Dangerous Skies by Suzanne Fisher Staples

Author:Suzanne Fisher Staples
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Published: 2012-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

10

Mama and Dad kept a close watch over me. They made sure I was so busy I couldn’t leave the house except for school. I felt like a prisoner, up to my elbows in soapsuds after every meal and keeping company with Mama and Gran while they cleaned and worked in the garden.

They all seemed to enjoy it, though I couldn’t think why. I was completely preoccupied with visions of Tunes huddled wet and shivering somewhere on one of the creeks.

In school I became a loner like Tunes’d been. I had no heart for hoops and talk with Dewey Morgan or anybody else for that matter. I refused to let anyone gossip about Tunes in my range of hearing. After a while they left me alone. I just put in my time and came home every day.

The weather stayed coolish and gray and inhospitable. The water and land looked alike, both flat and dull, and the sky above pressed down heavy like the plate of an iron until it seemed nothing could move. And I felt the weight of being caught between.

Obie hung out on the doorstep, waiting for someone to take him down to the water, or down the lane, or anywhere. Every once in a while he’d get tired of waiting around and he’d head down toward the dock. He’d return a few minutes later dripping wet. He’d lie down on the step again and wait some more.

Mama and Gran were doing their spring housecleaning. Mama had me take the mattresses off the beds on Saturday and vacuum the box springs and frames.

For some reason, the combination of cleaning and gray weather put Mama in a good frame of mind, and she chirped happily away all day, talking about the charity ball coming up and what various ladies were contributing in the way of flowers. I sneezed and my eyes smarted with all the dust, but she paid me no mind.

I began to grow impatient and restless, and took to pacing when I wasn’t working, until Gran couldn’t stand it.

“Land sakes alive,” she said one afternoon. “You’d think you were afflicted with a passel of fleas. Here, help peel these potatoes, settle yourself down.”

Mama had her bridge club over for lunch and an afternoon of cards. We had the day off from school for teachers’ meetings. I wanted to avoid Mama’s friends and stay outside, so I gave Obie a bath. The fleas had become near-epidemic, and Obie’d been scratching a right lot. For a dog who loved water he sure hated a bath. He stood quivering, his head down like he was sick. Soon as I finished he took off at a dead run, straight down to the water, where he rolled in a mess of dead fish until he smelled awful enough to be to his own liking again.

I took my fishing rod down and cast off the dock for about a half hour but didn’t catch anything. I was starving. Finally there was nothing left for me to do but go to the kitchen and get a peanut butter sandwich.

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