The Great Good Summer Read Online Free PDF

toward him, he’s looking down, like he’s given up on finding contrails or anything else in the sky. “But a museum’s nice, right?” I say. “So lots of folks can see it?”
    Paul stands up and shakes out his pants and stretches his arms above his head, like he’s just waking up. “Ha,” he says, in this really sarcastic way. “You sound just like my mom. I’m sure both of you mean well, but a museum means it’s history. Over and done with,” he says. “The end of curiosity and exploration and discovery, not only for guys like me who thought we’d hitch a ride to the International Space Station someday, but for everyone. I mean, I guess they’ll keep sending unmanned spacecraft out there—y’know, rovers and stuff—but sometimes you’ve gotta go somewhere in person to understand it, right? You can’t just plant yourself in a place like Loomer for the rest of your life and expect to learn anything.”
    And right then Paul Dobbs turns around and walks straight up the cellar steps, across the sidewalk, and out past the big cedar elm. He keeps walking through the hotpaved parking lot of Loomer Second Baptist Church and turns left onto Allen Avenue. He doesn’t look back, not once, and he doesn’t look like he plans to stay planted anywhere.

Chapter Five
    S o here’s when I know for certain that things with Mama have gone all kinds of wrong. We’re sitting at Snow Drugstore, sipping our after-church shakes, and Donnetta Snow steps over from the pharmacy counter to say hi.
    â€œMax, Ivy,” she says. “Best chocolate shakes this side of Houston?”
    â€œWell, hello, Donnetta,” says Daddy. “Good to see you. And yep, they’re as good as ever. My little Ivy-girl was suffering a bit of heatstroke after church, and a chocolate shake seems to be the cure-all!” Daddy winks at me, and Donnetta smiles her famous Donnetta Snow smile. I sip my shake and feel relieved I’ve been forgiven for ducking out of church. Daddy hardly seemed to mind at all, which makes me think he’s been feeling sorrier for me than he’s let on.
    â€œAw, I’m glad, honey,” Donnetta says, and she ruffles my hair so that my skin tingles. In a good way.
    â€œNow, Max,” she says, “I’ve been meaning to call you to ask what you want me to do with Diana’s prescriptions. She hasn’t picked them up, and I understand she’s out of town, but if my calculations are correct, she’s run out of two of them. Are you sending things to her?”
    I suck up a quick, nervous straw full of ice cream, and it goes straightaway to my brain and gives me a freeze headache. So much for a milk shake being a cure-all.
    Mama needs her pills. She always has. She has high blood pressure from her daddy and something she calls “swell finger” from her mama, and she never, ever misses a single day of her pills. But then she’s never missed any of my school events before this year’s end-of-year ceremony either.
    â€œWell, that,” says Daddy, “is a very good question, Donnetta.”
    And then he looks at me like I might know what to do about Mama or her pills or Donnetta Snow. He looks at me like he’s got no idea what to do about any of it himself. He looks at me like he’s afraid. Afraid that Mama’s not of her right mind. Or that Hallelujah Dave isn’t. Or that we may never get Mama back home with us in Loomer, Texas, where she belongs.
    And I decide right then and there that there’s hardlya thing worse in the world than seeing your own daddy look that afraid.

    In the car Daddy says nothing. He buckles up and sets the bag with Mama’s pills on the seat between us, and he drives. His lips are tight and white again, and I can tell he doesn’t want to talk, but I do. So I say, “Daddy, Mama thinks all the best conversations happen in the