The Buried Book Read Online Free PDF Page B

After a few hours, she’d bellow from the front seat of the car that it was time to go, and Jasper would have to climb down from the hayloft in the barn or wherever he’d been playing. He usually threw some sort of fit about it, and she’d end up dragging him screaming through the dirt back to the car.
    You get any dirtier, I’m gonna leave you here for Leo to plow under, she’d growl. The only thing anyone gets in this godforsaken place is stink.
    But she’d left him there anyway. Jasper glanced back at the burnt house. The book in the small of his back pressed uncomfortably against his spine. Her eyes were red with dried tears the morning she left him. She looked scared.
    Promise me you’ll keep him safe.
    The image of Wayne’s wild Injuns crept through his thoughts, but he shooed them away. He doubted his mother had ever met an Indian in her whole life, but she was scared of something.
    Wayne was too busy talking about other things to notice the frown on Jasper’s face. “School’s startin’ in a couple weeks. Pop says you’ll be walkin’ with me this year. I think you’ll like Miss Babcock. She’s not as strict as some of them teachers I’ve heard about. You like school?”
    I’m not going back home for school?
    “I said, do you like school?” the older boy repeated like his cousin was thick.
    “It’s okay,” he mumbled. Jasper had just finished third grade back in Detroit. His teacher mostly ignored him. He’d learned not to ask too many questions in class since all they seemed to do was irritate her. The older boys called him shrimp and stole his milk money every Friday. He wasn’t going to see them in the fall. He might not see them ever again.
    “What’s your favorite subject?”
    “I don’t know.” Jasper found them all fairly boring. He planned to say nothing more about it until another thought occurred to him. “I really want to learn to read better. Especially that curly writing people do.”
    “Cursive? Well, I can help you with that, kid. I’m the best.” Wayne threw his arm around his cousin’s shoulders.
    Jasper shook it off, worried that his cousin might discover the book stuffed in his pants. “Isn’t Uncle Leo going to be mad at me?”
    “Nah. Just apologize . . . and offer to clean the chicken coop as penance. That should make Pop feel better.”
    The two boys had reached the road and headed back toward Uncle Leo’s small house. It was so much smaller than the one that had burned down, and Jasper wondered for a moment why that might be. Up ahead, he could see the large man standing at the end of his two-track drive. He was holding a pitchfork in his hand, a pitchfork that might be meant for one ungrateful nephew. Jasper swallowed hard.
    “Where’d ya find him?” Uncle Leo asked Wayne as they walked up.
    “Down in the hay field. Think he must’ve got lost.”
    Jasper nodded pathetically, not looking his uncle in the eye. Leo put a palm on his shoulder. It felt like a boulder. The man’s hands were strong enough to snap a nine-year-old’s spine in two.
    “This the last time you’re planning on running away?” Uncle Leo squeezed Jasper’s shoulder hard enough to bring tears.
    “Yes, sir. I—I won’t do it again. I’m sorry. Can’t I do something to help out, like . . . clean the chicken coop?”
    Uncle Leo let go and folded his enormous arms. He turned his iron stare to his own son. “What an interesting suggestion.”
    “I was gonna help him, Pop. I know it’s my chore to do. He just felt so bad worrying y’all like that, he wanted to help. Right, Jas?”
    Jasper nodded.
    “C’mon. Let’s get started so we don’t miss breakfast.” Wayne grabbed the younger boy by the arm and dragged him away before Uncle Leo could lay down a more severe punishment for them both.

CHAPTER 6
    We’ll get to the murder allegations, but first we need to get to know each other. Understand?
    Later that afternoon, Jasper crept back into the house while Wayne headed