Read Online Wish by Barbara O'Connor - Free Book Online Page A

lightning bugs twinkled out in the garden, Gus stood up in that slow way of his and said, “Want me to drive you home, Howard?”
    â€œNo, sir,” Howard said. “I’ll walk.”
    I wondered if Gus was thinking what I was. That it was liable to take him all night to get home with that up-down walk of his. But Gus just stretched and said, “All righty, then,” and ambled off toward the house.
    â€œSee you,” Howard said, and headed up the driveway toward the road.
    I sat there by the trap and looked over at Gus and Bertha’s little house nestled on the side of the mountain. How come Bertha hadn’t told me Mama had been here? Had Mama liked it here? Had she picked pole beans out in the garden with Gus? Had she helped Bertha make bread-and-butter pickles? Had she sat on the porch at night, gazing up at Pegasus? Had she slept in that room with those canning jars?
    Finally I got up and went inside. I looked around the living room at Gus’s old easy chair, the dusty table covered with magazines and coffee cups, the TV with a bowl of plastic fruit on top. Had Mama sat in that chair? Propped her feet on that table while she watched soap operas on that TV?
    I could hear Gus and Bertha out on the porch talking. Every now and then, Bertha’s laughter danced through the screen door. Finally I went out there and sat in the lawn chair next to them. Light from the kitchen sent a soft glow over the porch. I took a deep breath and said, “So, Mama came here one time, right?”
    The two of them looked at each other. Gus cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. Bertha reached over and put her hand on my arm.
    â€œYes, she did,” she said.
    â€œOh.” I watched one of the cats swatting a moth that was flitting around the porch. “When?”
    â€œA long time ago,” Bertha said.
    â€œBut when?”
    â€œWhen you were just a baby,” she said.
    â€œSo I came, too?”
    From somewhere down in the woods, a bullfrog croaked, sending an echo across the mountains. Below us, crickets chirped in the tangled weeds under the porch.
    Bertha gave me a sad-eyed look. “No,” she said. “You didn’t come.”
    â€œWhat about Jackie?” I said. “Did she come?”
    â€œNo, Jackie didn’t come either.”
    â€œBut where were me and Jackie?” I asked. “And Scrappy? What about him?”
    Bertha leaned over closer to me. She smelled like talcum powder. “Charlie,” she said. “Your mama came here and left you and Jackie and Scrappy behind. Showed up on my doorstep in the middle of the night with a garbage bag full of clothes.”
    â€œDid she just come to visit?” I asked. But in my heart, I knew the answer to that question.
    â€œNo, Charlie,” Bertha said. “She just up and left y’all without looking back.” Bertha’s voice suddenly had an edge to it. Sharp and angry sounding. I would’ve never guessed Bertha could sound angry like that.
    â€œOh,” I said.
    Bertha continued, her voice getting sharper and angrier. “When I asked her what in the world she was doing running off like that, she looked me right in the eye and said, ‘I’m tired of my old life. I’m startin’ a new one.’”
    A flash of heat lightning lit up the sky over the mountains and there was a low rumble of thunder.
    â€œThen what happened?” I asked.
    Bertha let out a big sigh. “Her new life didn’t last too long.”
    â€œHow long?”
    â€œA couple of months.”
    â€œBut what happened?”
    â€œI told her what I thought about her new life and I reckon she didn’t like it. She didn’t want to hear what I thought about a mama who up and leaves her children behind. She stormed out of here like a freight train and hightailed it back to her old life and I haven’t seen her since.”
    Another rumble of thunder echoed across the valley