Sadie's Mountain by Shelby Rebecca Read Free Book Online Page A

good that rests on the other side of fourteen and a half. You know what; I’d love to get another dog someday. But, what if it makes a mess, or pees on the floor? I need things clean, orderly. I need things to be in control.
    As I think about the pros and cons, I eat the greens Missy gave me even though I suspect there may be some bacon fat in them or something, and the potato salad. I leave my chicken-friend remains on the plate as Missy glares at me. I gulp down the sweet tea. I shrug my shoulders and she stares at the chicken, back at me, and then she frowns as she picks up my plate in defeat.
    “You guys shouldn’t have let me hold ‘em when they were hatched, let me name ‘em and then cut their heads off in front of me.”
    “That’s just the way life is, Sadie,” she explains. “How were we supposed ta know you’d be so...sensitive?”
    I shrug my shoulders.
    “Are you goin’ to drive over and walk a little ways or take the walkin’ trail over yonder?”
    “Drive, but couldn’t I just go buy some goldenseal in a jar? She won’t even know.”
    “Momma wants you to get it for her, from the ground,” she says, her mouth in a grim line. She rummages around in the pantry behind me as I stare at the kitchen walls, the pictures, the knick-knacks. Memories are just being held back by my purposeful blankness.
    “Here,” she says, as she hands me a thin sack made from the leg of some old britches.
    I look inside and find a root digger and some cheesecloth.
    As I hold the digger, it tugs on a little string tied onto a memory in my brain. The wooden end feels so familiar. I run my hand up and down the soft edge and realize this is the very same one Momma had taught me with. She said she’d found it in a ginseng patch when she was a little girl, obviously discarded accidentally by a veteran digger. It had been sharpened into a perfect claw. Slowly, I put it back into the old britches.
    I bet they were daddy’s , I think as I run my fingers over the soft fabric. I hadn’t come back when daddy died three years ago—he’d had a heart attack. I just sent a really ornate, probably gaudy, flower arrangement from Ansted Floral & Gift. I couldn’t come. I can’t tell anyone this but I’d never wanted to see daddy again—not even dead. I know Missy doesn’t want to talk about him right now. Her memories of him are different than mine.
    “Where are the babies?” I ask before I turn to leave.
    “Elise is at school, Sadie. And little Joe’s takin’ a long nap. You’ll meet ‘em later,” she says, proudly.
    “What about Dale?”
    “He’s on a run ‘cross country,” she explains. “He’ll be back in four days.”
    “The life of a trucker’s wife, huh,” I joke.
    “Yep. We put up with a lot. You’d better go, Sadie, or you’ll miss dinner.”
    “Okay, bye,” I say. She waves me out. She seems a bit busy.
    When I step on the front porch, I remember— I think my horse Monty is still in his stable. He’s, what? He’s got to be about twelve years old. Missy never said anything about him dying like Frosty did; and I know the boys like to ride the horses so they didn’t sell him—I don’t think.
    I walk slowly down the trodden path toward Monty’s stable. The familiar scents in the air tug on memory after memory. I try to swallow them down but they feel like they’re choking me. My throat swells with that hard lump again. I hate this feeling. That lump in my throat had stayed for almost a year after...I was raped.
    Why is it so hard to say the word rape in my head? I wince. I wonder if the lump will just stick itself in my throat the whole time I’m here. It doesn’t hurt but it’s annoying. It feels like I’m going to cry but even if I pinch myself until I do, the lump stays put.
    I’m distracted from my throat when I catch sight of my horse. He’s standing behind the fence in the pen. His back leg is bent and his tail is swatting a fly buzzing around his hind end. He whinnies when he