Virginia Hamilton Read Online Free PDF Page A

keep her safe. And the roll and coast of the Quinella thrilled her to her heart. Laughing, she gripped the handlebars. Her curls were soon plastered back from her forehead in waves. She felt wind pressure on her eyeballs, and her mouth went dry. At the crest of a plunge she’d not fixed firmly in her mind, her stomach suddenly rose and turned over. With a gasp, she flew off the seat and nearly wrecked.
    Chrissakes! But her luck was still grand.
    She steadied and all of her thoughts passed behind in the wind. Seeing each detail of wood and weed, she forgot them immediately. And plunged on and ever down.
    Until, three quarter-miles later, there was a pause, a recess of a flat place in the Quinella Road.
    Ready.
    Justice craned her neck around to check the last long hill behind.
    Nothing coming down.
    She studied the forward road.
    Nothing coming on.
    Listening hard, shaking wind from her hearing, she heard nothing coming down or coming on.
    Set.
    Swiftly riding, she released the handlebars and hand brakes to grasp the seat beneath her. Simultaneously, she removed her feet from the pedals to stretch her legs up and stiffly forward until they rested on the handlebars. With the slightest lean, she started the bike turning in circles in the road.
    Go!
    Justice had slid from the seat onto the crossbar. Letting go of the seat, she leaned her back over it. And she had speed enough for four good circles around in the road. With arms held out to the sides, she might have been a child asleep on a comfortable couch.
    There—yeah!
    Posed and balanced to perfection. On the last one and one half circles around, she lifted her arms straight above for the ear-splitting applause.
    You wish! was her fleeting thought.
    She had to struggle to get her feet down and scoot back on the seat before the bike fell over on its side. Not a second too soon, she leaped off and caught the bike in an awkward crouch.
    Have to figure a way to get down more graceful, she thought. But not now. Anyway, it’s a better trick than anything I’ve seen boys do.
    Practicing the trick was not what she was here for.
    “Best get off of the road,” she told herself. She pedaled a short distance through a part of the road that was even and ordinary. So began the straight-out Quinella, a hot country road on the way to farmland, small towns and nowhere.
    But on the right was an expanse of countryside. In the forefront, next to the road, was a field with a barbed-wire fence. Here Justice stopped the bike. The fence was as far as she had gone on Monday and Tuesday. Today she would go the rest of the way. This she had promised herself.
    First, she worked to get her bike through three barbed wires, which was what the fence consisted of. Sliding the bike between the lowest and middle strands, she took care that the barbs didn’t puncture a tire or scratch the paint.
    Whew! And once the bike was through, she held the strands apart and gingerly stepped in, one leg at a time.
    Justice hid her bike in the tall weeds along the side and headed on, the blue sky for company.
    Well, like a field, she thought as she walked away from the road and fence behind her. She had no idea how long a boundary the fence made, or where it ended. There was no sign of it ahead of her. The place like a field opened up, going on and on, with grand shade trees ahead of her and to one side. Within those trees was heavy shadow growing deeper until it appeared to be darkness. And shade, forever trapped under the trees, was as black as night against the open land where she walked bathed in sunlight.
    Oh, don’t make me go in the shade by myself.
    Talking to herself. But she knew what she must do. Sooner or later, she must enter the shade and face the hard work.
    Trudging in sunlight through tall weeds, Justice soon had spiny burrs stuck to her pants legs. She didn’t mind them. Always, she seemed to have some weed mark or grass stain on her clothing. Her mom said she was as countrified as she could be.