True Fires Read Online Free PDF Page A

humid hot air leaves her lungs craving something cleaner, fresher.
It’s near impossible
to breathe ’round here,
she thinks.
Wonder if that’s the reason the
whole damned place seems brain-damaged?
    The Negroes patiently clutch their box tickets, waiting to be paid. With a hollow look, Franklin Dare yields the lead. She sighs.
    “All right, everybody. The big, bad Sheriff’s gone. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Nate, take the men into the barn, get started on the Pickers’ Log. Franklin and I’ll be there in a minute to settle up.”
    Relieved, the men make their way into the cool, cavernous grove barn. Through the wide door, there’s the scent of fresh-picked fruit.
    Turning to Franklin, she asks, “Isn’t Ed Cantrell the principal of Lake Esther Elementary?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Franklin says. Beside him, the boy nods solemnly.
    Memories of pudgy Eddie from grade school, shy, smart, never quite in with the in crowd, but never quite out either, fly through her mind. She pictures him in high school—he’d become Ed by then—his scarlet-and-white band uniform straining at the side seams as the horn section marched past the cheerleaders on the football field; his stubby fingers surprisingly delicate on the shiny valves of his trumpet. Son of a teacher and a traveling salesman, he’d been a nice boy. She hoped he’d become a fair man.
    “We grew up together,” Lila tells Franklin. “I’ll go to the school with you in the morning. We’ll get this straightened out, get these kids back in school where they belong. Okay?”
    Franklin’s face floods with gratitude. The boy eyes her warily.
    “Okay with you?” she asks the boy directly.
    “Y-yes, ma’am,” he stammers. His ears flush bright red.
    “And you, sweet girl?” Lila bends low, from the waist, places a soft hand on the girl’s shoulder.
Poor thing.
Frightened eyes, the color of deep creek water, glimmer between dark, tear-clumped lashes, search Lila’s face. “That Sheriff has no idea what he’s talking about,” Lila tells her. “You have a beautiful nose.”

8
    It’s late—the clock beside Betty Whitworth’s bed shows nearly midnight—when, finally, the rain comes.
Took its time getting
here,
Betty thinks, as she listens to it run off the roof and splat in the rain barrel. She shifts, rearranges the hot-water bottle under her aching hip. The pain will be less in the morning, now that the storm has broke. But tomorrow she’ll have to check the ceiling under the third-floor roost. If the shingle glue hasn’t held, if the pin leak’s gotten worse, she’ll have to beg somebody—Daniel maybe—to climb up there and apply some more.
    If only Clay was here . . .
It’s the hymn of her days, and most of her nights.
If only Clay was here . . .
to climb up on the roof, to rewire the chandelier, to paint the stairwell, to enforce the rules, to collect the rents. The list of ways clever Clay could make her life easier was endless.
    If only Clay was here . . .
a visit from the Sheriff wouldn’t reduce her to a babbling idiot, a brush-off by Franklin Dare in answer to her questions about the Sheriff’s business with the children would’ve spawned a more forceful demand for the facts. Maybe she can bribe some information out of little ’Becca tomorrow. That poor child has a sweet tooth for Cora’s thumbprint cookies.
    If only Clay was here . . . Stop it! You’re turning into a crazy old
loon just like Mama. Remember how she was in the end, roaming the
halls in her old gray robe and slippers, wild white hair spilling out of
her hairnet, calling out, in that voice like a dull needle on a scratched
record: “Henry, are you there, dear? Henry?”
    What was it that had doomed her to live—a motherless child, a childless mother—in this godforsaken, falling-apart place?
Will I wind up like Mama, wandering the halls calling out
like some crazy old loon? Was it this crazy old house that cursed us
both?
    Built in the boom year of 1898 (the same