A Thousand Never Evers by Shana Burg Read Free Book Online

sewing for us. But no matter how she scours the counters or sweeps the dirt from the floor, our home still looks exhausted. In the kitchen, where the floorboards split beside the oven, you can even see the ground. The two bedrooms tilt, and when it rains in summer, our house smells of mildew.
    Pretty soon, though, it’ll smell nothing but sweet.
    Don’t it just figure, I already mixed up the brown sugar and flour for the world’s best honey cake when I find out there isn’t any honey in the cupboard. Sure Mama’s taught me how to bake butterscotch cookies without baking soda and a pumpkin pie without butter, but how to make a honey cake without honey? I’ve got no idea, so I get cracking over to the Montgomerys’ place, but they don’t have any honey either.
    So I whistle and click for Flapjack.
Tweet, click, click. Tweet, click, click.
Together we cross the tracks to find Elias, who’s knee-deep in parsley on Mr. Mudge’s farm. By the time he locks the last sack in the shed, the sun’s starting to set. I ask him to take me to the Corner Store.
    At a time like this, all I can say is it’s a real good thing Mr. Mudge built his Corner Store just across the railroad tracks on the edge of the white side, because ever since that civil rights meeting, I don’t feel like going any deeper into white Kuckachoo than I have to.
    While we cut through the forest, I ask my brother if Mr. Mudge knows the garden belongs to us all. “The mayor came by and chatted with him a good long while, but he never mentioned the will or any of us,” Elias tells me. “Then the mayor handed Mr. Mudge the keys to Old Man Adams’s place.”
    All of a sudden, I’m madder than September frost. I can’t stand the thought of them passing round those keys that belong to my uncle.
    When we get to the Corner Store, I’m so angry I can barely talk. Still, I tell Elias, “Hurry on up!” because I’m not about to risk getting home after dark. Not with Mama so tense these days, and not when I’m working so hard to bake her favorite cake.
    Flapjack and me stand on the grassy patch between the bayou and the parking lot and wait. We’ve got to wait outside, because Mr. Mudge won’t let cats in his shop.
    I watch Mrs. Montgomery come out of the pay telephone booth behind the store. Mrs. Montgomery’s always saving her nickels and dimes to call her brother, who lives in New Orleans and actually has a telephone right in his house. Now Mrs. Montgomery waves to me. Then she crosses by the front of the shop and walks out the parking lot to Main Street.
    As usual, there’s a white girl sitting on the shop steps. Her name’s Honey Worth. Her blond hair falls like a bale of hay across her forehead. She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts and she’s hugging her fat cat, Sugar, in her arms.
    I don’t let Honey see I’m watching her because Mama always tells me not to look at white folk too close. Some of them are members of the Ku Klux Klan. And Lord knows I don’t want trouble from cross-burning haters, so I got in the habit of fixing my eyes to the ground while I wait for Elias to come on out of the store.
    Adding all the times I’ve waited on the grass beside the Corner Store parking lot, I bet I’ve seen hundreds—maybe even thousands—of feet go by. Black patent leather shoes with frilly white socks. Brown penny loafers oiled to shine in the sun. Saddle shoes scuffed on the black and white leather alike. And bare feet that never wear shoes, except maybe to church on Sunday.
    Today, though, it doesn’t take but a few minutes till I notice a pair of feet different from any I’ve ever seen: two plump sausages strapped in six-inch high heels teetering along the gravel edge of the parking lot. And this time I can’t help it. I’ve got to see the southern lady who can actually walk in such things!
    My eyes climb the green heels to the red-and-white-checkered dress, to the bright red lips, to the hat on the lady’s head. And there they are—a