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

about the leaves on a magnolia and how they're so stiff and waxy, they almost never fall apart and come undone.
    We pass the creek where we say bye to Little Bit, who walks alone the rest of her way home. Mr. Frank and I take a minute to wash our hands. I splash my face with water and rub hard on the scar that runs down the side of my nose. Dirt and water go there first and run through it like a river. I reach down to take a sip of water and catch a water beetle with my fingers, and something comes out of it because that water beetle stings me. I wonder if it hurt me because I hurt it.
    "Come on, Addy," Mr. Frank says. "I'm hungry." He looks at me, takes a handkerchief from his pocket, dabs my face dry. I want to tell him how much I miss Momma, but I don't. We look at each other and smile. I guess me and Mr. Frank, we don't have to say much.
    I set the water beetle in the water and turn it loose.
    ***
    That night Miss Irene confides that she has not gotten much sleep of late because she is not used to sharing her bed with Mr. Frank, who kicks in his sleep. I decide to help out.

    In the middle of the night, I sneak into their room and tie Mr. Frank's big toe to the bedpost just like Momma done me once to keep me from kicking her. But the next morning when Mr. Frank gets up and trips and falls because he didn't know his toe was hooked up with the bed, neither he nor Miss Irene think I've helped.

    At school, we relearn some about the war. It all started because Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard fired the first shot, a man with a too-long name. We look at pictures of Ulysses'S. Grant. I always did think Mr. Grant was a might better-looking than Robert E. Lee, but I keep that bit to myself.
    Then, finally, we put the past behind us and we begin a new subject called geography. Mr. Frank stands in front of the schoolroom with his nose bandaged up from his fall just that morning. He shows us a map from a book called
Atlas,
and it is there that we children see the world all charted out. On the page, in this book, the lines are so clear. There is the United States of America with the shapes of each state marked
with straight lines, but when you get up close, they squiggle here and there. There are lines for rivers and jig jags for mountains.

    "There's still a lot of room here," I say, pointing to the West, wide open and unlined.
    "Yes, there is, Addy." With the bandage and his nose all plugged up, he talks like he has a cold. "Many go out there to seek their fortunes and maybe even mark the land with their own names."
    "Didn't your grandpa go out west?" Rew Smith asks Mr. Frank.
    "Yes, he did, Rew. To Texas."
    "That's where my pappy went." For a minute, me and Mr. Frank, we look at each other. This might be the first thing we have in common. I wonder if he misses his grandpa like I do my momma and pappy.
    "Where's No-Bob? Where's Smith County? Where are all our roads and rivers?" Little Bit wants to know.
    "They're not on this map. A lot of the smaller places don't get put on a big map like this. But there are the big rivers here." Mr. Frank, he points out all the big rivers. He calls them sources for the little rivers. He says if a river forgets its
source, it dries up. He points to the river Strong. I remember what Little Bit told me. Their slave, Buck, crossed that river called Strong.

    Mr. Frank, he starts explaining our assignment. He says he'd like each of us to decide on a place and make a map of it. It can be our house, our neighborhood, our town, or even a road.
    "Draw it out like you see here," Mr. Frank says. "Write the names of the rivers and paths if you know them. Write down what you know about this place. You can work individually or with partners." I have a feeling that today Mr. Frank wants us to do our work and leave him alone. Especially me.
    "How long do we have?" Little Bit wants to know. Already we know we'll be partners. We're leaning forward ready to run out of the schoolhouse. I want to take Little Bit