Family Reminders Read Online Free Page A

gold strike after another, he ended up in Cripple Creek. “Mighty obliged to you, ma’am,” he said shyly. “Between working all day, cooking dinner, and trying to keep the house livable, this old bachelor just plain don’t have time for anything else.” As he talked he pressed a crinkled dollar into Mama’s hand. Then he bowed slightly and backed out the door.
    Mama called me into the parlor. “Look at this,” she squealed. “One dollar! My goodness!” Mama let out a long whistle and picked up the hem of her skirt, dancing a jig.
    Daddy clumped in from the kitchen and stood there, leaning on his crutches and watching Mama dance. “What’s going on here?” he finally asked.
    “Well, for starters, Daniel,” Mama said pointedly, “I’m dancing in the parlor without any music.”
    Daddy just shrugged.
    Mama looked at him for a moment, a challenge flashing in her eyes. “For another, I’m happy because Mr. Stewart paid me one whole dollar for doing his laundry. And I already have another job for tomorrow. See, I can help out until you get back on … until you get better.”
    “Don’t you understand, Liddie? I’m not going to get better. I’m always going to be missing a leg. Let’s face it, nobody’s going to hire a one-legged miner.”
    Mama’s smile faded against the rough truth of Daddy’s words. Then in carefully woven words, as soft as flannel, she said, “Daniel, you’re right, no one is going to hire a one-legged miner … to mine. But don’t you understand that you are
more
than a miner, one-legged or two? Or at least I always thought so.”
    She reached up to hug him, but Daddy, stiff and unbendable, held on tightly to his crutches, eyes straight ahead. Mama shook him gently by the shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. Then, putting her money in her apron pocket and her chin in the air, she flounced out of the room.
    Daddy came over to me where I sat on the sofa. Smiling weakly, he dropped a Reminder in my lap. It was a carving of a woman bent over a washboard, her sleeves rolled up and her hair falling down around her face.
    “It looks just like Mama,” I said as I inspected it, turning it round and round.
    Daddy nodded and limped slowly out of the room.
    Before I followed him into the kitchen I put the carving carefully on the shelf with all the other Reminders.

Nine

    “Would you run down to Brown’s Emporium for me?” Mama asked as soon as I walked in from school and dropped my book bag on the kitchen chair.
    “Oh, Mama, can’t I do it tomorrow?” I asked, breathing in the delicious, warm smell of just-baked bread.
    “No. Daddy is out of pipe tobacco,” Mama said in a tone that made it perfectly clear that there was to be no argument. She handed me a piece of bread slathered with wild raspberry preserves. “Here, have a snack before you go,” she said, softening her voice and kissing me on the head as she went back to her chores. One sweet-sour bite brought the memories of last summer flooding back.
    Mama, Daddy, and I left the house early one morning to pick raspberries. We hiked up the road past the house until it was no longer a road but a dusty trail into the mountains. Daddy whistled as he carried the picnic basket and his fishing pole. Mama and I both carried tin buckets. Up and over the ridge we climbed until we reached a scraggly mountain meadow dotted with wildflowers. The creek bubbled and rushed along past the raspberry bushes, their branches full of knobby, red fruit
.
    “Heaven on earth,” Daddy said, taking in a deep breath. I breathed in, too, big gulps of moist air that smelled of the river, pine, and the sweetness of ripe fruit
.
    Mama and I rolled up our sleeves and went to work plucking ripe, plump raspberries off the prickly branches
.
Daddy gathered firewood and started a campfire. Then he stuck a worm on his hook and began to fish. The sun climbed higher and hotter in the sky, and the only sounds were the rustle of the raspberry branches and the