Chig and the Second Spread by Gwenyth Swain

Author:Gwenyth Swain [Swain, Gwenyth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-51727-2
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2003-11-18T05:00:00+00:00

In downtown Niplak, just beyond reach of the sorghum mill's old mule, was the big rock. It had been left behind by a glacier that had visited the county some ten thousand years before. No one had thought to move it when Niplak was founded. Instead, Main Street jogged around it, giving anyone who cared to clamber up the rock's rounded sides a perfect view of all the town's goings-on.

Chig and Willy and countless other kids, past and present, loved the big rock. Large enough to prove a challenge for young mountain climbers in training, it was too small and hard to appeal to grown-ups. “Hey there,” Chig whispered in greeting. She patted a warm, sunny side of the big rock's granite face and waited for Willy.

He wasn't long in coming. Even from fifty feet away though, Chig could see that Willy had about as many bright ideas for making money as she did. Willy shuffled along as slowly as sorghum molasses pouring from a bottle on a winter day. He was bound to scuff the heels of his shoes to shreds if he kept it up, but Chig decided not to point this out to him. He looked as if he didn't need more bad news.

“Howdy, Chig,” he said.

“Howdy.”

“Can't for the life of me figure out how to make twenty cents, can you?”

“Nope.”

They sat on the rock and squinted into the early-morning sun. The hilltops were lost in haze. A lone truck lumbered down the road but didn't pause in Niplak. Dew varnished the grass around the rock.

Although the day promised to be a scorcher, it was still cool enough to think. But even working their brains as hard as they could, Chig and Willy were short on thoughts. They'd begun to sweat a little from the effort and the midmorning heat when Jimmy and Timmy Settle, Daisy's older brothers, loped by.

The Settle twins were only recently graduated from the Niplak school. Now they used their school smarts and big-rock-climbing skills in their very own painting business. “Never seen anything like those boys when it comes to climbing a ladder or putting up scaffolding,” Chig's daddy had remarked not long before. Chig and her daddy had been standing in front of the Gibson place on East Main, where the Settle boys were deep into painting gingerbread trim on the eaves.

Jimmy had chatted with them during a root beer break. “Mrs. Gibson's sister Tallulah is coming down from Chicago for a visit next week,” hed explained, “so we're painting the whole place up, inside and out.”

Now he greeted Chig and Willy with a halfhearted wave. “Good day for rock sitting,” he said.

“Yep,” Chig answered.

“Sure beats painting,” Timmy said, setting his buckets and brushes down on the grass.

Willy and Chig perked up. Didn't Timmy and Jimmy seem a bit cranky and tired?

“If you're too wore out,” Willy said, “we'd be happy to do your job for a day.”

“And we'd only charge twenty cents for the both of us,” Chig added quickly

“Now, hold on there,” Timmy said.

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