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

till middle of next week nohow, so take your time. Tell your ma I ax ’bout her.”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    I took my five fish, my fishing tools, and my pie and started home again.
    As I walked, I started calculating how I was gonna divvy up these last five fish. Three of ’em were enough for me and Ma and Pa if I didn’t eat too much, so Mr. Leroy was still gonna get the two I’d promised him.
    Once I got home, I cleaned all five of the fish and Ma fried ’em up. After we et, I’d go take Mr. Leroy his share. He was always doing extra so he was the last one to lay off working. He never et till it was late.
    It was easy to find Mr. Leroy. All you had to do was pay attention to the sound his axe made.
    â€™Round this time of day, when it’s starting to getting duskish, the sound of Mr. Leroy’s axe is so regular and natural that Pa says it turns into a part of the scenery and you wouldn’t notice it unless you were trying to, or unless it stopped all the sudden.
    It’s like the way you don’t notice the sounds toady-frogs make down by the river till they shut up.
Then
you say to yourself, “Them toady-frogs sure were putting up a awful racket, how come I didn’t notice it afore?”
    After I washed up I went out on the stoop to tell Ma and Pa I was gonna take Mr. Leroy his fish.
    Ma’s hands never quit knitting. She looked over her spectacles and said, “Don’t you stay out too long, ’Lijah. If working with Mr. Leroy’s gunn mess with you getting up early and doing your chores, you knows which one of ’em you’s gunn give up, don’t you?”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    Pa ain’t like Ma, he holds up on his whittling to talk. He don’t try to do whittling and nothing else together since he near whittled his little finger off that time whilst telling ’bout how hard he use to work in Kentucky. That finger still don’t do everything he wants it to do, but at least it’s still there. Mr. Leroy’s got him a finger that ain’t nothing but a nub.
    Pa said, “You gunn work with him tomorrow?”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œGood boy. On Sunday I’m-a help Mrs. Holton with some them stumps she got left. I’m-a need you and Cooter to come ’long.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    Ma’d put a rag on the plate of fish she’d fried up for Mr. Leroy, and I took it and headed down the road. Once I’d walked a spell I could hear him chopping in the south. He was down at Mrs. Holton’s place. She’s what Ma calls a unfortunate soul. Her husband got sick then got caught whilst they were getting free, but her and their two little girls got through.
    She’d come to Buxton with lots of pieces of gold sewed up in her dress and bought fifty acres of land in the south of the Settlement. Everyone knowed ’bout her and talked ’bout her ’cause word was that out of the three hundred families here, she was the only one that never had to borrow no money to get her land. She paid for the whole thing cash on the barrelhead!
    Folks are speculating all the time ’bout how much money Mrs. Holton has. She don’t flash it ’round or nothing, but folks say anyone that can buy fifty acres without no loan must be rich as a slave owner!
    If you buy land here in the Settlement, there’s some rules you gotta go ’long with no matter how much gold you have, and one of ’em is that it ain’t no one’s job but your own to make sure you clear your whole fifty acres and dig a drainage ditch all ’long your property and the road.
    Mrs. Holton’s girls were way too young to do serious woodcutting, and it was the time of year that folks were so busy working from sunup to sundown that no one had the time nor the fight left in ’em to get a chopping bee going, so she paid Mr. Leroy to clear her land and dig her drainage ditch. He was always looking to do