Indigo Field by Marjorie Hudson

Author:Marjorie Hudson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Published: 2023-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

28

Miss Reba stands on her porch, hands on hips, watching TJ trudge up the drive. Since he’s been here, this boy has stolen Tyquan’s iPod, broke it in half, apologized only because she made him. He’s messed up her mama’s flower bed, her squash bed, her corn. Yesterday, she went up to close that window he’s always leaving open, saw her mama’s quilt bunched up on the porch roof. She got a hammer and nailed the window shut. And now here he is, late from school, soaking wet, covered in sand and mud, smelling like tobacco.

Miss Reba reams him out good. He wasn’t on the bus. When she called the school they said he was absent all afternoon. His clothes are wet and muddy. Sticks and weeds in his hair. Shoes ruined. “Where’d you run off to? Best tell the truth.”

“I went to Lucy’s island. I wanted to see if it was true, all what you said.”

It stops her dead.

She stands there squinting at him. “You been spying on me?”

He nods. “I like the stories, Miss Reba. I like Indian stories. And all about Sheba.”

She stares at him some more. What does he know about Sheba?

Finally she opens her mouth. “Don’t spy,” she says. “And don’t you ever lie to me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Miss Reba skewers him with a look. She sends him upstairs to think about his ways. Then she goes to talk to Danielle. That angel face bright and kind and lively.

“This boy’s always going to lie. That’s what whiteboys do. It’s in the blood. Danielle, something don’t change, Imma have to give him back.”

“He told the truth just now, Auntie,” Danielle says right out loud, her brown eyes gleaming. “It’s good he likes Sheba and Old Lucy and your stories. I like them too.”

“He needs to stop using my Egyptian Queen,” Reba says.

“Tell him,” Danielle says.

“Boy needs something to keep him busy. These chores ain’t enough.”

Danielle goes quiet, like she agrees. But maybe she’s gone away again.

Reba scoops chickenscratch from the trunk of the car, flings. Chickens come running. Dent still there. Whiteboys and whitemen dogging her on every side.

“Jolene needs help,” Danielle says.

“That’s right.” Miss Reba nods. “And she would make him work. No lazing around at Miss Jolene’s.” Let the whiteboy leave her in peace a few hours.

“Tell me a new story, Auntie,” Danielle says. “Tell me the story you don’t want to tell.”

Miss Reba’s heart sags in her chest. She knows just the one she means. But not with the boy spying. That boy’s going to go work for the hardest-working white woman in Ambler County, soon as she can arrange it. She picks up the phone. Calls Jolene. Who seems to need help more than pride right now.

“Saturday?”

Yes. Saturday.

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