Read Online Blood Kin by Steve Rasnic Tem - Free Book Online Page A

the preacher used for that. But the Grans hardly ever saw nobody. They never went into town, or to any of the socials, and nobody went to see them, either. Except the preacher. People said he went there most every week. But Sadie had never heard of anyone else visiting there in years; she didn’t even know how they got their food. It seemed a shame — they didn’t live that much further up the mountain. But Sadie had never visited them, either. The kids at school said they were devils.
    She felt herself trembling. “I have to go?”
    Sadie wished she could take that back. She went stiff all over, waiting for her mother to scream at her, or maybe hit her. But her mother didn’t say anything for a while. Then, finally, in a voice that made Sadie want to cry it sounded so gentle, “I guess you gotta, Baby. They’re the Grans, and they never asked nobody before.”
    Sadie looked down at her yellow dress, still gathered in folds behind her. She wondered why her mother hadn’t noticed, or why she wasn’t saying anything. “I’d best be changing,” she said, and started for her room.
    “They’re the Grans, but they’re still just Gibsons, Sadie. I never knowed you to change your dress afore dark.”
    Sadie stopped, wondering if her mother knew about her period. Maybe older women sensed that kind of thing. “I gotta go to church meeting after. I promised the preacher.”
    Her mother’s laughter was like a donkey braying. “You’re gonna handle snakes!” The cigarette dropped out of her mouth and rolled on the floor. Aunt Lilly stamped the sparks out, looking a little mad. Momma must have forgotten that Aunt Lilly and Uncle Jesse were part of the preacher’s congregation.
    “You oughtn’t to go, child,” Lilly said. “That church is no place for a young girl like you. Best keep away.”
    “I’m just gonna watch . I promised I’d go.”
    “You’re gonna watch , huh?” There was a last, brief explosion of laughter from her momma, but this time it didn’t sound like laughter at all.
    “Sadie, girl — let’s talk about this,” Aunt Lilly said.
    “I probably wont even stay the whole time.” Sadie tried to slide kind of sideways into her room without showing her backside.
     
     
    S ADIE WIPED HERSELF clean with the dress — she’d find some place out in the woods to dump it tomorrow. She didn’t have so many dresses she could afford to dump one like this, but she just, just couldn’t wear it no more. Momma would find out though, when some time passed and Sadie hadn’t been wearing it. Sadie didn’t know what she’d say, but it didn’t matter. Momma would be so mad no matter what she told her.
    She really didn’t have a “good” dress — her momma made most of hers out of those fancy print feed bags — but she had a blue one that was pretty clean. It had some bad tears, but they were along the seams, so maybe she could just pin them up and nobody at the church service would notice, especially if they were consumed by the spirit like they all got at the preacher’s sermons.
    The walls of her back porch room were old gray planks, just like the regular outside walls, except those walls were two boards thick everywhere. In her room there were places where the planks that made her walls didn’t come together just right, leaving narrow little spaces. Where her walls faced the outside her momma had pasted newspapers to help block the cold. She’d read the stories on those papers maybe a thousand times. But spaces between the boards on the inside wall were left open to let the heat through from the wood stove in the front room. She could put an eye up to the cracks and see what went on in that room. And the walls were so thin she could hear almost everything going on in the whole house.
    She hid herself behind her dresser, just in case one of them drunk men had his eye up to one of them cracks, changed into a fresh pair of flour sack panties her mother made, then arranged the blue dress as best