm grove I crouched behind a tree, not because I wouldn’t be welcomed, but because the possibility of them seeing me and tossing me in the river threw me into a panic. I could not swim well, and I didn’t want to die. I wondered, too, about the fat folks, if the handlers would have trouble hauling them back up. And if they drowned, did those people float downstream and wash up, sanctified, at somebody else’s picnic?
    While I considered this, the ladies spread blankets, and set babies to roll, gurgling and half naked. Like a normal Sunday afternoon, they passed drumsticks and melon slices. Old men sat on folding chairs under the trees, spitting seeds and roaring with laughter. They drank lemon water from paper cups, smoked brown cigarettes, and slapped their knees. I watched children play stickball and wished I could join them.
    Miz Hanley saw me. “Miss Livvy, child, that you?” she called from her place on a quilt where she was surrounded by grandchildren, bowls of mustard potato salad, and jars of sweet pickle.
    I was taught better than to turn and run, so I stepped from behind the tree. “Yes, ma’am, Miz Hanley. It’s me, Olivia Harker.”
    “Well, come on down here, and let us see you.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Junk,” she said, “fetch this young’n