Summer's End by Audrey Couloumbis

Author:Audrey Couloumbis [Couloumbis, Audrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101563465
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2007-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

22 BABY POWDER

Mom rode up front in the cab as we headed on back to the farm, but I pretended not to notice her. She did the same. I didn’t know how long she planned to stay. With all the relatives and the commotion at Grandma’s while the house was being built, I figured we might never run into each other head-on until I had to go home.

As we rode back to the farm in the chilly night air, I began to want a jacket. Huddled against Dolly, who fell asleep almost immediately, I found myself worrying about where Collin was tonight, if he was warm. I didn’t want to think about him. Yet I couldn’t help picturing him sleeping in the back of somebody’s truck.

I wondered if he’d found my money. His money, now. But then I thought he wouldn’t find it till he changed clothes. I figured Mom must have given him money too, so he wouldn’t be going hungry just yet. I felt a little better after I thought about that.

Dolly and I were sent to one of the bunkhouses when we got back to Grandma’s. The farmhouse was small, only four rooms with porches front and back. But Pop had built little bunkhouses that lined up on the lee side of the house, four bunks to each place, and his boys had slept out there when they outgrew the double bed.

They had been given fancy addresses by the boys, which were now shortened to the Ranch, the Cave, the Mud Hole and the Tree House. They all looked the same. They were fitted out with bunk beds and wood-burning stoves. We looked into the one that still had a lamp burning.

Aunt Birdie had taken one bottom bunk, along with Stellie. Aunt Lois was draped over the other bottom bunk with her kids. That left the top bunks for us. We took off our shoes and tiptoed in. “Where’s your stuff?” Dolly whispered.

“Still in the house, I guess. My T-shirt is long enough to be a nightie.”

Aunt Vera Jean stuck her head in, and after a quick look around, whispered, “You two bunk together. I’m taking one.” And then she was gone again.

I poked my head out the door and saw the bobbing circle of light from her flashlight only a few steps away. “If you go through the kitchen, bring my book bag out here, would you?” I said, just loud enough to be heard. “Under the phone.”

Dolly and I climbed up to a top bunk, where she sprinkled herself so heavily with baby powder that a white mist hung in the air.

I said, “I can hardly breathe.”

“It smells good,” she said in a lowered voice.

“A little sprinkle on a baby’s butt smells good. This is a blizzard.”

Aunt Lois said, “Do you want to wake these children?

Because I am not the one who will read to them till they fall asleep again.”

So we stopped talking, but we couldn’t seem to get comfortable. The bunk was too narrow for the two of us, it seemed to me, although it never had been before.

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