Read Online Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis - Free Book Online

happen.
    Some folks say Mrs. Brown’s touched in the head, but ’cept for scaring me in the woods at night she treats me real kind. And everyone knows caint no one in the Settlement bake the way she does!
    I ain’t trying to be disrespectful of Ma’s cooking when I say that neither. Ma can fry some tolerable good fish and make vegetables that ain’t
exactly
horrible, but she caint bake for nothing. Pa would get pretty excited if I showed up with one of Mrs. Brown’s pies. He never let on to Ma how happy those pies made him, but if he thought she waren’t listening and couldn’t see him, he’d give me some big hugs and spin me ’round the room and kick up his heels!
    Mrs. Brown held her front door open and said, “Come on in and pick which one n’em pies you’s partial to, ’Lijah.”
    I said, “Thank you, ma’am,” and pulled off my brogans and left ’em on the stoop next to all my fishing tools.
    The inside of her house had trapped the smell of the pies and soon’s you crossed through the door you couldn’t help but open your nose wide as it’d go, lean your head back, close your eyes, and breathe in as much of that air as you could!
    I stood still and took me two more deep breaths. I learnt a long time ago that when you’re smelling something real good, you only get two or three first-place smells of it afore your nose won’t take no more notice. I didn’t want to move or nothing so I could enjoy the smell afore my nose started recalling I was toting six dead fish.
    After I took my fourth breath, I was smelling as much fish as I was smelling pies, so I opened my eyes and commenced breathing regular.
    Mrs. Brown was smiling at me.
    I smiled back. “They sure do smell good, Mrs. Brown.”
    â€œI ain’t meaning to be unhumble, but you know they tastes better’n they smells, ’Lijah. Come on in the kitchen and pick you one.”
    We walked through her parlour. It was one of the Settlement’s rules that all our houses had to look just ’bout the same on the outside. All of ’em had to have a stoop and a picket fence and a flower garden out front and had to be exactly ten paces off the road. It waren’t till you went into the houses that you saw the different ways that folks set ’em up.
    Mr. and Mrs. Brown didn’t have much of nothing in their parlour. Where we had a table with a cloth and a vase for flowers and some chairs, they only kept a empty blue baby crib with a tired old white sheet over one corner. Where we had a big fireplace and mantel made out of bricks from the Settlement’s brickyard, they still had a fireplace made out of clay and rocks. Where Pa had paid Mr. Leroy to lay some maplewood floorboards, they still had floors made from rough pine. Their home only had one floor whilst ours had two. They’d only come up from America a couple of years ago and were still struggling.
    The Browns et in the kitchen so they kept their eating table in there. Ma told me that lots of folks that use to be slaves couldn’t bust the habit of eating only in the room where they cooked, so heaps of people in the Settlement used their parlour for things ’sides eating food.
    Mrs. Brown had the pies resting on a table near the back window.
    Since I only had one perch for her, I picked the smallest pie and dropped the fish off the stringer into a big basin.
    She said, “Thank you kindly, ’Lijah. Mr. Brown is sure enough gunn be surprised when he come home and have some perch!”
    I took the pie. The tin was still warm! I said, “Thank
you
, Mrs. Brown. My pa’s gonna be surprised too!”
    I stepped out on Mrs. Brown’s back stoop and scaled and cleaned the perch. I left the guts in the basin for her garden.
    I went back into her kitchen. “I’ll bring you your tin back tomorrow, Mrs. Brown.”
    â€œNo rush, I ain’t gunn be baking no more