Hard Red Spring by Kelly Kerney Read Free Book Online Page B

Ladino?”
    Judas held a finger up, shook his head. “But her clothes are Indian,” he said with his mouth full. “Women cannot change to Ladino. If all men change to Ladino, then Indians have money and dignity. If all women change to Ladino, there are no more Indians. There is nothing left.”
    Father’s forest looked burned. The ash would remain, sticking to everything, until the first rainy season shower. Animal tracks preceded them, and human tracks, too. Evie could tell Judas’s tracks from his shoes, pointed at the tips, whereas Father’s boots left wide, blunt prints. The largest in the forest. There were so many tracks, tracks of bare feet, Indian feet. Deer, jaguars, and lizards, and the sideways slide of snakes. They could still hear the piano clearly, running through a refrain. Mother’s playing not only entertained Father while he worked, Evie drew courage from it when she ventured into the forest.
    They ran into Father and Ixna, who was holding her red blanket to her chest. Both coming from another trail, laughing. Father held on to Ixna’s tied belt, allowing himself to be towed along the path. They did not see Evie and Judas right away.
    â€œFather!” Evie called. “Are you playing a game?”
    They both spun around. “We are!” Father answered, waving. “Blindman’s bluff! Though don’t tell your mother, you know she doesn’t like games so much when we’re supposed to be working.”
    â€œI know.”
    The piano suddenly stopped. Birds, insects, unseeable things crawling in the brush. Evie shivered with fright. Father turned Ixna around by theshoulders and pushed her down one of the paths. In a moment, she was gone. In another, Father was gone, too, down a different path.
    The music began again. The pause lasted just long enough that Evie knew what had happened. A breeze from the window had blown the sheet music across the room.
    â€œI can never get Ixna to play games with me,” Evie told Judas. “Not even I Spy.” All Evie’s games on the mountain were solitary, dreary endeavors at imitating her parents. Planting pebbles, pecking at the piano. “But it seems she likes blindman’s bluff. You think she’d play that with
me
?”
    â€œ
Saber.
”
    Evie and Judas continued deeper into the forest, where Judas needed his machete. He whacked at branches and vines with big, unpredictable motions, never warning Evie. She appreciated this, his trust that she knew to keep clear.
    They soon came upon a small clearing planted with tiny corn seedlings. There had been trees before, but an Indian had cut them down to sun his crop. Evie could see the stumps, sliced up with thin, weathered machete marks, then burned to feed the soil. An Indian could have twenty of these plots hidden all around their land.
    Alone, this discovery would terrify Evie, but with Judas, she felt brave. He was just Indian enough in her mind to be able to control the ghosts, and white enough that she didn’t fear him. That’s what Ladino meant to her. She watched him now attack the earth with his blade, cutting up the corn plants, not six inches high. Evie did her part and stomped on them, too, twisting her heel into the white, surfaced roots. In a minute, they’d destroyed the plot. Evie took three rolls from her basket and left them there, a gift, a hopeful gesture Father insisted on if Mother was going to insist on such destruction. Then they set off to find more.
    â€œJudas, what does Magellan eat? I can’t get him to eat anything.” This was not the only problem. In addition to not eating, Magellan had begun to peck at himself. A large wound had appeared on his breast, sticky and infected. Evie moved him to a dark corner, hoping no one would notice. Her first job on the farm, and she was failing at it.
    Judas made an abrupt right and began to slice what seemed to be a new trail. “Magellan eats fruit and