Read Online Chasing Redbird by Sharon Creech - Free Book Online Page B

Jessie would laugh her head off, her red hair bobbing and the fat on her arms jiggling. Uncle Nate adopted a serious look when he was dancing, as if he were in a contest and didn’t want to mess up, but when the record stopped, he put his hands on his knees and laughed—how he laughed and laughed, until tears rolled down his cheeks.
    They sure loved that boogie-woogie. They even had this thing they’d say to each other, from The Boogie-woogie Bugle Boy song. If Uncle Nate was leaving the house, he’d say, Tootle-ee-ah-dah! And Aunt Jessie would say, Make the company jump! They’d do this all the time. Tootle-ee-ah-dah! Make the company jump!
    As I came in the house this time, I realized I hadn’t heard Uncle Nate say Tootle-ee-ah-dah! lately, either. Hearing that music again made me feel so pitiful I could hardly stand it.
    I went through the kitchen passage and down the hall to Uncle Nate’s room, where the record player was blaring away. His door was slightly ajar. Inside, he was dancing like a wild man with an invisible partner.

CHAPTER 17

T RESPASSING
    F or a week, there was no sign of Jake. May asked me if I’d said anything to make him mad, because he was ignoring her at school. “He won’t even look at me,” she said. “What’d you do, Zinny?”
    â€œNot a ding-busted thing,” I said.
    Everyone else was heartbroken over the lost-again Bingo. We had several searches, and they made me put up another notice (which I promptly took back down) at Mrs. Flint’s store. Bill Butler stopped me one day as I was walking to school and said his puppy was back, but he’d heard ours was missing again. He was sure sorry about that. He wished he could give us his, but his mother was too attached to it.
    Bonnie kept insisting that Bingo was probably sniffing his way home that very minute, and every morning and evening, she’d stand out in the yard and call him.
    One Saturday, I was up on the trail, clearing the part where it entered the first section of woods, marked on one of the maps as Maiden’s Walk. Ahead of me was a tunnel of beech trees. Overhead hung a roof of branches and leaves, and below, the smooth gray-blue trunks looked like a double row of columns stretching into the forest. It was a silent, eerie, cool place, dark as a wolf’s mouth.
    When I had first seen the words Maiden’s Walk on the map, I’d imagined a young woman, dressed in white, gliding down a sunny lane. Now, seeing what was ahead of me, I pictured a disheveled maiden, in torn clothing, being pulled toward a horrid sacrifice. I saw her struggling and screaming, and glimpsed the drooling jaws of a black beast at the far end of the tunnel.
    I was down on my hands and knees, scraping away, trying to rid my mind of this picture. “And now the company jumps,” I sang, to the beat of the boogie-woogie. “A-toot a-toot—”
    I thought I heard a whistle. No. It was quiet. “A-tootle-ee-ah-dah—” I heard the muffled whistle again and froze, still as a stone.
    The whistler was approaching. I inched behind a beech tree and scrunched myself into a ball at its trunk. Soon the whistling stopped, but it was followed by another sound—a tap-tap-tap ping against the ground, as if someone were swinging a stick.
    It was probably Uncle Nate, I thought, looking for Aunt Jessie. Or maybe he was meeting someone. Maybe he really did have a sweetheart up here in the hills. I hated that thought. He’d better not have a sweetheart.
    As I started toward the sound of the stick, a tall figure appeared at the entrance to the woods. With the sun behind him, all I could see was a dark form and a long crooked stick. It wasn’t Uncle Nate. I turned and ran, tall-stepping over uncleared brambles, scrabbling and tearing at branches.
    â€œZinny, Zinny! Wait!”
    I kept running. I knew the voice and I didn’t want to see its owner.
    â€œZinny—” He