This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger Read Free Book Online

again. He hit hard on “the three r ’s” that were always stressed at Lincoln School—responsibility, respect, and reward.
    “Pay attention to the first two, and the last will come your way,” he said.
    We cleaned ourselves up and got ready for work. I didn’t see Albert anywhere, or Volz, and that made me a little nervous. I hoped nothing had happened to them because of their kindness the night before. At Lincoln School, nothing good seemed to come from kindness. Ralph, Bledsoe’s son, was waiting with a pickup, and Mose and I piled onto the truck bed along with all the other boys who’d drawn duty in the hayfields.
    It was hard work, but it wasn’t long that day. On Saturdays, in spring and summer, we were required to put in only half a day for a farmer. This was because we were expected to attend the baseball games our school team played in the afternoon. Hector Bledsoe fed us a lunch of dry bread and thin, tasteless cheese, then drove us back to Lincoln School himself. As we jumped from the pickup bed, he called to us, “Rest up this weekend, boys. Monday’s supposed to be a scorcher.” I thought he laughed gleefully but that could have been my imagination.
    Some of the boys, like Mose, had to hurry off because they werescheduled to play. The rest of us went back to the dormitories. A few minutes before the game was to start, Mr. Greene marched us down to the field. We saw the girls coming from their dormitories, led by Lavinia Stratton, the music teacher and head girls’ adviser. Miss Stratton was a spinster of indeterminate age. She was tall, with elongated features—long legs and arms, and her face, too, which was also very plain and always worried-looking. Her hands were slender, and her fingers, like everything else about her, were long and delicate. When she played the piano, she closed her eyes, and her fingers became things with a mind of their. Sometimes her music was so lovely it lifted me out of my life at Lincoln School and took me for a little while somewhere else, somewhere happy. In those wonderful moments, I thought the world was beautiful and she was beautiful, too. When she stopped playing, the worry came back into her face and she was plain again, and my life went right back to being the uphill slog it had always been.
    We sat on wooden bleachers. Some of the town folks were there, mostly to watch Mose pitch. In the same way that Miss Stratton’s fingers on a keyboard could create something lovely, Mose, when he stood on the mound and hurled that horsehide, offered a beauty every bit as moving. That day we were playing a VFW-sponsored team from Luverne. The guys were already on the field, warming up. I looked for Albert, who was not athletic in the least and almost always sat on the bench. I didn’t see him anywhere, and I began to worry. I spotted Mrs. Frost and Emmy sitting at the far end of the bleachers. They usually came to the games and cheered us on. When Mr. Greene was busy talking to Miss Stratton, I slipped away and found a seat beside Emmy.
    “Hi, Odie,” she with a bright smile.
    “Well, good afternoon, Odie,” Mrs. Frost said. “It’s good to see you. I was afraid Mrs. Brickman might lock you up in the quiet room forever.”
    “Just for the night,” I said. “But no supper.”
    Mrs. Frost went livid. “I’m going to speak to that woman.”
    “That’s okay,” I said. “Albert and Mr. Volz managed to slip some food to Mose and me. Have you seen them?”
    “Isn’t Albert out there?” She scanned the ball field, then looked back at me. “You haven’t seen him?”
    “Not since last night. And not Mr. Volz either.”
    “Is it possible they’re just working on some carpentry project together?”
    “Maybe,” I said, thinking the project, if that was what had taken them away, was more likely Volz’s still. I hoped it was that rather than some of the darker possibilities the Black Witch was capable of conjuring.
    Then I saw Volz making his way among the