South of Superior by Ellen Airgood Read Free Book Online Page A

she heard a car pull Up. She leaned in the doorway, bracing herself with her hands, her body angled forward by a hump in her back but her feet planted solid on the threshold. She wore denim overalls, rubber galoshes, a woolly cardigan over a long-sleeved Undershirt. Her white hair fell in braids along an angular face, and her eyes were bright, snapping blue. A black-and-white terrier squeezed past her and raced down the steps.
    â€œJack!” she cried in a gravely voice. The woman who’d gotten out of the car stopped as Jack jumped in ecstatic circles around her knees.
    â€œJack, get down, get back here,” Mary rasped, her voice even gruffer than usual. She’d had a start, her eyes playing tricks on her, seeing the face of a woman who’d been dead and in the ground for a long, long time. Ada Stone , she’d thought for one shocked moment. “Jack,” she rasped again, and after a few more leaps he trotted back to her.
    Her visitor made her way forward, her arms full of boxes. “Hi, I’m Madeline Stone, I’m staying with Gladys Hansen?”
    â€œI thought so.” Mary turned herself around to go in the door but the girl didn’t follow. “Come on, then!” Mary barked and heard the plank steps creak behind her.
    Mary had cobbled her place together and knew what it must look like to her visitor: a couple of wooden boxes Up on wheels. Which it was. Virgil Higley of Higley Logging had given her two old tool cribs when he was finished with them and she’d bolted them together and cut a doorway in between. The place suited her. Real small, so it heated Up good. The girl would find out, if she stayed north long enough. You only needed what you needed, nothing more. The woodstove was burning hot in the first room and it was warm as toast. A cracked leather armchair was pulled Up close by it, and six chickens sat in beds of straw in a long wire hutch on the floor, clucking softly. Jack gave them a calculating look and Mary growled, “Jack.” Jack sighed and trotted past.
    The second room held a cookstove, a pegboard hung with pots and pans, a countertop and cupboards and a sink without spigots, a gas refrigerator, a footstool, a couple of old easy chairs. There was a bunk along one wall, covered with a quilt and bolstered with pillows, a metal wardrobe, shelves of food and books, an old card table with a puzzle spread across it, and finally another wire cage, Jack’s. Mary shooed him into it.
    â€œHe’s still got his puppy ways. Got to be able to get some peace now and then. John Fitzgerald brought him to me, you know John?”
    Madeline Stone shook her head.
    â€œLives in town, you’ll meet him. A great knurl of a man, built like a stump. Runs the hardware. Anyway, John brought Jack to me and I told him I didn’t want a dog but he wouldn’t take no. Somebody dropped him off, looks like, left him to die or find a home. No collar, no tags, skinny, running loose. Maybe he just run off and got lost, I don’t know, but either way, John couldn’t find nobody to take him, so here he is.” Mary sat in the chair beside Jack’s cage and scratched his head through the wire. “Sit down, it don’t matter where.”
    Madeline set her load of boxes on the table and eased into the other chair. Mary took note of her Unease. Well, what could you expect? She was from the city and she looked it—not fancy, but smooth. Smooth skin, smooth hands, a real modern short haircut showing, now that she’d plucked off the cap she’d been wearing. (It was the hat that made her look so like that face out of the past, Mary decided. She couldn’t recall if she’d ever seen Ada minus her hat. And the girl was bosomy too, like Ada had been. Bosomy and solid. She could do some work if she had to, not like some of these girls who looked as if a stiff breeze would blow them away.) She had on very clean blue jeans with a cream-colored