The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion Read Online Free PDF

suitable—practically every shoe she owned had a little heel.
    She went down the hall to the twins’ bedroom closet and started rummaging through a box of their old shoes. She found a pair of worn-out pink sneakers with pom-poms. Unfortunately, they were two sizes too large, but they’d be better than trying to run in flip-flops and breaking an ankle.
    She put them on and laced them up as tightly as she could and went out to her greenhouse and filled her two large ceramic polka-dotted bird seed containers, one with sunflower seeds and the other with the wild bird seed. She went out and placed the container with the wild bird seed on the side of the house, ready to be picked up as she ran by, headed to the front yard. She then went back to the greenhouse, picked up the container with the sunflower seeds, took a deep breath, and ran to the backyard, filling up the feeders as fast as she could.
    After Sookie finished filling the feeders in the backyard, she dropped the container on the ground and ran to the side of the house and picked up the other polka-dotted seed container and was running toward the front yard when she stepped in a gopher hole and lost her left shoe. She couldn’t stop so she just went on without it.
    And of course, the very same moment she hit the front yard, the new Methodist minister and his wife were driving by the house and saw Sookie, wearing one pink shoe with tassels, hopping around on one foot, throwing seeds from a large polka-dotted container at her feeders. They slowed down and, as a matter of courtesy, were going to stop and say hello, but thankfully for Sookie, decided against it andquickly drove on. They were from Scotland and didn’t know if running around wearing one pink shoe with tassels while carrying a large polka-dotted container and throwing seeds was some kind of Southern bird-feeding ritual or not, but they were afraid to ask.
    Sookie’s neighbor Netta Verp was sitting out on her side porch in her robe, having her morning coffee, when she suddenly saw Sookie flying around the yard like a bat out of hell, with her polka-dotted bird seed container, slinging seeds every which way, and she wondered what in the world she was doing. Netta had never seen anyone in such a hurry to feed their birds in her life.
    After Sookie had filled all the front yard feeders, she ran back into the house and stood looking out the living room window, waiting to see if her smaller birds would come to feed. She waited, but none came. Where were they? There was not a bird to be seen anywhere. She then ran down the hall and looked out the kitchen window and saw the blue jays happily gobbling up all the sunflower seeds in back, while as usual, all of her smaller birds flittered around in the bushes below. Oh, no. Those little birds didn’t know what was waiting for them in the front yard. Oh, Lord. She hadn’t planned on this. Now she didn’t know what to do. She ran out on the back porch and started waving her arms and yelling at the top of her lungs, “Go to the front, little birds—go around to the front! Hurry up, little birds!” But how do you communicate with birds? It was so frustrating. Now not only were her little birds not getting anything to eat; all those sunflower seeds seemed to have attracted every blue jay in the entire area, and more were flying in by the minute.
    Netta observed her neighbor out on her back porch, jumping up and down and waving her arms around like a crazy person, and she didn’t know what to think. It was certainly peculiar behavior. She just hoped poor Sookie hadn’t flipped overnight, but with the Simmons family you never knew.
    After a moment, Sookie ran back to the living room window to see if, by chance, any little birds were there, but now a whole new gang of big blue jays were in the front yard, eating all the bird seed. It was so frustrating. The only other thing she could think of to do was to get Carter’s old baseball bat and run out and try to scare the