Read Online Wonderland Creek by Lynn Austin - Free Book Online Page B

passed out again. Lillie didn’t seem fazed. “Least there’s no bullet left inside him,” she said. “Here, you press this against his back and I’ll keep on pressing the front.”
    “I-I’m going to faint. . . .”
    “Oh, no you ain’t. Come on—whoever you are—I ain’t strong enough to stop the bleeding on both sides.”
    “I-I-I . . .”
    “Take deep breaths, girl. Get some air into your brain. You want him to die on us?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “Then push hard. We got to stop the bleeding.”
    I did as I was told. When I pushed the cloth against his back, Mack moaned.
    “Stay with us, Mack,” Lillie coaxed. Her voice was soothing and calm. “Don’t you dare go a-dying on me now, you hear?”
    I held the cloth tightly against Mack’s shoulder. The blood felt warm, like something alive on my hand. I closed my eyes.
    Maybe I was dreaming. This was the sort of dream people had when they read frightening stories before bed. Any minute now I would wake up and the morning would start all over again, only this time no one would get shot. I opened my eyes when the dizziness passed, but I was still in the Acorn Public Library, holding a bloody towel to the librarian’s gunshot wound.
    I averted my gaze and focused on a shelf of books nearby, reading the titles and silently alphabetizing them by the authors’ last names to get my mind off all the blood. And the dying man. And the ancient woman with the wispy white hair. Why couldn’t I be as calm as she was? Why couldn’t I think of something practical to do?
    “I-if there’s no doctor in town, w-what do people do when they’re hurt or sick?” I asked.
    “They come and see me. I’m known as a healer round here. . . . You know how to pray, girl?”
    “My father is a minister.”
    “Well, unless he’s hiding out in the next room, he ain’t gonna be any help to us, is he? We best get praying.” She closed her eyes and lifted her chin in the air, yelling out a prayer as if the Almighty was stone-deaf. “O Lord, you see this boy laying here. You see he’s bleeding hard. He has no help but you, Lord. You know how we all depend on Mack, and so I’m begging you to stop the bleeding and spare his life.” She went on that way for several minutes before ending with, “In Jesus’ precious name. Amen.”
    She opened her eyes and gazed at me, waiting. I glanced down at Mack, and he was so deathly pale and there was so much blood that the only thing I could think of to say was, “Oh, dear God . . . please . . . please . . . please . . .” I had never watched anyone die before and it looked as though I was about to. Tears choked off my words.
    “Ain’t much of a prayer,” Lillie grumbled.
    “I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . . I-I could say the Lord’s Prayer . . .”
    “No thanks. I’m thinking the Good Lord has that one about memorized by now. He don’t need to hear it again.”
    “Should we call the police?”
    “Ain’t no police way out here. County sheriff might show up if Mack dies on us, but we don’t want that.”
    I wondered if she meant we didn’t want the sheriff to show up or we didn’t want Mack to die. “Who would want to shoot him?” I asked.
    “Oh, I can name a couple people who mighta shot him. Mack is—” She stopped and glared sharply at me as if suddenly realizing she was about to tell a secret to a stranger. “I think you better tell me who you are again, and what you’re doing in my house.”
    “I’m Alice Grace Ripley. I came yesterday with five boxes of books to donate to the library.” Yesterday. It seemed like a million years ago. “Didn’t Mr. MacDougal—Mack—tell you?”
    “No, ma’am, he certainly did not. Where’d you say you was from?”
    “Illinois—Blue Island, Illinois.”
    “I never heard of no islands in Illinois. And I sure ain’t never heard of a blue one.”
    “Well, the town isn’t really blue . . . and it isn’t an island, either. I think it was the