Little Girl Lost by Tristan J. Tarwater Read Free Book Online Page B

selling them. On the first day of rest, a man who Madame Greswin paid in sausages would set up a little booth, grilling the tasty links and selling them for a half-piece or a blueie. Even in the bitter cold the man showed up, warming his hands over the grill as he shivered on his little stool, waiting for the customers who were willing to brave the weather for a hot sausage.
    On the second day of rest, Auntie went to temple. She fried a few sausages, leaving half a sausage and a piece of bread for Tavera before she went out for the day. Tavera was supposed to watch the home and hearth and most importantly, clean the machines the old woman used to grind the meat. Tavera was allowed to touch them only to clean them. The crone expected a perfect job. The little girl was required to leave all the parts out on the table so the old woman could inspect them. Auntie Greswin would run the pieces of metal under her large nose, smelling the precious pieces of metal and running her fingers over them to be sure they were free of grease. The cleaner the pieces, the less likely her fresh sausages were to turn. If the metal parts were not cleaned to her specifications, Tavera received a beating with the cane. After the beating was over, she was commanded to clean the parts again and go to bed. After a few weeks of this, Tavera learned how clean the machines had to be in order to make it to
bed free of welts.
    There were times when Tavera had to remind Madame Greswin who she was. The old woman would squint at her from time to time and call her by different names, Kera or Gema. Madame Greswin would complain about her joints and claimed she knew when it would snow by how they ached. Tavera wanted to say it sounded like nonsense to her. But no amount of complaints about pain ever stayed the old woman’s hand with the cane so Tavera held her tongue and her wonder when the cold snows came.
    The winter was harsh and the snow piled up to where the crone thought it unsafe to send Tavera out of doors to shovel. They spent more time around one another, the beady eyes of Auntie more likely to find fault with Tavera’s doings the more time she spent indoors. After a particularly snowy set of days, Tavera wished she had never been taken in by the old crone. Everything she had done those few days had been wrong and with the snow piled high, she couldn’t escape the old, shuffling woman and the long, wooden cane she wielded with such skill.
    When the woman drank, it could go well or poorly. Sometimes she sipped something Tavera wasn’t familiar with after going to temple. The alcohol dulled the old woman’s senses so she slept deeply enough to allow Tavera to poke around. One late afternoon as the woman lay asleep in her bed, Tavera summoned the nerve to creep upstairs and into the small, sparsely furnished room serving as the woman’s quarters. Further inspection revealed a crawlspace within the wall. The little girl was able to hold in her curiosity and bide her time till the next time the woman was out of the house, being sure to get all of her chores done before she clipped upstairs to the room.
    In the crawlspace were several trunks marked with words she hadn’t the education to decipher. Inside were old but well-done drawings of a woman and a man, the man obviously older than the girl with the solemn face who stood by him. There were a few beautiful quilts and two old fashioned dresses. Best of all though were the half-dozen hair ribbons, some of them made from some kind of shiny material. Tavera held her fingers over the ribbons for a few brief seconds before snatching the two she thought were the nicest, quickly putting everything back where it went and running downstairs so she could hide them in her bedding.
    After too many phases the snow let up to the point where it actually began to melt a little, the banks growing lower. The sun turned the white mountains into gray ponds and the water pooled wherever it could, filth and dirt lining the