Sharon Creech 4-Book Collection by Sharon Creech

Author:Sharon Creech
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

CHAPTER 36

A LONG CHAIN

The air was hot and sticky as Sairy and Dallas thrashed their way through a thicket. Vines tangled their legs and briars jabbed their arms.

“It looked like this would be the shortest route over to that path on that hill, but I don’t know now,” Sairy said. “Let’s stop and rest a bit, okay?” She reached into her backpack and pulled from it a yellow scarf, which she tied around her neck. If she’d worn something like that at home, Tiller would have said, What’s that around your neck? You never wear scarves. But here, Dallas didn’t know—and wouldn’t care—whether she was the kind of person who would wear a yellow scarf or not. She felt a little silly thinking about it.

“There’s more bugs here than in the holler, you notice that?” Dallas said, swatting at flies.

“Maybe my lucky yellow scarf will keep them away,” Sairy said.

“Maybe your lucky scarf will help us find water. I bet there’s a creek right down there. I bet it’s real clear, not some old, muddy, poison creek, and we’ll splash in it and drink as much as we want.”

Sairy sat against a tree and closed her eyes. She imagined that there was an invisible ball of twine unfolding behind her, all the way back across the hills to Ruby Holler. That invisible ball of twine was right there in her hand, and she had to hold it tight, because if she let go of it, she and Dallas would be lost out here.

“What are you thinking about so serious-like?” Dallas asked her.

“Nothing much,” she said.

“You’re not homesick, are you?”

“Me? Shoot, no. We’re on our adventure,” Sairy said. “Not homesick at all.”

“You know who you look like, sitting there? You know that picture in your kitchen, of the girl and the lady sitting in the woods? You look like that lady.”

“I do? That’s my mother, and that girl is me,” Sairy said. She felt a sudden, deep longing for her dead mother, and then wondered if it was harder to miss a mother you had loved, or, like Dallas and Florida, to miss a mother you had never known.

“And that picture next to it,” Dallas said, “with the two men, who are they?”

“That’s Tiller and his daddy. And the one next to that, the one of the couple by the creek, that’s my grandmother and grandfather. And the one next to that, that’s me and Tiller and our kids.”

“It’s like a whole long chain of connected people,” Dallas said.

“Yes,” Sairy said. “I guess it is.”

“Want me to build a little fire?” Dallas said. “I know it’s hot, but we could eat that can of beans. They’d be better hot than cold. You got the matches?”

“Matches?” Sairy said.

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