The Buffalo Soldier Read Online Free Page A

great-aunts and -uncles. Schuyler Jackman's granddad was buried no more than forty or fifty feet from where he was sitting right now: Alfred had studied the headstone a half-dozen times, he'd even touched the cold marble. Tim Acker's cousin was here somewhere, too, a much older boy--a teenager--who'd died in a car accident further up the mountain near the gap. He figured that tombstone had to be in the new section, a part of the cemetery he rarely visited. It wasn't as interesting there. The tombstones were more recent, and there were no Civil War soldiers with their rusty G.A.R. stars.
    Maybe, Alfred worried, it wasn't right for him to be here now. Or, perhaps, ever. He could be violating some country code or local tradition.
    In Burlington no one would have cared if he and Tien--a Vietnamese girl who'd become his best friend in the year he was with the Pattersons--had felt like hanging out in the graveyard. It was a real city, and they went wherever they wanted. He figured the high-school kids there went to the cemetery all the time, especially when they needed a quiet place to get high. But never once had he met a soul in the cemetery in Cornish during the many times he'd roamed inside the wrought-iron fencing.
    He decided he'd allow himself a few more minutes of solitude--that was something he had here that he'd never had anyplace else--and in one almost simultaneous motion he pulled his knees up to his chest and his cap down as far as his eyebrows. It was odd being the only kid in the house, and he wasn't sure what he thought about it. Often he felt lonely. It was, as far as he knew, a first for him since he'd been a baby with Renee. At the very least, it was the first time that he'd been alone in Vermont. Maybe when he was very young and they still lived in Philadelphia there'd been a time when he was the only kid around. But who knew? Maybe Renee did, but he had no expectations he'd ever see her again, and it probably wouldn't be the first thing he'd bother to ask her if he did.
    One good thing about being the only child was that it meant he wasn't at the absolute bottom of the pecking order. In almost every other house where he'd lived, he had been. First there were the biologic children, and then there were the foster kids who'd gotten there before him. At one place--two houses ago--there had only been foster kids, but he was the last in and so he was still the low man on the totem pole. Not that it mattered. There they were all just a money-making scheme, anyway. They all knew they were just income so the woman could stay home, watch her soaps, and drink long-necks.
    Yet even though he had more space now than he'd ever had in his life, he didn't feel as if he had much privacy. Here--at first he meant only the house, but as the word formed in his head, he realized he meant the town--he felt as if he was constantly being studied. Inside, outside. Everywhere, it seemed. It was the exact opposite of being ignored, which was something he was used to and understood. He knew how to get by on his own.
    But between Terry and Laura and the neighbors and the teachers and the pastor and the kids at school, he felt like a zoo animal--and maybe not even a zoo animal you liked. More like a zoo animal you didn't quite trust. It was like they always thought he was up to something.
    Maybe that was how come he felt lonely.
    He was, as far as he could tell, the only black child for miles, and that didn't help, either. He wasn't just the new foster kid, he was the black foster kid. He couldn't begin to figure out what the deal was with that, or what the people who shuffled him around were trying to do now. At first he had figured this was just an emergency placement because he'd pissed off the Pattersons once and for all, but then he realized he was expected to stay here awhile.
    He wasn't completely sure how he felt about that, even now after ten weeks.
    Occasionally he wondered if he might have been adopted by someone if he'd been