Into the Free Read Online Free Page B

head out to check on the pups.
    The mother mutt looks up at me, the spotted pup I named Rose hanging in her jaws. The mama hunches over, crunching tiny bone and tendon with those yellow teeth. I look around the yard, frantic. I call their names. “Twinkle? JuJuBee? Belle?” I listen for their weak yelps, their hushed panting. Nothing. Nothing but the sound of the mother limping back into the deep, dark woods from where she came.

     
    Soon enough, I fall asleep on the ground next to Sweetie’s trunk. I sleep all night under the stars. The next morning, it isn’t Mama who finds me, and thankfully it isn’t Jack. Instead, Sloth wakes me as the sun comes up. “Morning, Wild Child.” He holds a biscuit and a cup of coffee. “You missed breakfast.”
    Sloth is old enough to be my grandfather, but he’s my best friend. I spend almost all my time with him. He likes to be outside as much as I do, and we can always manage to find a squirrel to befriend if the day is taking too long to get done.
    Unlike Mama, who only cooks when Jack’s coming home, Sloth is serious about preparing meals every day, and he expects me to help. Whether it’s catching game, filleting fish, or plucking hens, I try to pull my share of the load. “Don’t work. Don’t eat,” Sloth teases as he holds the biscuit and coffee above me. It’s a belief that’s stuck with me. Ever since Mama stopped cooking on a regular basis. If I get hungry, I go looking for Sloth.
    I was only about four years old the first time I found him on the side of his house holding a plump red hen and a rusty ax. He pinned her to the cedar stump, stretching her scrawny neck long and thin across the wood. Her eyes looked into mine. They were black and round, and they knew.
    When his ax sliced into her, the sound of her cries sent me spinning. By the time I settled, Sloth was carrying the hen to a tin wash bucket on his porch. Headless, she swung from his hand. Blood dripped down with each of his wobbly steps. He threw the bird into the bucket. Then he came back from the fire pit with a pot of hot water. “Watch out, now,” he said, dumping it over the bird. “Helps the feathers slide out.”
    Next thing I knew, he was handing me the hen and pointing me to sit on the edge of the porch. “Pluck,” he said. I gave him my absolutely-not look. “Pluck!” he said again, this time a direct order.
    He pulled one long red feather from her belly. I tried, but it didn’t slide out. It was stuck. The thick base of the feather clung to the hen. I argued that she didn’t want to be plucked. Didn’t want to be supper. “Gotta eat!” is all Sloth said. He pulled the bird back to his own lap and stripped the feathers out in bunches.
    That sure wasn’t the last bird I’ve plucked with Sloth. He’s taught me a lot about things like that. Like how to spread trotlines from bank to bank and come back in the evening to find a whole line of catfish, turtles, or crappie hanging from hooks.
    My favorite is when we catch gars. Their long narrow mouths look like they could snap my arm in two. Sloth always signals me to keep back. Then he slides the hook right out of the fish, like he’s slipping a knife through jelly. No pressure at all. Looks easy. But that’s how Sloth does pretty much everything in life.
    “I should have gone fishing with you yesterday,” I say, biting into the warm biscuit and looking around for Jack’s truck, hoping it’s nowhere in sight.
    Sloth reaches out his hand to help me to my feet. “Ever a choice,” he says, “choose fishing.”

     
    Mama said they moved to Cabin Two not because it was cheap but because it was the farthest place they could find from her parents on the other side of town. It’s been almost twelve years since Mama married Jack. His Choctaw blood was not welcome in Mama’s family, and so neither am I. We live in the same town, shop in the same stores, walk the same streets, but if my grandparents happen to cross my path, they simply