A Season of Gifts by Richard Peck Read Free Book Online Page A

Her rolled-up jeans were dusty with chaff.
    “Mother and Dad didn’t know you sneaked out,” I accused.
    “I didn’t sneak out,” she said. “I left quietly. I’m fourteen. I have a life to live. In many important ways I’m practically twenty.”
    “Oh,” I said.
    “And clear out of my room,” Phyllis whispered. It loomed pink around us. “Ruth Ann will wake up, and it’ll be your fault.”
    We glanced across the pink stripe to Ruth Ann’s side. She was this little mound in the bed, snoring lightly, with one small hand on top of the covers. A drying hollyhock doll nestled by her chin.
    “For Pete’s sake,” Phyllis murmured, “what are those feathers doing all around her bed? It looks like a pheasant flew in here and blew up.”

C HAPTER S EVEN

Fuss and Feathers
    T he town was all eyes and ears, and the countryside heard all about it. The Kickapoo Princess had gone overnight from rumor to sure thing. Being high school girls, the witnesses weren’t reliable. But there was a bunch of them, and they sang like canaries.
    It was a story that had everything: ghosts, gunplay, and Civil Defense.
    WHAT’S GOING ON IN A RURAL
PIATT COUNTY MELON PATCH?
    a headline in the
Champaign Courier
inquired.
    ARE OUR DISTANT EARLY WARNING DEFENSE SYSTEMS ENOUGH?
    People who couldn’t find us on a map beat a path to our door. Traffic backed up, and the newspapers of Arcola, Sullivan, and DeWitt County sent reporters.
    Woody’s Zephyr Oil filling station pumped gas around the clock. The Dairy Queen took on extra help and was talking about putting in a drive-through. A lot of money changed hands.
    Barbara Jean Jeeter’s mother kept her out of school for a week, saying she had a beast of a cold and possibly bronchitis.
    To cash in, Mrs. Dowdel had set up shop out at the front of her property. It was a roadside stand featuring her jars of corn relish and apple butter and everything else out of her storm cellar. Piles of jars stood on hay bales, though she had no hay to bale. There were big bunches of bittersweet tied with fishing line. Shocks of Indian corn rose out of pumpkin piles. A few gawky dolls made out of cornhusks and yarn, with walnuts for faces.
    A sign over a mountain of watermelon and mushmelon read:
    PRODUCE FROM THE HAUNTED PATCH YOU PLUG ’EM YOU BOUGHT ’EM
    Coffee cans held displays of pheasant feathers:
    AUTHENTIC KICKAPOO HEADDRESS FEATHERS 5¢ APIECE 3 FOR A DIME
    Mrs. Dowdel’s prices were steep, but she was making money hand over fist. Also, she was unusually chatty to reporters who wanted to interview her, though they had to buy a gallon jug of soft cider or a peck of peaches first.
    You could hear her from our house, bending the reporters’ ears. “Pshaw, if you’re after a story, go down to the southern part of the state, down there at Cahokia. I know it’s the rough end of creation, but the old prehistoric people buried their folks in mounds down there. A good many has been dug up and put on display. Bones, of course. Go on down there and don’t bother me,” she’d say, and keep the change.
    A small figure joined her after school, waiting on trade and darting back and forth for more gourds off the haunted vine at a dime apiece, a quarter for three. It was Ruth Ann in a cut-down version of Mrs. Dowdel’s feedsack apron, with pockets.
    Mother kind of gave up and said, “At least I know where she is, and she doesn’t have to cross a busy street.” To work on his sermons, Dad had to move up in the attic. The traffic was deafening, and cars parked in our front yard.
    Ruth Ann only came home in time for supper, bobbing through the cannas in an apron that brushed her sandals. She never came home empty-handed. She’d bring a mess of tomatoes too bruised to sell. Or a long-necked squash Mother could fry in butter. Now Ruth Ann was tying up her braids at the back of her head, since most of Mrs. Dowdel’s hair was drawn back in a big bun. Ruth Anncarried a corn dolly in her apron pocket now