Carry Me Home by Sandra Kring

Author:Sandra Kring
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780440335245
Publisher: BANTAM DELL
Published: 2009-05-20T12:00:00+00:00

Me and Ruby Leigh walk home alone after work ’cause Eva Leigh, she caught the pukes from LJ, so she didn’t work tonight. While we’s walking, Ruby Leigh, she reaches up and taps my head with her fist, but she don’t do it hard. “Hello? Anybody in there?” she says.

“I am,” I say.

Ruby Leigh, she puts her hand on my arm. “What’s wrong, Earl?”

Ma says there’s things you should tell other people, and there’s things you shouldn’t. I have a feeling the things stuffing up my head are things I shouldn’t tell her, but the way I see it, who would know more about this loving stuff than Ruby Leigh, who’s always loving on somebody? “Ruby Leigh? If I was to ask you some things about loving, would that be something I should ask?”

Ruby Leigh smiles. “Sure, Earl.”

“Well,” I say, “how come some people stop loving each other, and some people don’t?”

Ruby Leigh, she is swinging her purse a little as we walk. She looks up at me, like she’s studying on something, then she says, “Earl, you talking about somebody in particular?”

“Well, I guess I am. I’m talking about Jimmy and Molly, and I guess I’m talking about my ma and dad too.” My voice kinda cracks when I say that.

Ruby Leigh, she puts her hand on my sleeve. “Oh, Earl, what’s going on, honey?”

“Well, Molly, she’s two-timing Jimmy. And my ma and dad, well, there’s trouble there too.”

Ruby Leigh stops walking, and she leads me to the bench in front of the barber shop. It’s so late, there ain’t even a drunk on the street. “Oh, Earwig, I’m so sorry. Come on, honey, sit down and we’ll talk.”

My throat gets all tight, like I’m gonna strangle on my own spit, when I tell her how Molly is gonna up and marry somebody, but it ain’t gonna be Jimmy. “Ah, poor Jimmy.” Ruby Leigh sighs. “It’s happening a lot, though, Earl. The soldiers have been gone a long time, and long separations have a way of cooling a girl’s heart down.”

“Not my ma’s heart,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

So I tell Ruby Leigh about how I was playing pirate and how I found that old treasure chest with pictures of Ma kissing that guy that looks like Jimmy. “Turns out that guy in them pictures is my uncle Willie—well, he ain’t really my uncle no more, ’cause he’s dead. He got killed in that other war.

“And that ain’t all, Ruby Leigh. I put two and two together, and now I’m thinking that me and Jimmy ain’t whole brothers at all, just half brothers.”

She asks me lots of questions. She asks me how old Jimmy is now, and I tell her I ain’t exactly sure but that he was twenty-one years old when he joined up with the Guard. Ruby Leigh says that was in 1940, so she figures it out and says he’s twenty-four now. Then she asks how long Ma and Dad been married, and I gotta think

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