Weeping Willow by Ruth White Read Free Book Online

grooves of the hills like lurking beasts … my first best friends, Bobby Lynn and Rosemary, and Mr. Gillespie, of course, presiding over all, laughing and cheering with us, waving his baton, flitting in and out of my dreams, both waking and sleeping.
    It was truly a magic season, but as suddenly as it had begun, it ended. The last football game was played at Black Gap. Afterward, as the crowd milled around, and the parking lot turned into a traffic jam, Rosemary, Bobby Lynn, and I slipped away to a quiet spot on the front campus. In our band uniforms we lay on our backs, looking up at the white steeple of the school against the sky. We were so close by then nothing needed to be said.
    Suddenly our thoughts were interrupted by a frightening male voice.
    “What’s yer name, girl?”
    The three of us jumped to our feet gasping as a man stepped out of the shadows. We faced the intruder.
    He was old and stooped over, using a walking stick. He had a long, white beard, and was wearing a toboggan cap over his ears, a red plaid jacket, and overalls.
    We were speechless.
    “Speak up! What’s yer name?” he repeated, and he poked me so hard in the shoulder with his stick I about fell backward, but Bobby Lynn and Rosemary caught me.
    “Ti—Tiny Lambert,” I stammered.
    “Huh!” he snorted loudly, and spit a big splat of tobacco juice on the grass. “You live up Ruby Valley with them Mullinses?”
    I nodded.
    Rosemary edged away from me. She was about to run for help.
    “What? Can’t hear your head shaking, girl!” he hollered.
    “Yes!” I spoke up. “I live up Ruby Valley with my mother, Hazel Mullins, and my stepfather, Vernon Mullins. Who are you?”
    “None of yer goddamn business!”
    That made me mad, and we stood glaring at each other for a minute. Then he turned abruptly and left us standing there.
    “Who do you reckon … ?”
    “I don’t know,” I said quickly, shivering. “Let’s get back to the others.”
    Late that night the face of the old man came back to haunt me. Oh, I knew him all right, though I was surprised I could remember. It was a face from the misty past—a face I associated with Willa, and running across a windy mountaintop, and the taste of strawberries. Grandpa Lambert.
     
    Bobby Lynn started spending every Saturday with Aunt Evie learning how to yodel. On pretty days I could hear them up there practicing outside. At lunch I joined them and we gossiped and giggled as we ate something good that Bobby Lynn had brought from her house.
    Rosemary’s birthday was on a Saturday in February and she invited me and Bobby Lynn to come to her house and spend the day and night with her. She lived about twelve miles outside of Black Gap. Then a big snow came on that very day, but Bobby Lynn’s daddy put chains on his tires and took us anyway.
    It was fun driving through the snow and seeing how pretty everything was. We were in high spirits as we climbed out of Mr. Clevinger’s car and went into Rosemary’s daddy’s store.
    Rosemary was helping out, but when we went in, her daddy excused her. She bundled up and we went out the back door of the store right on the river. Before us was a swinging bridge suspended all the way across the river—about thirty or forty yards to the opposite bank where the railroad tracks were. Beyond the tracks, nestled against the hillside, was the Laynes’ cozy white house with smoke coming from the chimney.
    “You live over there?” I cried out in amazement. “We have to go over that bridge?”
    “Sure,” Rosemary said. “Come on, I’ll show you how to walk it. It’s fun.”
    Rosemary struck off across the bridge. It was about three feet wide, with a high mesh-wire fence and a cable on each side so there was no danger of falling off.
    It was obvious Rosemary was an expert at navigating that bridge. It began to sway—tike a bed does when you walk on it. She grabbed a cable and grinned at me and Bobby Lynn from the center.
    “Come on! You have to pick up