Missing May by Cynthia Rylant Read Free Book Online Page A

Cletus. Well, a couple of times I looked back and saw him staring up at the tops of the mountains, staring like he was looking at angels flying up there, and his face was so clear and open that he seemed like a tiny child to me. What was it he was thinking, looking up like that?
    My own quietness, I think it came from peace. Nothing needed doing in that car. Ob was beside me and safe. Cletus behind us content. I knew that for a good three hours we were going to be like this, no surprises, nothing gone wrong. I could look out at the mountains and the tiny little houses people had squeezed onto them. I could see the muddy old toys in the yards and the melting-away snow-men. The smoke from chimneys keeping people warm and happy. Dogs chained to their houses, asleep in soggy yards. I didn't need to take care of anything or anybody, and the silence was as blessed to me as the deepest kind of sleep could have been.
    When the signs on the turnpike started telling us we were coming to Charleston, Cletus became so fidgety that at first I thought we'd better find a filling station, and fast.
    But when he started talking about the capitol, I knew it was only nerves.
    "I never have seen it," he told Ob. "Only a black-and-white picture in our West Virginia history book. Even that knocked my socks off.
    "I just think about all those important people, making laws under that gold dome. It must be to West Virginia what the Parthenon was to the Greeks."
    Cletus shook his head and stared out the window toward the Du Pont plant we were passing.
    "It's got to be the greatest thing," he said, "to work in the West Virginia capitol every day."
    And for a second, right then, I had this strong image of Cletus someday doing that very thing. Of his being Fayette County's elected representative to the legislature and driving over to Charleston to put his head together with other important heads and enact profound laws.
    Then I remembered that he liked to eat Vienna sausages from the can and watch reruns of "Laugh- In," and came to my senses.
    The green-and-white road signs kept teasing us along with mentions of Capitol Street so many miles ahead, and we strained our eyes for a glimpse of the gold-leafed dome, like Columbus looking for a continent.
    Then ... there it was, and I know it was better than all three of us figured it would be. The capitol building sprawled gray concrete like a regal queen spreading out her petticoats, and its giant dome glittered pure gold in the morning sun. I felt in me an embarrassing sense of pride that she was ours.
    That we weren't just shutdown old coalmines and people on welfare like the rest of the country wanted to believe we were. We were this majestic, elegant thing sitting solid, sparkling in the light.
    Ob kept running the car off the road as he tried to drive and look at the same time.
    "Sure is a beauty," he said as he pulled the car back into the lane for the third time.
    "Sure is," I heard Cletus answer. The boy looked like he was just swallowing up the sight, gulping that capitol down as fart as he could as we moved on past it, on toward I-64. I knew he wanted to stop right then and stay there, maybe forever. Forget that Bat Lady.
    Ob probably knew it, too.
    "Don't you folks worry," he said. "Tomorrow when we come back this way, we're going to stop and spend the whole day wandering that place.
    We'll see us some historical documents and some genuine West Virginia artifacts. Then we'll go have us some lunch with the senators and maybe even the governor himself in the capitol coffee shop.
    "Me and Cletus, we'll tell him how to straighten out all his mess."
    So as Cletus pinned his eyes to that place he thought might just be heaven, our car kept on moving, out of view of the fine gold dome, further apart from Deep Water and the people we used to be there, on nearer Putnam County and the people we were about to become. Three visitors heading for Oz.

CHAPTER TEN
    "The Reverend Miriam Young has passed on I'm