Read Online The Ballad of Lucy Whipple by Karen Cushman - Free Book Online
Authors: Karen Cushman
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like."
"Butte, how morbid and awful."
"I wonder what Pa looks like now."
"Butte!"
I hurried on ahead, bucket bumping against my legs and more of the precious water splashing my skirt. But Butte, skinny and fast like Pa, caught up with me. "I don't mean to be morbid, Luce. He's still my pa, even now, and I wonder what he looks like, is all. Is his skin hanging in tatters? Is he just bones? Are his fingers and toes—"
"Butte, you're making me sick. Why do you think about things like that?"
"Sometimes I like to think of things that are bad or scary, kind of like practicing for being brave. I have to be brave now that Pa's dead and except for me you're all females."
"Females can be brave too, Butte."
"Yeah, but you ain't very and I'm the next oldest so I reckon it's up to me. I don't think I'd be near as brave if I didn't feel I had to."
I stopped in surprise. I never knew that. Figured Butte was just naturally all guts and go-get-it.
I put down the bucket and rumpled his hair. It shone red in the sun. Like Pa's. "Seems like I'm getting educated today as well as you."
Dear Gram and Grampop,
All of a sudden I am grown mighty popular and it is all due to the box of books from Miss Homer. Men I have never spoken to this past whole year come up to me, hat in hand, and say, "Excuse me entirely, little sister, but I hear you might have some books for borrying.
"
I have become a one-person lending library. My library has two rules:
1. I get to read books first.
2. No chewing tobacco stains.
I used to have a third rule—Return what you borrow to ME. Do not lend it to someone else—but everyone broke that rule. Besides, the books always come back to me eventually, so I have eliminated rule number three.
Some of my books have gone fifty miles or so up and down the river and have come back with notes inside: "Ripping good story, miss!" or "What a conbobberation about nothing" or "Might you have one where the heroine has yellow hair and is called Marthy?
"
One miner wrapped about five dollars' worth of dust in a cigarette paper and put it between pages twenty-four and twenty-five of "Rip Van Winkle" and it was still there when the book came back to me. I have used it toward paying off Bean Belly Thompson for carrying the books.
Next time you visit Pa's grave, please plant some flowers on it for Butte and me, larkspur if you can find it for we have that here and I would like to think we are looking at the same thing, even if I look at the flowers and he the
roots. Mama says Pa is in Heaven with God, but the last time I saw him he was in a box in the ground in Massachusetts, so that is how I tend to think of him. Not that I don't believe in God. I do. I'm just not sure that I believe in Heaven, at least not like I believe in the public library.
Writing about Pa made me more than ever homesick for Massachusetts, so I got my pickle crock and tried to guess how much money was left in it. I counted the coins and attempted to weigh the gold dust by holding it in one hand and a half pound of lard in the other. I still didn't know just how much was there, but I knew it was not near enough. Sighing a big sigh, I went to the kitchen to chop onions and cabbage for slaw.
CHAPTER TEN
A UTUMN 1850
In which, I though unwilling, pick berries in the
wilderness and am rewarded with a new friend
September came clear and hot. Blackberry weather. And dewberry, elderberry, and huckleberry.
"Why do I have to go picking and not Prairie?" I asked Mama. "She wants to go and I don't."
"Prairie is only seven. I don't want her wandering alone out there."
"Mama, you shouldn't want
me
wandering alone. I'm the one who gets lost and Prairie's the one who finds me. She'll do better than I will."
"Nevertheless," Mama said, and I knew that I and not Prairie would be berry picking.
Each morning I gathered up my wits and my buckets, hid
The Count of Monte Cristo
under my apron, and trudged away to the hillside off Ranger Creek. The hot summer
"Butte, how morbid and awful."
"I wonder what Pa looks like now."
"Butte!"
I hurried on ahead, bucket bumping against my legs and more of the precious water splashing my skirt. But Butte, skinny and fast like Pa, caught up with me. "I don't mean to be morbid, Luce. He's still my pa, even now, and I wonder what he looks like, is all. Is his skin hanging in tatters? Is he just bones? Are his fingers and toes—"
"Butte, you're making me sick. Why do you think about things like that?"
"Sometimes I like to think of things that are bad or scary, kind of like practicing for being brave. I have to be brave now that Pa's dead and except for me you're all females."
"Females can be brave too, Butte."
"Yeah, but you ain't very and I'm the next oldest so I reckon it's up to me. I don't think I'd be near as brave if I didn't feel I had to."
I stopped in surprise. I never knew that. Figured Butte was just naturally all guts and go-get-it.
I put down the bucket and rumpled his hair. It shone red in the sun. Like Pa's. "Seems like I'm getting educated today as well as you."
Dear Gram and Grampop,
All of a sudden I am grown mighty popular and it is all due to the box of books from Miss Homer. Men I have never spoken to this past whole year come up to me, hat in hand, and say, "Excuse me entirely, little sister, but I hear you might have some books for borrying.
"
I have become a one-person lending library. My library has two rules:
1. I get to read books first.
2. No chewing tobacco stains.
I used to have a third rule—Return what you borrow to ME. Do not lend it to someone else—but everyone broke that rule. Besides, the books always come back to me eventually, so I have eliminated rule number three.
Some of my books have gone fifty miles or so up and down the river and have come back with notes inside: "Ripping good story, miss!" or "What a conbobberation about nothing" or "Might you have one where the heroine has yellow hair and is called Marthy?
"
One miner wrapped about five dollars' worth of dust in a cigarette paper and put it between pages twenty-four and twenty-five of "Rip Van Winkle" and it was still there when the book came back to me. I have used it toward paying off Bean Belly Thompson for carrying the books.
Next time you visit Pa's grave, please plant some flowers on it for Butte and me, larkspur if you can find it for we have that here and I would like to think we are looking at the same thing, even if I look at the flowers and he the
roots. Mama says Pa is in Heaven with God, but the last time I saw him he was in a box in the ground in Massachusetts, so that is how I tend to think of him. Not that I don't believe in God. I do. I'm just not sure that I believe in Heaven, at least not like I believe in the public library.
Writing about Pa made me more than ever homesick for Massachusetts, so I got my pickle crock and tried to guess how much money was left in it. I counted the coins and attempted to weigh the gold dust by holding it in one hand and a half pound of lard in the other. I still didn't know just how much was there, but I knew it was not near enough. Sighing a big sigh, I went to the kitchen to chop onions and cabbage for slaw.
CHAPTER TEN
A UTUMN 1850
In which, I though unwilling, pick berries in the
wilderness and am rewarded with a new friend
September came clear and hot. Blackberry weather. And dewberry, elderberry, and huckleberry.
"Why do I have to go picking and not Prairie?" I asked Mama. "She wants to go and I don't."
"Prairie is only seven. I don't want her wandering alone out there."
"Mama, you shouldn't want
me
wandering alone. I'm the one who gets lost and Prairie's the one who finds me. She'll do better than I will."
"Nevertheless," Mama said, and I knew that I and not Prairie would be berry picking.
Each morning I gathered up my wits and my buckets, hid
The Count of Monte Cristo
under my apron, and trudged away to the hillside off Ranger Creek. The hot summer
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