The Book of Bright Ideas by Sandra Kring Read Free Book Online

Grandma’s pictures and knickknacks and her good dishes and silver. Then we packed up her clothes and put them in a box to go to people so poor they have to wear dead people’s clothes. We put the boxes of clothes by the front door, and we hauled the dishes and stuff up into the attic. There was an old guitar propped up in the corner. The varnish was worn off right under the hole in the front, and there was a spider’s web tangled over the four strings it had left. I wanted to strum it, but I didn’t want the spider’s web to cling to my fingers.
    Aunt Verdella smiled as she picked up the guitar. “This was your daddy’s first guitar,” she said, touching it as soft as if it was a baby. “Rudy and I gave it to him for his fifteenth birthday. My, but that boy could play, right from the start. I was so proud of him the first time I heard him play with Owen Palmer at Marty’s. Before your ma and dad were married, your daddy played out all the time. Rudy wasn’t much for dancin’, but we’d go down there on Friday nights, have their fish fry, then stay till closing time. Your uncle Rudy would waltz, that’s about it, but I’d always find some women there to jitterbug with. Course, your daddy didn’t just play at Marty’s either. Sometimes they drove a good hundred miles on a Saturday to play for some wedding dance or other kind of party. Folks still shake their heads over your daddy quittin’. They all say he could have made it big.” She set the guitar back down and it made a hollow-sounding ring.
    Aunt Verdella started singing a couple of lines from a song I didn’t know, then she grabbed my arms and started swinging them, her feet moving this way and that way, and her big belly rocking. We laughed, then she dropped my hands. “I’m gonna teach you to jitterbug someday,” she said. She laughed again, then sighed. “It’s such a shame Reece doesn’t play anymore, but your ma said that was no life for a married man. I understand, I suppose, but I just think that it’s such a pity when people stop doin’ the things that make them happy. And I still say, if your ma would have gone with him, learned to dance, and let herself have a little fun, he’d still be playing.”
    When we had all the boxes in the attic, we took down the yellowed curtains from all the windows and washed them in Aunt Verdella’s wringer washer. Then we hung them on the line to dry. It was a warm and windy day, and we giggled as those curtains flapped and snapped and wrapped themselves around us. Then we got busy washing the wallpaper, so it don’t look dingy.
    Me and Aunt Verdella worked till she said her arms and legs were aching like they had a cold in them. The house sure did look spiffy though, and it smelled clean too, from all that scrubbing and the breeze blowing in to air the place out, like Aunt Verdella said.
    When we were done, Aunt Verdella drove to the Daverson’s Motel to tell the Malones that the house was ready. Then, soon as supper was done that night, she made Daddy and Uncle Rudy and Tommy help unload the junk from the Malones’ pickup and wagon. While they started unloading, I brought Winnalee upstairs, like Aunt Verdella told me to do, and I told her to pick out which of the four bedrooms she wanted for her very own.
    Winnalee didn’t pick the one I thought she’d pick—the one with curtains the color of Freeda’s cheeks, and with flowers on the wallpaper in the same color—instead, she picked the room with wallpaper covered in pointy, dark green leaves creeping up the walls on brown ropes. The one with the ceiling that dipped where the room drooped down on the edges. “Why you want this ugly one?” I asked her, while she was setting her ma down on the bench that sat in front of two tall windows that overlooked the fields.
    â€œBecause,” she said. “My ma always wanted a