Poison Heart by Mary Logue Read Free Book Online Page B

world seemed to twist and tilt on its own. Then he wanted to close his eyes and make it go away.
    “But she said you could write, Walter. That’s such good news. Can you show me how you can write? Would you write your name for me?”
    She put a pen in his good hand.
    “Can you sign your name, Walter?”
    He nodded.
    “Let’s try a practice run.” She put a paper under the pen and he wrote his name. He couldn’t see it, but he remembered how to do it. You don’t forget how to write your own name.
    She looked at it and said, “Walter, you have to concentrate. That looks like a kid in kindergarten did it. Just a big, jumbled mess.”
    He tried again. He was doing the best he could. Margaret knew how to help him do it.
    Patty Jo looked at his signature. “Not good enough. I guess I shouldn’t have believed Margaret when she said you could write. She thinks you know what’s going on, but you don’t. I can go ahead and sell the farm without your signature. She won’t be able to stop me.”
    Walter was so worried about the farm. His old friend Edwin had come in and told him that Patty Jo was going to sell the farm. Now she’d said it too. She shouldn’t do that. They needed to keep the farm. The farm was his. He would be going back to the farm as soon as he could. He had lived there all his life.
    He grabbed Patty Jo’s arm and tried to ask her about the farm. His mouth moved and sound came out, but it was as bad as his writing, all jumbled.
    She took his hand off her arm. “I know, Walter. I’ve asked the nurses to keep Margaret away from you. I think she upsets you too much.”
    His Margaret. The sweetest girl in the world. She had such beautiful blue eyes. Like her mother. He needed to close his eyes.
    Patty Jo leaned in and whispered to him, “You won’t be in here much longer. I’ll take care of you.”
    He hoped she was right. All he wanted to do was go home.

CHAPTER 5
    After school, Meg ran to the barn and sat on the top bar of one of the old stalls. Harvey watched her from his stall as she watched him. It was a comfortable viewing, each of them patient and curious. Meg felt as though she were drinking the animal in.
    Harvey would be going home tomorrow, and she might never be friends with an elk again. From the first moment she had seen the elk, there had been a connection between them.
    She had a cut-up apple in her pocket. She watched him wrinkle his nose as she offered him a piece.
    “Do you smell it?” She hopped down and came closer to him. He was safe in the stall, so she didn’t need to worry about him running away, but she did move as slowly and carefully as she could so as not to spook him. She could smell him. He gave off a forest odor that was a mixture of goodness and grossness: rotting leaves, wild plums, muck stewed in tree hollows.
    Meg had cut the apple into six pieces. She knew he was fully capable of eating the whole apple by himself, probably in one big bite, but she wanted to dole it out so that she could watch him and so that he really knew where the apple came from. That it came from her. Maybe he would always remember her when he ate apples.
    She held the first piece up to his nose to allow him to sniff it. She held her hand flat. She didn’t want Harvey to accidentally nibble at her fingers. He lifted his lips back, if that’s what they were called—the rim of his mouth around his teeth. He had big teeth. They looked like petrified wood, but lighter. He pulled at the apple section with his lips and sucked it into his mouth.
    In school she had told her friends that they had an elk staying at their house.
    “Aren’t you scared of it?” Miranda Wales asked.
    “No,” Meg explained, remembering what the vet had told her. “Elks that have been bottle-fed are one of the tamest animals there are.”
    “You going to kill it and eat it?” Ted Thompson asked. He thought he was so smart.
    He actually was pretty smart. That was one of the things she liked about him. And she