Read Online Playing With Matches by Carolyn Wall - Free Book Online Page B

said.
    “Don’t you think his folks want him to come home?”
    “Doesn’t seem the case, does it?” she said. “He’s been with us since last night. I took him some ham and biscuits this morning.”
    “But, Auntie, people don’t live in trees. Monkeys do. I read—”
    She gave me a long look. “Child, there is one thing you got to remember in this life.”
    I sighed. Auntie’s list of life rules was longer than my arm.
    “First off,” she said, buttering her bread, “are you seeing him with your mind or your heart?”
    “That boy is trespassing.”
    She laid circles of cucumber on her bread, and salt-and-peppered them hard.
    “Second, if it’s not hurting anybody, jus’ leave it alone.”
    “But—” Maybe, somewhere, this boy’s ma was calling him.
    Auntie took up a fresh peach. She pitted the fruit and sliced some on her plate.
    I bit into my own and marveled at the warm juice. “But it’s suppertime, and I’ll bet he’s hungry.”
    “Don’t talk with your mouth full. Butter him some bread. And fill a glass with lemon water.”
    I also slid three peaches into my pocket.
    When I went out, I was pleased to the bone that he was still up there, that he had not climbed down and wandered off to set up housekeeping in somebody else’s tree. It was like having a wild and exotic bird. I bet there wasn’t one other person along the False River that could say a yellow-haired boy had moved into their tree.
    “Hey!” I hollered up. “I brought you some food. What’s your name, anyway?”
    “Finn,” he said. “Hand it here, then.”
    “I won’t,” I said. “I’ll lay it on the ground. You come on down, now, and get it ’fore the ants do.”
    I could see him through the branches. He wore cutoff jeans, a T-shirt of no color, and a ball cap fixed tight on his head. “I ain’t coming down,” he said.
    “Then I brought it for no reason. I’ll just throw it to the geese—”
    “Wait,” he said, and he stepped down, and again, till he was perched on the lowest and thinnest branch.
    “How come you’re wearing that hat?”
    “This here was my daddy’s cap.” Finn gobbled up his dinner. Peach juice ran off his elbows. He tossed the pits away and drained the glass.
    “You act like you’re starving,” I said. “Where’s your daddy at now? Isn’t he wondering what’s become of you?”
    He didn’t answer but asked a question of his own. “What’s your name, anyway?”
    “Clea,” I said.
    “How old are you?”
    “Ten and eleven-twelfths.”
    “Ha!” he said. “I’m lots older.” Then he climbed to the top, and I saw no more of him that night.

    The next day I sat with my back to the trunk. This was nothing like Claudie’s friendship had been. Finn was older and therefore wiser, and he had secrets. I liked that. Up in his tree he could be quiet as a mouse. In fact, all the next day I heard nothing out of him and began to be concerned. Then came the rustling of leaves, and Finn suddenly asked about the multicolored house across the way.
    When I said nothing, he came down a few branches and asked again.
    I set down the book I’d been pretending to read. “I was born in that house.”
    “Then how come you’re here?”
    “My mama’s Clarice Shine. After she birthed me, she brought me here.”
    “I heard about her. Seems a sad thing,” Finn said.
    “Don’t you go feeling sorry for me, boy.”
    “Don’t you call me boy,” he said, “and anyway, my ma died when I was two days old. That makes us the same—your ma being dead to you and all.”
    That set me off like a bottle rocket. “She’s not dead to me, and she sure isn’t dead to all her friends that stop by.”
    “Friends?” Finn snorted. “You ain’t noticed they’re all horny gents, and most of ’em’s wearing boss-man uniforms?”
    By boss-man he meant guards. It was one reason I hated theprison worse than any criminal they might harbor there. “Mind your own beeswax,” I said.
    Finn sounded far away.