When I Crossed No-Bob Read Online Free PDF Page A

Irene laughs and lets me go outside.
She says around her house, people ought to do what they're naturally good at.

    I feed the chickens and collect their eggs, milk and feed the cow, and clear out the stalls every day. I feed the new hogs corn to keep them tame, and when the acorns fall I take the hogs to the woods and let them root around some. I know it's time to cut a good supply of firewood when I see the hogs raking and toting straw, a sure sign of a cold spell.
    Mr. Frank, he got himself some good land here with plenty of nut-bearing trees: big-bud and scaly-bark hickories, black walnut, chestnut, beech, pecan, and chinquapin. I pick plums from under the trees too and tote them to the two hogs so they'll taste better. I gather red-oak, elm, maple, and juniper bark. I set it out to dry and then grind it up so we can stew it down and use it to dye. We use borax, alum, and bluestone to set the dye. I set aside some red-oak bark for fevers and colds. Lots of things you can do to get ready for colds, like collecting and drying mullein and horsemint for teas. Momma taught me about such things that Miss Irene isn't so keen on.
    One afternoon, I am sweeping the yard with a brush broom when Little Bit stops by, picks up another of Miss Irene's brooms, and starts sweeping alongside me, humming some song.
    "After this, you want to play marbles?"

    "Don't you got chores?" I say. Little Bit is pretty and young, so she gets spoiled. She plays. I work.
    "I climb trees," she says, moving a pigtail. "I'm not a Miss Priss."
    Miss Irene hails us from the porch. She sweeps and tells me to go on off and play. She says I've already done a fine job.
    Little Bit and me, we don't say much. We just are and we are that together. We already had our fight down near Clear Creek at her brother's wedding, so it's like we've gotten that out of the way, and it was a good fight, because we were equal and neither one of us won and the two of us, we know how strong and how weak the other is.
    While we are out and about we pick and collect the last of the wild plums that grow along a ditch in the thickets. We can help Miss Irene make jelly and pies.
    You work and you work and you work and you eat some and you sleep some and you get up and start all over. Every now and then you get hit with hard times or good—who's to say? But then there are these tiny times in between when you look up at the tops of trees swaying or you sit down to a fine meal with a new family or you wake up alone and by the end of the day, you got yourself your first friend.
    ***
    At my seat in the schoolhouse I look down at my slate board and I think and think. Each Monday we are to write a composition. So far our titles include "The Past," "Napoleon Bonaparte," and "A Snow Scene." Each Friday we have to memorize and recite a poem. "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. "A Psalm of Life" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The title for our composition today is "Egypt."

    I stare back down at my slate board. There is all that blank space that looks like my life. It is easier to look at that slate and think up funny things to do. It is easier to make mischief.
    "Addy?" Mr. Frank says to me.
    Everyone looks up.
    "Just start. The words will come once you get started."
    "I don't have any words for Egypt, Mr. Frank."
    Mr. Frank, he thinks on this.
    "Then write about your mother, Addy. Just talk to me. Write like you talk. Write everything you told me when we were working outside." He doesn't wait for me to complain. He just lets me sit there, picturing Momma kneeling in the front yard every morning to set up a new egg. I think of where she might be now. Somewhere in Texas where there's nothing but cowboys and tumbleweeds.
    I don't follow Mr. Frank's advice. I don't want to bore him with what I already told him.

    I set out to write. I write down the pictures in my head. I write about Momma and how she lifts her feet up feeling powerful whenever she wore her shoes. I