Read Online The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls - Free Book Online

stacked on the shelves according to size, and ladles and stirring spoons hung on a rack above the stove. You could tell Aunt Al ran a very tight ship. The walls were
hung with needlepoint and small varnished boards with Bible verses or sayings like A SCRIPTURE A DAY KEEPS THE DEVIL AWAY and YOU CAN’T HAVE A RAINBOW
WITHOUT A LITTLE RAIN .
    I asked if Joe was there. “I met him yesterday, but I didn’t know he was my cousin.”
    “Where’d you meet him?”
    “In Uncle Tinsley’s orchard.”
    “So you’re the peach thrower?” Aunt Al threw back her head and let out a huge laugh. “I heard you got quite an arm on you.” Joe was out and about, she said, and
usually didn’t come home until dinnertime, but he was surely going to be sorry he missed this. She had four children, she went on. Joe was thirteen, her middle boy. She introduced the kid at
the table as her youngest, Earl. He was five, she said, and he was different, not much strength, and he’d never really learned to talk—so far, anyway. Her eldest, Truman, who was
twenty, was serving his country overseas. Her daughter, Ruth, who was sixteen, had gone down to North Carolina to help out one of Aunt Al’s sisters, who had three children to look after but
had been taken down with meningitis.
    A man came out of the back room, moving carefully like he was hurt, and Aunt Al introduced him as her husband, our Uncle Clarence.
    “Charlotte’s daughters? You don’t say.” He was thin and slightly bent, his gaunt cheeks had deep lines, and his gray hair was crew-cut. He studied Liz. “You I
remember,” he said. Then he looked at me. “You I never laid eyes on. That momma of yours got you out of town before I had a chance to see my brother’s only child.”
    “Well, now you got your chance,” Aunt Al said. “Be sweet.”
    “Glad to meet you, Uncle Clarence,” I said. I wondered if he was going to hug me, like Aunt Al had. But he just stood there looking at me suspiciously.
    “Where’s your momma?” he asked.
    “She stayed in California,” I said. “We’re just here for a visit.”
    “Decided not to come, did she? Now, why don’t that surprise me?” Uncle Clarence started coughing.
    “Don’t be getting all cantankerous, Clarence,” Aunt Al said. “Go sit down and catch your breath.” Uncle Clarence left the room coughing.
    “My husband can be a little crotchety,” Aunt Al told us. “He’s a good man, but his lot ain’t been an easy one—what with his bad back and the white lung he got
from working in the mill—and he’s sour on a lot of people. He also worries hisself sick about Truman being over in Vietnam, but he ain’t going to admit it. We’ve lost three
Byler boys to the war, and I pray for my son and all those boys over there every night. Anyways, how about some pie?”
    She cut us each a fat slice. “Best peaches in the county,” she said with a grin.
    “And you can’t beat the price,” I said.
    Aunt Al burst into laughter again. “You’re going to fit right in, Bean.”
    We sat down at the kitchen table next to Earl and dug into the pie, which was unbelievably yummy.
    “How’s your momma doing?”
    “She’s fine,” Liz said.
    “She ain’t been back to Byler in years, has she?”
    “Not since Bean was a baby,” Liz said.
    “Can’t say I fault her for that.”
    “Did my dad look like Uncle Clarence?” I asked.
    “Different as night and day, though you could still tell they was brothers. You never seen a picture of your poppa?”
    I shook my head.
    Aunt Al studied the dish towel that she seemed to carry everywhere, then folded it into a neat square. “I got something to show you.” She left the room and came back with a thick
scrapbook. Sitting next to me, she started paging through it, then pointed to a black-and-white photograph of a young man leaning in a doorway with his arms crossed and his hip cocked. “There
he is,” she said. “Charlie. Your daddy.”
    She slid the album over toward