Read Online The Last Noel by Michael Malone - Free Book Online

stay at his side as he strode straight through the cluster of teenagers on the lawn and climbed the stone steps of Gordon Junior High School.
    At the top of the steps, he turned and found her beside him. “I named that dog Philly,” he said. “I’ll see you.”
    Inside the school corridor, Noni watched as he pushed open the door labeled “Principal's Office.”
    When finally Kaye walked out, she was still there in the hall, waiting for him.
    And she walked with him from class to class, from locker to lunchroom, throwing the power of her name over him like a cloak. He didn’t ask her to do it, he didn’t acknowledge that she was doing it, but she knew that it would make a difference and that it was something, it was some one thing she could offer him.
    And in a strange way it was also a means of her keeping close to Gordon, of keeping Gordon alive.
    After school, Noni's mother drove up in their Lincoln to take her to her piano lesson, and although Noni looked in thebus windows as fast as she could when they passed it, she didn’t see Kaye inside.
    That evening, back at Heaven's Hill, Noni tapped at the door of Clayhome. She could hear the radio inside, a woman on it singing, “He's got the whole wide world in His hands!” While she waited for someone to answer, she looked down and saw that there was a new cemetery of Popsicle sticks beside the door, inside their old border of stones and broken bricks. This time the plot was more crowded with the little black-marked crosses than Noni had ever seen it before. But why would the sticks even be here when Kaye's mother was in a hospital in Philadelphia, when she couldn’t have brought her crosses down to Moors this Christmas as she had done on previous years?
    Kneeling, Noni read the names on the sticks: there were crosses for Che Guevara, for Black Panthers “Shot by the Los Angeles police,” for Bobby Kennedy, for Watts and for Czechoslovakia and for Hue. There were dozens and dozens of crosses. And in their center was the one that Kaye had told Noni had burst in two his mother's heart.
    Black words filled both small sticks of this cross:
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    Apr 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., 39 yrs old, shot to death. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.
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    â€œNoni? What you doing, baby?”
    The girl stood, brushed soil from her white tights. “Hi, Aunt Ma. I was looking for Kaye. I wanted to know how it went, the rest of his day at school. I didn’t see him on the bus.”
    Amma told Noni that her grandson hadn’t come home yet, that he had gone off with his Uncle Austin to try to find a part-time job at the taxi company. “You want to come in and see that cute little dog Philly? He is a devil.”
    â€œThank you, but I have to practice.” Noni pointed at the cemetery. “Is Kaye's mother down here now?”
    The woman shook her head. “No. Kaye stuck those sticks in the ground himself. He brought all that stuff with him in her old shoebox. Kaye and his mama are real close, always were. It's tough on a only child.”
    â€œIf she gets better, will he go back to Philadelphia to be with her?”
    Amma gave Noni a long look. “Kaye's going to stay here with us. And I’m glad he's got you for a friend. Now don’t stand out here in this cold damp without your coat on. Go on back home and get warm. I’ll tell him to call you.”
    Noni lifted her thin shoulders, let them fall. “He won’t.”
    Amma took the girl's flushed face in her broad strong hands. “Go on home.”

The Third Day of Christmas

    December 21, 1972
The Chinese Jar
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    In Heaven's Hill, fifteen-year-old Noni walked tentatively and loudly on her new clunky platform heels down the front stairs into the hallway and looked in the mirror at the gown her mother had chosen for her to wear to the Senior