Sound Of Gravel, The by Ruth Wariner Read Free Book Online

half-full; the dark blue sky was clear and dotted with stars that brightened the cold air. Long before the flashlight’s beam found the outhouse, the smell of stale urine guided me toward the eight-foot-tall, unpainted wooden box that rose out of the ground like a dead tree trunk. I knew it would be completely dark inside except for the light that streamed through a small crescent moon carved into the door. Its knob was a piece of wood nailed to it, and its hinges were made of rubber cut from recycled tires, which made the door rigid and hard to open.
    One step up onto a small wooden floor and there I was, standing over a hole while I held my breath to keep from sucking in the stench that would make me retch. I turned around, crouched down, and placed my behind over it, supporting myself with my palms to guard against splinters in my cheeks. One interminable moment later, I hurried out of the rickety door, sucked in the cold air, and walked quickly back to the house, my heart pounding inside my ears.
    *   *   *
    CHRISTMAS MORNING, ALL of us ran for our stockings, unclipping the clothespins way before Lane and Mom woke up. The socks were indeed stuffed, though mostly with peanuts, which didn’t feel like a treat as we always had peanuts around the house. I was happy to find two mini Almond Joy bars and an orange mixed among them.
    Count your blessing;
    See what God hath done.
    After we emptied our stockings, Matt sorted through the wrapped gifts, read whom each one belonged to, and handed them to us. We had two each. While we felt and shook our packages, Mom and Lane got up. My stepfather, already dressed and ready to feed the animals and milk the cows, peeked into the living room, bid us good morning, and made a quick exit. Mom came in soon afterward and announced we could open our presents. I tore into my biggest one first and ripped open the red-and-white candy-cane paper to reveal a previously opened cardboard box that had been taped shut. Inside was a white plastic Ferris wheel, its Fisher-Price sticker faded and peeling, with four little boy and girl figurines. These, plastic and dull, looked as if they had been left out in the sun. The figurines’ round bottoms still nested easily into dusty round holes on the Ferris wheel. One figurine looked like me: she had light freckles on her cheeks and was dressed in navy blue, her hair pulled back into a blond ponytail. I would have been jealous of her long hair—Mom always cut mine short—but her ponytail had somehow been chewed off and tooth marks were on her head.
    Luke also received a weather-beaten Fisher-Price toy—a red farmhouse with a farmer figurine, a horse, a cow, and a little, pink pig. They had little, round bottoms just like my figurines, and the whole thing was identically tattered. Once we realized that our figurines were interchangeable, we played with our new used toys for hours. Luke opened and closed his plastic farmhouse door over and over, and each time it closed, a loud moooo came from inside the door, and he laughed out loud with watery eyes as if he had never seen anything so amazing. I liked the way a cow could go straight from the farmhouse to a Ferris-wheel ride and back again. We were thrilled by our new toys, exhausted as they were.
    Count your blessings;
    Name them one by one.
    Count your many blessings;
    See what God hath done.

 
    5
    By the following summer, I had turned six and I decided I was old enough to help my brother Matt with his farmwork. The alfalfa fields glowed green under the hot desert sun, and the peach trees were covered with green leaves and small, unripe fruit. A dense pecan grove created several acres of cool shadows behind our farm, and although the house still smelled of mice, it was brighter and warmer in the summer light.
    That summer had seen two exciting developments on the farm. First, electricity had finally stretched to our corner of the colony. Lane had dug narrow, shallow trenches and buried electrical