Valley of Bones Read Online Free PDF Page A

Puppy. One of those. I must have been three or four. And watching her bookkeeper’s finger moving across the familiar black shapes that meant BOX, or whatever the word was, I suddenly realized I could make its sound in my head without Gran having to say it, and that meant that I could turn on the story in my head, just like when you turned on the TV. And that meant, I soon came to realize, that I could read anything, any book in Granny’s house, any book in the tiny town library in Wayland.
    Probably it is a fabrication that this happened, I am backfilling to make a story, as perhaps St. Augustine made up the famous story of his conversion in the courtyard, the child’s voice calling take up and read and he took up and read the verse that allowed the Holy Spirit to enter his heart, but so it is with memory. Who knows what really happened and really, who cares? It’s what we make of it now that counts, and the truth is by the power of the Holy Spirit burnt into our bodies, so even now I can recapture the elation, the quivering joy I felt when I discovered what reading was, the second most important spiritual event of my life.
    I kept it secret from Momma and Daddy, because I was I am trying to think honestly here. Because I was either a controlling monster even then, like kids you hear about who hide their poo, or because I figured out even as a little thing that neither of them would be happy to learn that I was going to be smarter than them. Both of them could read somewhat, but there was not a book in the house, so that keeping the secret was no strain, even for a four-year-old.
    (You don’t believe this denial of accomplishment? You think kids want to be praised, why would I hide my gift? Why is there the perversion of gifts at all? Or their salvation? St. Ignatius Loyola wanted to be a conquistador, Hitler wanted to be an artist. Let’s call it satanic while we wait for the final revelation of psychology.)
    Gran had a lot of books, of course, and for the longest time I thought that this was what was meant when she called herself a bookkeeper. Momma did not like me staying over at her mother’s place, or maybe she was just being mean to Gran because Gran always wanted me to, or to me because I did too. She was a jealous person, Momma, although not particularly interested in me when she had me to herself. Mean jealous, may God forgive her as I have.
    By the time I was five and starting in school I was reading Black Beauty and Misty of Chincoteague and could use a dictionary to look up words I didn’t know. I thought I had invented looking up in the dictionary, as a matter of fact, that I had discovered that all the words in this fat book were arranged in the same order as the alphabet! I recall being annoyed when I saw Gran look something up and asked her what she was doing and discovered that it was an open secret. Or maybe that is another fabrication.
    In the first grade at the Sidney Lanier Elementary School they were doing the alphabet and I said I knew all of that and I could read but the teacher didn’t believe me and that was when I first heard the voice in my head. Pay attention, Emmylou, she was saying, because I was looking out the window wishing I was reading something, she was saying what comes after H and I said I know all this already, this is stupid. She got red across the cheeks, Mrs. Barrett her name was, and I could feel the kids get excited, a murmur like wind in the grass, and she said don’t be rude if you know so much say the rest of the alphabet and the voice told me no, you don’t have to, you’re smarter than all of them put together. I even looked around it was so clear, like one of the other kids was talking, but it wasn’t, just a nice soft voice, you couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. If this never happened to you you don’t know what I’m talking about, and if it has you may tremble at the memory of it.
    Anyway, that was my first crime that the devil made me do,I had to