Breaking into Sunlight by John Cochran

Author:John Cochran
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
Published: 2024-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

“Please read, Meg,” Charlie said. “Why won’t you read?”

“You can read it to yourself, Charlie,” Meg said. “Or read your comic book. I told you I need to give my voice a rest.”

They were in the car, heading back from Goldsville. Charlie had asked three times for her to read. She had been nice at first, but now she was starting to sound a little annoyed. “I like to hear it the way you read it,” Charlie said. “Please.”

“You’re being a pest,” she said.

Mr. Smith cleared his throat and changed the subject: “Did you enjoy yourself, Reese?”

“Yes,” he said. “Thanks for inviting me.”

“Sure. And how about you, Charlie? Did you have fun?”

“Yes,” Charlie said. He turned to look at Meg again, and he opened his mouth like he was going to ask her a fourth time to read to him. But then he turned to Reese. “Have you tried to draw my cats yet?” he asked.

“No,” Reese said. “I haven’t.”

“You could try,” Charlie said. “It would be a good picture.”

“Maybe,” Reese said. He really didn’t want to. It wasn’t what he liked to draw, and he wished Charlie would stop asking.

“Why don’t you try?” Charlie said.

“Leave him be, Charlie,” Meg said, clearly annoyed this time.

“Ease up, Meg,” Mr. Smith said. “Charlie, let’s just sit quietly and enjoy the ride for a while. Okay?”

They got to the state highway and went along silently for a time. Reese watched the fields passing, the view broken occasionally by billboards. They passed one advertising Virginia peanuts for sale and then a sign for a little town with a name Reese had always liked: Resolution. Just past it, Mr. Smith said, “You know what? I think I might get off at the next exit and take a scenic way back home. It’s a beautiful day, and I’m sick of the highway. Reese, do you mind?”

He didn’t. It was a beautiful day.

At the next exit, Mr. Smith slowed and went off. At the bottom of the ramp, he turned left onto a country road. The skies were high and blue, and here and there in the fields were pools of water left by the recent rains, reflecting the blue from above so they looked like pieces of fallen sky.

Charlie was humming again. Mr. Smith didn’t seem to notice, and Reese had pretty well gotten used to it, too. After a while, the noise was like a radio playing in the other room: something that was there in the background, but you didn’t really pay any attention to it. Mr. Smith cleared his throat as if he were going to say something. But then he fell silent again.

Reese thought they must almost be there. He looked at the clock on the car’s dashboard: It was a little past 1:30 in the afternoon. He had his pocketknife out, and he was fiddling with it, opening and closing the blade. He thought of his dad, wondered how he was doing.

He realized then that he hadn’t thought of his dad all day since leaving the Smiths’ place, and he felt a little twinge of guilt about that.

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