Read Online A Land More Kind Than Home by Wiley Cash - Free Book Online Page A

running until I was dizzy and had to stop to catch my breath. I looked around for Joe Bill, but I didn’t see him. There was a tree beside me, and I reached out and held myself up to keep from falling over, and then I leaned my back against it. I heard something crashing through the trees behind me, and I knew it was Joe Bill coming to find me. I put my hands on my knees so Joe Bill wouldn’t see me crying, and when I did I saw my hand had blood on it and I had it all over my blue jeans and it was on my shirt too. I turned my hand over and saw that a splinter half as long as my middle finger had gotten stuck down in the fat part of my hand right below my thumb. All of a sudden it hurt so bad that I couldn’t even think about touching it. I just stayed bent over with my other hand on my knee and I stared at the splinter and watched a drop of blood run through my palm, down my fingers, and into the leaves. I tried to clear my head and think about something else besides what I’d seen them doing to Stump. I heard Joe Bill running through the woods behind me.
    He stopped running, and I heard him panting like he was out of breath. I turned my head so he wouldn’t see me crying, and I tried to make a fist to hide all the blood, but that splinter was so big that it wouldn’t let me close my fingers. A drop of blood had landed on my shoe and was running off the side into the dry leaves.
    â€œIt’s all right, Jess,” Joe Bill said. He couldn’t hardly talk because he was so out of breath. “They were just laying their hands on him,” he said. “They were trying to help him.” I looked up at Joe Bill. I saw that he was crying too.

T HREE
    W HEN I DIPPED MY HAND INTO THE RIVER, THE WATER was so cold that it almost took my breath away. I let my wrist go limp, and I swished it back and forth like a brook trout flicks its tail in shallow, rocky water, and I watched the blood leave my hand and move into the river like red smoke drifting up from a fire. I took my other hand and cupped water into it and splashed it over my face to keep my eyes from getting too red and swollen from all the crying. I didn’t want Miss Lyle or Mama or nobody else up at the church to know I’d been crying because I didn’t want them asking me nothing about what we’d been doing.
    Joe Bill sat by the water on top of a rock a little piece down the bank with his arms locked around his knees. He looked out at the river. Neither one of us had said a word since we came out of the woods and snuck back down to the riverbank. I stared at his back for a minute, and then I stood up and shook the water off my hands.
    â€œYou know we can’t tell nobody about this,” I said to him. “We shouldn’t have seen that. We weren’t supposed to see anything.”
    â€œI know,” Joe Bill said.
    I thought about what I was saying, and then I pictured those men lying down on top of Stump, and in my head I heard myself holler out for Mama. I stood up and turned away from Joe Bill before I started crying again, and I untucked my shirttail and wiped my eyes with it. I tried to keep my right hand from touching my shirt any more than it already had so I wouldn’t get more blood on it.
    â€œWe never should’ve gone up there,” I said. I looked back at Joe Bill. He turned his face toward me, and he looked like he might start crying again too.
    â€œI think they were trying to help him,” he said. “Mr. Thompson told us it was Stump’s special day. Maybe they were trying to heal him. Maybe they were laying their hands on him so he could talk.”
    â€œHe couldn’t breathe!” I screamed at him. “He was trying to get up and run because he couldn’t breathe, and they wouldn’t get off him! They might have been trying to kill him!”
    â€œThey weren’t,” Joe Bill said.
    â€œHow do you know?” I hollered. At that second I thought