The Librarian of Boone's Hollow - Kim Vogel Sawyer Page 0,23
enough, he heard Maw’s sweet voice and Dusty’s chortles. He caught snatches of words—Striped Chipmunk, Purple Hills, Grandfather Frog…Maw was reading from Old Mother West Wind, the storybook she’d read to Emmett on Sunday afternoons when he was Dusty’s age. Remembrances carried him backward in time, and longing for the simpler days of childhood struck hard. Sure, he was home now. But all grown up and armed with a college degree, he couldn’t live in his parents’ loft again. Not forever.
If the Coal & Coke Company hired him, they’d probably let him rent one of the company houses in Lynch, which had been built for the coal workers. If they did, he probably wouldn’t make the trek to Boone’s Hollow for Sunday services. He wouldn’t eat suppers around the table with his folks and brother or clean Paw-caught catfish before dawn. He was home…but he wasn’t home.
Sadness hit as hard as a tree trunk landing on his shoulders, and his hand fell away from the string. He’d gone to college to better himself, believing his schoolteacher’s insistence that the degree would make his life richer and happier. But would it really?
Bettina
BETTINA HELD HER breath and tapped on Glory’s bedroom window, praying Glory’s nosy maw wouldn’t poke her head out the front door of the cabin and ask who was disturbing their Sunday naps. She should’ve gone straight home. After lunch, Pap gave her permission to go for a walk while he took his usual Sunday afternoon snooze, but she’d waited under the tree by the church for almost two hours until Emmett finally showed up. By now Pap was probably awake again, shuffling around the cabin, wondering what’d happened to her and building up his temper. But she had to talk to somebody or she’d bust. And she sure couldn’t tell Pap what was bubbling inside her.
Oh, where was that Glory, anyway? She gritted her teeth and tapped again.
The muslin curtains swished to the side, and Glory looked out the window. Her mouth fell open. Bettina gestured, and Glory nodded. Bettina scurried around to the back of the cabin. The Ashcrofts’ back door always gave Bettina the shivers. Pap would not tolerate a back door. If a person had two doors, he might accidentally go out one and come in another, and everybody knew bad luck would come to that fool person and everybody who lived in the house. She bounced on the balls of her feet until Glory stepped out and closed the door real careful behind her. Bettina darted over, grabbed Glory’s arm, and dragged her to the Ashcrofts’ animal lean-to.
Inside the shadowy space that smelled strong of earth, animals, and manure, Bettina took hold of Glory’s hands. “Guess what.”
“He’s home.”
Bettina held in the squeal she wanted to let out and squeezed Glory’s hands hard. “Yep. An’ guess what he done when he seen me?”
Glory’s eyes blazed. “Can’t guess.”
Of course she couldn’t. Glory didn’t have so much as an ounce of imagination. Bettina sucked in a big breath, counted to three, then let the air whoosh out with her words. “Scooped me off the ground an’ hugged me, that’s what.” She thought sure Glory’s eyes would pop right out of her head. She laughed, then sashayed to the center post and leaned against the weathered wood. “Oh, Glory, you shoulda seen it. It was so romantic. Just like bein’ in a movie.”
Glory gaped at Bettina. Glory’s fuzzy brown hair stood out like a lion’s mane around her moon-shaped face. Glory wouldn’t never keep a beau if she didn’t learn how to tame that frizzy hair of hers. The picture-show heroes never went after girls who looked like they didn’t know what a comb was for. “Tell me what all he done. Did he kiss you?”
“Well…” Bettina ground her toe into the soft dirt, giving Glory a sly sideways look. “He couldn’t kiss me. Not right there in the middle o’ the street.”
“Was someone lookin’?”
“No, nobody was lookin’. Nobody was around ’cept for him an’ me. That’s what made it so romantic.” She closed her eyes and filled her mind with the image of Emmett, his fine suit hugging his solid frame, the sound of a bird singing from a nearby bush, the warmth of sunshine pouring down on the two of them…and the heart-fluttering remembrance of Emmett’s blue eyes aimed at her, as if he couldn’t get enough of seeing her. Oh, what a pretty picture.