Black Gold by Sara Cassidy

Author:Sara Cassidy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781459814240
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Published: 2017-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Mom pulls off the highway and onto a field that a week ago was probably waist-high with hay. It’s harvest time. That’s the kind of thing you can smell when you live in the country. The car bumps over hay stubble toward a half-built Ferris wheel, stick arms raised in the air, waiting for seats. That’s one thing about living in the country—you get to go off-road. Now when I’m in the city and I see a house with cars parked right on the lawn I think, Those people have lived in the country.

We pull up beside a battered car with a muddy shovel handle sticking out of a side window. Rudy points to a bumper sticker that says My Other Car is a Penny-Farthing. I wink at him.

Inside the fairgrounds, people are coming and going with apple pies and jars of pickles and chickens in cages in their hands. Horses and cows are being coaxed from trailers. A small crowd chases an emu that has gotten loose. Mom won’t let me join in. We leave our LEGO projects in the Children’s Gallery, and then Mom points me toward the Agricultural Hall to register my cucumber before she and Rudy submit his smocked shirt at the Textiles Barn.

Plates of deep-red tomatoes, potatoes scrubbed to perfection, onions with their tops tied with bows, warty gourds, and zucchinis the size of my leg fill the long tables in the barn. At the back, people work their way up to a desk where a woman takes down their names and categories. The woman is Esther. She’s writing swoopy letters in a thick book with yellowed pages. Her capital letters make me think of the lace curtains in Rachel’s living room. Rachel says her grandma made them, but I don’t believe her. They’re just too—where’s Rudy with his thesaurus?—fancy.

Finally I’m at the front of the line. “Name?” Esther says, not looking up.

“Cyrus Inglot.”

Her hand swoops across the page. The capital C for my first name is like an inky plume of smoke. The I for Inglot looks like an inky fishhook.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.