Sufficient Grace by Amy Espeseth Read Free Book Online

with my arm around her shoulders.
    â€˜I’m sorry, Naomi. I was just mad that you didn’t tell me, and that you’re a woman and I’m not. I was just jealous. It’s not so bad, is it?’
    Naomi snuffles and heaves and tries to talk, but she needs to just catch her breath a bit before she can. I wait patiently, and I don’t think that she’ll gloat, but I did make her cry.
    Finally, she can talk. ‘I’m not a woman, Ruth, I’m just a big stupid baby. I’ve started to pee my bed again. Mom says it’s alright and she helps me change the sheets every morning, but I’m scared now that I’ll wet myself during the day too. I’ve got paper towels from the kitchen in my panties because I couldn’t bear for you and Reuben to know. Samuel knows, but he’s promised not to tell. He’s promised.’
    I feel really bad now and rock Naomi until she stops crying so hard. ‘Well, girl, we got to get on and build this fort.’ I talk soft to her. ‘I can’t do it without your help. Get on up and help me move these bales.’
    She gets up and gets to work, only small hiccups break into the sound of us dragging bales. Naomi’s got streaks of dirt down her face where her tears caught on some dust, and she looks like a baby raccoon. I don’t tease her, though; seems like she’s got enough on her heart right now.
    Reuben’s running around with another garter snake stuck on the end of a rusty pitchfork. He’s pierced it on three of the four tines, and the snake is writhing with its eyes all bugged out in pain. My brother meets its gaze with a mean and hungry glint in his eye, and he grins like a barn cat ripping the wings off a bat.
    â€˜You ain’t no Moses, Reuben,’ I tell him quick. There is no need for the bronze snake; we haven’t been bitten. We seek no cure.
    He sees the seriousness in my eyes and moves as if to fling the limp creature up over a low barn rafter. I call out and he stops. He’s leaning on the pitchfork, relaxing with half-lidded eyes.
    Naomi is still sitting on the bales, braiding twine into her hair and humming a chorus.
    â€˜You’re hurting that snake just to hurt it.’ I hate to see a creature suffer.
    And Reuben sticks the fork hard into the floor. The sharp tines are through the snake and stab the wood, but it doesn’t take. The pitchfork bounces and hits the ground. I’m looking where it landed — feeling the slice of the tines through my body — when Samuel comes up behind me and tickles my back where my hair touches my waist. I jump and turn around and he smiles. I was scared, but there wasn’t no harm done; I smile back at him.
    Samuel reaches down and pulls the snake off the end of the pitchfork. He passes it over and I hold it limp in my hands.
    â€˜What a girl.’ Reuben smirks at me and goes into his fort. My brother’s peeing in there now. I can hear it and smell it strong and sharp in the still air.

5
    SO MANY THINGS CAN COME BETWEEN NEIGHBOURS , EVEN goodneighbours. Friendships formed through generations of raising barns, crops and babies together seem to weather like uncut grass when some unexpected sun shines too hot and too many days in a row. Some grasses will cure standing; heat just makes them all the better for cattle. But then, some grasses will steam in humid sun or plain wither in dry heat; after that, they ain’t good for nothing. That’s the way it is with friendships in Failing.
    Grandma is my family’s main neighbour: our house squats on an acre carved off the side of her nearest cornfield. We don’t even need a fence. Grandma owns all the woods around here and more land here and there. Uncle Peter owns the adjoining Magnusson place, and most of the folks around here have farms with many acres. Grandma can keep track of all of us from her porch. Uncle Ingwald lives in town in the parsonage, but the Lord