The Everlasting Now by Sara Harrell Banks

Author:Sara Harrell Banks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 2020-08-21T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

In late afternoon, dark thunderclouds began building in the west. Lily brought the clothes in, then left to go to the farm before the rain caught her. The sky was glassy, the air smelled of sulphur, and the birds grew quiet. Then rain began drifting across the fields in silvery sheets. Fat drops pocked the dust, flattening on the boards of the porch.

“Check the upstairs windows for me, Brother!” Mama called from the dining room.

Rain drummed heavily on the roof as I went from room to room, closing windows. I was on my way downstairs when I saw Sheriff Hamm standing at the front screened door. His shirt was wet and rain glistened on his polished boots.

I knew this was going to happen, I knew it! Once Mama made that call to the mayor, I was dead. I wanted to pretend I didn’t see him and go back upstairs, but I couldn’t. My stomach felt like it was going to fall out. There was a ringing in my ears.

He peered through the screened door and saw me.

“Tell your mama I’m here,” he said.

I didn’t say anything. I just turned and went into the dining room. For a minute, I stood there looking at Mama. She was laying out a dress pattern on the dining room table. The thin tissue paper crinkled under her fingertips as she pinned the pattern to the material. Swan sat in a corner dressing her dolls from scraps of cloth light as summer butterflies.

“Mama,” I whispered. I was so scared my voice sounded squeaky. “The sheriff’s outside on the porch.”

In the muted light from the windows, Mama’s face was pale. “Have him come in,” she said, “then you and Swan make yourselves scarce.”

“I’m not gonna leave you alone with him,” I told her.

“It’ll be all right,” she said.

Swan and I hid behind the hall door.

When he first went into the room, I heard him say he was sorry about upsetting her. Sorry my foot, I thought. He didn’t look like he was sorry. I bet he only said it ’cause the mayor made him.

Then I couldn’t make out any more words, just a kind of mumbling. A few minutes later he walked back down the hall and out to the porch. Mama didn’t walk to the door with him, the way she did with regular company.

We waited a second, then we left our hiding place and watched as he left the porch and went down the steps. The rain had ended and the air was fresh and clean; steam rose from the ground. The sheriff stomped down the front path, his boots crunching on the gravel. Then he walked toward the gate, brushing past the tea roses that tumbled over the front fence.

We followed him out to the yard, and Shirley Boligee followed us, lifting her paws delicately over the wet grass. Swan picked her up. When Sheriff Hamm reached the gate, Swan called out to him, her voice high and thin as a pennywhistle.

“You ol’ bully,” she said.

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