The Sweet by and By by Todd Johnson Read Free Book Online Page A

a caramel-colored pony. I don’t know where he got it, maybe I did at the time, but it seems like somebody gave it to him because they couldn’t take care of it anymore and Daddy being the preacher, people
    gave him things lots of times. He was a pretty pony, but I didn’t like to go around him because he made a snorting sound through his nostrils which sounded hateful to me. Callie on the other hand wasn’t afraid at all and was ready to ride him first thing even though she had never done it before. That’s where Mother stepped in and declared that no child of hers was getting on a strange pony that we didn’t know and so help her if Daddy let one of us, he better plan on sleeping on a church pew because the only way he would step into the house was over her body lying dead in the doorway. Daddy did not challenge her. He ran the house and made every important decision as far as I could tell, but on the rare occasion that Mother put her foot down, he understood that the battle was not worth the casualties and simply moved on. Callie did not ride the pony, and within a couple weeks the pony was living somewhere else.
    Every fall, I couldn’t wait to go back to school. It was all I thought about the whole month of August. By the time I was fourteen there was no one else left in my grade. Farm children, if they went to school at all, only stayed long enough to learn how to write their names and read a little, then went back to work for their families. Daddy had taught me to read before I ever started school, mainly because I was always curious and asking questions when I saw him studying and writing notes for his sermons. I don’t think he ever wrote out a whole sermon, if he did I never saw it, but he always made notes to help him think about what he was going to say, which is more than I can say for some preachers I have heard since. If I asked him, he would stop what he was doing and let me sit on his lap, and we would sound out words together from the Bible. I know now that he picked easy ones because there are still some Bible words I couldn’t sound out if I had to, names of places, and people and rivers. I read anything I could get my hands on, which wasn’t a lot because there wasn’t any such thing as a library. The only books I got were presents now and then and the ones our teacher, Mrs. Eloise Grimes, would let me borrow. Her
    husband got killed by lightning in a bad storm and she never married again, but she had family up in Richmond and she went to see them about twice a year, which was a lot of traveling back then. She always brought back books. I think my eyes would be better now if I hadn’t stayed up many a night squinting by a kerosene lamp. Callie only went to school because Daddy made her but had already stopped by the time she was my age. She could read as good as anybody, but she didn’t care two cents about it.
    Callie grew into as pretty a girl as ever lived. She had long light brown hair, almost blond, sometimes she braided it and other times wore it up on her head. To have spent her life on a farm, her skin was as pale creamy as a dogwood blossom, almost white. I myself had skin the color of ruddy earth, and hair to match. Some people still say I’ve got good color, I guess that means they can tell I’m alive. Callie’s skin was so unusual people talked about it at church when she was dressed up or if we went into town. Callie was looking to get married if she could find someone she would have, and there were plenty of boys that took an interest in her. She wanted her own house and a bunch of children to go with it. At the end of the summer, picky as she was, after many a picnic and Sunday afternoon visit, she had decided on who it would be, Lawrence Adams, the son of Sanford Adams the banker. Lawrence hadn’t asked her to marry him, but I could tell it was coming once he felt comfortable that she would say yes.
    Ninth grade would be my last school year according to Mrs. Grimes. She