Read Online Hard Red Spring by Kelly Kerney - Free Book Online

potbellied boy, completely naked, ran alongside the cart, trying to get a look at Father’s blue eyes. Sometimes he humored these curious children, smiling savagely so they screamed with terrorized delight and ran away. But today he whipped Tiny into a trot, leaving the little boy behind.
    â€œThey’re all trying to plant now, before the second draft. With all the men gone, there’s going to be a corn shortage, Evie. Dead Indians can’t pick coffee. Dead Indians can’t build railroads.”
    But they could do other things. Steal, sabotage her family’s crops, haunt their mountain, and possibly much more. “Father, what made the volcano erupt?”
    The mountains, to Father, were not holy or evil. They were nothing more than two plates colliding. He demonstrated for Evie how mountains formed over millions of years.
    â€œOur mountain,” he said. She did not like that phrase anymore: our mountain, my mountain. Each time he said it, she thought of the snake. Father let go of Tiny’s reins, butted his chewed fingertips against one another. But his hands, which always seemed huge and powerful, struck Evie as completely inadequate for what he was trying to demonstrate. “Two opposite forces,” he said, “pushing against one another. Now those same forces that made our mountain can release lava and pressure from far below the surface. Pressure you cannot imagine. That’s why, too, when the volcano erupted you felt the ground moving. Everything’s connected, right below the surface.”
    Evie didn’t find this explanation any more comforting than Ixna’s story about the big snake. “And what about the cave? What made the cave?” she asked boldly.
    â€œCaves are just made from water. When lots of water flows for a very long time, it carves out the rock. No ghosts,” he reassured her, winking.
    Just outside the city’s limits, they passed vast, empty fields. No Indian shacks, no crops, no workers. Half the year, the fields grew wheat. The other half, nothing.
    â€œThe dirt crop’s looking good this year,” Father said, making his usual joke.
    They’d seen these fields full of wheat on their initial arrival in Guatemala and Evie had cried, thinking someone had beat Father to his idea. But no, this had not been the case. “That wheat isn’t grown for Indians,” Father had told her. “That’s for export, grown in the regular season, and on a much larger scale than what I’m trying.”
    â€œWhy won’t the Indians eat your wheat?” Evie now asked. “I understand they don’t like bread, but they won’t even try cookies!”
    â€œIndians think that new foods will anger their ancestors. They think they can’t be Indians if they change at all. They rely so much on corn that it’s their religion, their clock, their food, their everything. Which was fine back then, when people didn’t have clocks, but now what’s the point?”
    â€œMaybe if we baked them cinnamon cookies. They’re the best.”
    â€œNow, that’s an excellent idea, Evie. I’ll try that.”
    Xela had already moved on from catastrophe. Its white buildings that had not crumbled stood immaculate again in the restored highland sunshine. Trails of whitewash dripped over the road, showing how recent the restoration had all been. The balconies of the rich, columned houses floated above, seeming to inhabit their own separate city fifteen feet above Xela.
    They passed the ruins of the collapsed cathedral, looking just as it had in the newspaper. They watched an Indian road crew moving barefoot amid the rubble, perhaps to rebuild, perhaps to clear the way for something else. A white foreman, wearing shoes and carrying a whip, directed them.
    â€œFather, there were little girls in there right before it fell. They were praying, I saw them. Do you think they all