The Adventures of Flash Jackson Read Online Free PDF

I’m afraid of snakes, you understand. You just have to be in a certain kind of mood to appreciate them.
    Â 
    Next morning, early, Mother got up and drove Grandma back out to her place. Soon after that I got up and levered myself into the kitchen, where I made some toast and another cup of coffee. I set the little pond frog out on the back step—“The pond is thataway,” I told him, but I figured he already knew that, being an animal. Animals are born knowing what’s most important for them, and they don’t bother with anything else, which is something about them I’ve always respected.
    I was feeling about ten times better by then, and was even starting to feel like a busted leg didn’t necessarily have to mean that my entire life was ruined. It’s hard to be gloomy on a morning such as that, with the sky a bright blue and the first rays of the sun poking theirway into the kitchen. Our house is a cheerful place, I must say. Ma had it fixed up very nicely, with hand-sewn curtains in all the windows and the whole place always in a dust-free state. A number of my dear departed dad’s creations could be found throughout the place, too: furniture, lamps, a clock. Dad was very handy with a set of tools. He’d built the addition on our house, in fact, and also Brother’s shed, as well as his own workshop, which used to stand where the pond is now. That workshop was where he came up with his inventions. Most of his gadgets weren’t useful for anyone except us, but there were a few things he managed to patent. That was partly how we lived, in fact. Royalties were still coming in from one of his widgets. It wasn’t millions, but since we owned the house and land, that and his life insurance was plenty to keep us going, as long as we didn’t suddenly develop a taste for designer clothes.
    Mother came back around ten. I could see right away she was in one of her snits—something Grandma’d said to her about the way she was raising me, no doubt. The two of them got along like dogs and cats most of the time. I just let her be. She went upstairs to her bedroom and closed the door. I knew sooner or later she’d get worked up enough to the point where she’d have to come down and give me a lecture, and then it would be out of her. It always came down to something I’d done wrong, somehow. In this case it was climbing the barn. All right, I admit that was one of my more boneheaded moves. Every little escapade of mine was like a miniature nuclear explosion: There was always fallout, sometimes lasting months. And this was definitely the biggest bomb yet.
    When, oh when, are you going to learn? she’d wail. I tried so hard to turn you into a lady, not a man. If only your poor father were still alive—it’s too much for one person to take on by herself, this child-raising business. And I would point out to her that it was mostly Dad’s fault I turned out the way I did, if fault was even the right word, which I didn’t think it was. He was the one who taught me how to ride, how to climb, how to fish and hunt and swim. If I didn’t know betterI’d think Dad would have preferred a boy instead of a girl. Matter of fact, he would have been more suited to a son, but we never held our personal shortcomings against each other, and they never slowed us down any. He’d been my best friend up until the day he died—we did everything together. I know he’d been looking forward to having a kid, period. Even if he was disappointed on the day I popped out, he never showed it. He just went ahead and did all the things with me he would have done with a boy, and we had high old times. That was a long time ago, but there wasn’t a day that went by when I didn’t remember some little thing he’d done or said, or for that matter that I didn’t use something he’d made with his own two hands. Poor old Dad. Poor old Mother. Poor