Read Online Building Blocks by Cynthia Voigt - Free Book Online Page A

it, between Sewickley and the arm. Kevin talked about harvesting hay, about milking cows so early in the morning that stars still shone in the sky, and about mucking out the stalls and the mingled smells of manure and dry hay and warm animals. He talked about spending all morning on a tractor, to weed out the long rows of corn, and the way the sun beat down until the skin on your hands cracked, and you had to hold the wheel so hard—because if you didn’t the sweat would make it slip out of control and you’d rip out the young corn plants—that you could barely unclench your hands at the end of the day. His Uncle Andrew talked all the time, stories and advice about life, jokes.
    â€œYou really like your uncle, don’t you?” Brannasked. He wondered why his father had never talked about Uncle Andrew.
    â€œYeah. I guess I do. And he likes me,” Kevin answered. “He really does.”
    â€œAre you going to be a farmer when you grow up?” Brann expected the answer to be yes.
    â€œI don’t know what I’m going to be. I’d like to draw—magazines have a lot of drawings in them and someone must do them. Or greeting cards and calendars. My mother says that’s all well and good, but I should be practical. She says I should look for something that uses drawing, because otherwise I won’t be able to earn a living.”
    â€œDoes she like your drawings?”
    â€œShe likes them OK,” Kevin said. “She says, I’m no genius but I have some talent, and you have to work on talent to train it.”
    Brann nodded. That was good advice, even if it didn’t sound exactly enthusiastic.
    â€œShe wouldn’t say that if she didn’t mean it,” Kevin announced, with confidence.
    â€œI guess not,” Brann said. “Why didn’t you tell her it was Suzanne’s fault this morning?”
    Kevin shrugged. “Anyway, it was my responsibility.”
    â€œWhen can we go out again?” Brann asked. He was getting really restless, with this feeling . . . exploding inside him, waiting to find out what the special thing would be.
    â€œWhen my mother calls.”
    â€œShow me some drawings, will you?”
    When the phone rang three times, then stopped, the two boys were sitting on the bed, looking at some drawings Kevin had made of faces. (He didn’t know how to make noses. He drew a nose in one line and then put two nostril dots beside it. Brann’s father had taught him how to make noses by shading.) Kevin took the three little children down the street to stay with a neighbor. “They go there two afternoons a week, when my mom does the books,” he explained to Brann. “The Grynowskis have six kids of their own, and she feeds them supper. Other days their kids come to our house.”
    â€œI’m glad I came on a day when yours are going there,” Brann said. Suzanne stuck her tongue out at him. Brann decided to wait for Kevin on the back steps.
    â€œYou won’t go away, will you?” Kevin asked. “I’ll only be five minutes, maybe ten. Then we can do something.”
    Brann couldn’t possibly fall asleep in five or ten minutes. He wasn’t even tired. All of his nerves were jangling. “I’ll be here,” he said. He felt trapped, even though he knew the way to get out, even though he was waiting for his adventure to begin. Every hour in this place—time—was like a year, a heavy and hopeless year. And thinking about Kevin—about his father—who lived there—it made Brann feel even more jangled. He really wanted to go back home—except he was curious to know why this was happening for him.
    Kevin was running when he came back. He stopped in front of where Brann sat on the porch steps. “What do you want to do?” he asked.
    â€œI want to see the caves.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI’ve never seen caves.”
    â€œI’m