4 Hemmed In by Marjorie Sorrell Rockwell Read Free Book Online

have worked up a new clown act.”
    “I like those clowns – even if I know one of them’s Uncle Freddie under the makeup.”
    After being horrible scarred in that fire, Freddie had retired fro m Atlanta Fire Rescue Departmen t and moved back to Caruthers Corners with his wife. His disability check allowed him to spend most of his time entertaining local kids as Sparkplug the Clown, his disfigurement hidden behind clown makeup.
    “Meanwhile, your Uncle Mark and Aunt Tilly will check on your mommy and daddy, make sure they’re all right.”
    “Okay. But I still miss them.”
    “I know you do,” Beau Madison nodded. “I know you do.”
    ≈ ≈ ≈
    “I’m so worried,” Maddy told her friends. She and her Quilters Club cronies phoned back and forth every morning. “Kathy has been such a good wife for Bill. He’d be devastated if her lost her. We all would.”
    “This second operation is not life threatening, is it?” asked Lizzie. Always trying to minimize life’s worries, the result of a privileged upbringing.
    “ Supposedly not. But you never know what could go wrong.”
    “Nothing’s going to go wrong. They’ll just clean out the infection, pump her full of antibiotics, and send her home before you know it. That’s the way these things work. I have a cousin who had a toenail infection –“
    “Liz Ridenour, don’t tell me that story. Your cousin lost her toe.”
    “Only one. She has nine others.”
    Bootsie was more sympathetic. “Little N’yen has really bonded with Kathy. I know he’s worried about his mom.”
    The adopted Vietnamese boy had been with his new home for about a year, but other than his differing skin tone you would have thought he was born into it. His biological parents had survived the Vietnam War, only to come to America and have a bus hit their Honda Civic. N’yen was the only survivor of the crash, fastened safely in his car seat in the backseat. His folk and the drunken bus driver died. Fortunately, it had been 2 o’clock in the morning and the bus was empty, heading back to the garage. Windy City Transport’s insurance company paid out two million – one mil per parent – to the orphaned infant. The money was tucked away in a college fund. But he’d spent nine years in foster homes before Bill and Kathy came along.
    Cookie came through in a more practical way. With all the children under Maddy’s care, she organized a day at Gruesome Gorge. Despite its name, Gruesome Gorge was a wonderful state park with a campground, hiking trails, and a waterfall that flowed into a lovely oval-shaped pond. There on the small sandy beach the Quilters Club had a picnic with the menagerie of kids. Aggie and N’yen splashed about under Bootsie’s supervision in Bottomless Pond. (Contrary to its dread description, the pond was no deeper than three feet at any given point.)
    “This was a good idea,” Maddy told her friend Cookie. “Everybody seems to be having fun.” She was cradling her daughter Tilly’s youngest in her arms, the infant zonked out after a bottle of warm milk. Lizzie was watching the others.
    The sun was bright in a cloudless sky, a perfect day for an outing. The mood belied the park’s sordid history, hinted at in its name. Back in the early 1800’s, Indian fighters slaughtered a tribe of Potawatomi, trapping them in the gorge like fish in a barrel. No one wrote of this shameful episode in the history books, merely implying that settlers pushed the indigenous natives off their lands.
    The state's name actually means “Indian Land,” an appellation that dates back to the 1760s. Then in 1800 Congress officially incorporated Indiana Territory, setting it off from the Northwest Territory.
    Picnickers sometimes found arrowheads and pottery shards on the grounds of Gruesome Gorge, the only remnants of the Potawatomi. The 1838 removal of the Potawatomi in northern Indiana to designated areas west of the Mississippi was known as the “Trail of Death” (not to be