Goldeline by Jimmy Cajoleas (i read books txt) 📕

churchyard. But I don’t like to think of Momma in a pit somewhere. I like to think of her as smoke, that she’s in the air above us, sung out like a song.

That’s how I like to think of it, sure. But if the Preacher catches me, will he burn me too? Will Gruff even know where to bring me flowers?

Me and Tommy walk for hours, till way after the sun has arced and headed on its way down to the dirt. Tommy’s dragging. Both of us are tired, both of us hungry and thirsty. I got to think about hunting us some food somehow, catching some rabbits maybe. Something. I don’t know how. It’s not like we have time for me to stop and build a trap.

We come to the edge of a clearing and there’s these two cardinals on a branch together, just sitting there, red as fall leaves.

“Hello there,” I whisper. “I been seeing a lot of you guys lately.”

That’s the sort of thing Momma used to say to birds, or really any kind of little creature. She’d face a squirrel on a branch and ask him what’s what and he would tilt his head and chatter at her and she’d laugh and laugh. I’d ask her what the squirrel said and Momma would say, “Nothing for your ears, Goldy.”

“But I want to know!” I’d say.

“Then listen,” she’d say.

All I could ever hear were chirps and whistles, same as with the cardinals. It’s pretty enough but it isn’t words. It isn’t stories. They tilt their necks and swivel their heads and fluff their feathers and mum up. It’s like staring at pages of print before I could ever read a word. I used to just open a book and make up what was inside. Every book was about baby pigs who find a lucky mushroom.

“Why are you always talking to everything?” says Tommy. “If it’s not a bird it’s a bush or a flower. Like you got something wrong in your noggin.”

“It’s grown-folks stuff, not for kids. I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

“Remember this kid right here saved your life two nights ago. This kid’s only a year or two younger than you.”

“Then it’s girl stuff.”

“Girl stuff is talking to birds?”

Why can’t I ever understand things like my momma could? Maybe she was faking it. Making it up, like what I used to do with the books. That’s a thought.

I look one of the cardinals dead in the eye and he winks at me. Then all of them take off into the air.

“That was weird,” says Tommy.

“You think?”

“You’re always such a . . .”

“Such a what?”

“Such a jerk! I mean it.”

“Hush.”

“I will not hush.”

I clap my hand over his mouth. “You hear that?”

It was a voice, a rich, deep, chocolaty voice. A lady’s voice, singing.

Tommy pulls my hand from his mouth. “Hear what? But wow, do you smell that?”

I do. It smells like hot cornbread. It smells like roast lamb and baked potatoes. It smells like the whole window of a pie shop. It smells like a rich kid’s house on Christmas, the smell that would waft through the windows and catch me like a trap and send me home hungry every holiday in Templeton. It smells like a whole world of delicious, and it’s coming from the clearing right up ahead of us.

“Careful,” I say. “Could be anybody out there waiting for us.”

“I don’t care who they are,” says Tommy, “so long as they got cornbread.”

He runs off through the trees, and I follow him hollering.

We hit the clearing and the sun blasts us so strong I have to squint my eyes. The field erupts with purple and yellow wildflowers, bright as candy. It stretches almost two hundred feet all around and is stuffed with the sweetest smells, honeysuckle and better. Butterflies blink and twitter around me like happy thoughts. The grass under my feet is the softest I’ve ever felt. Everything in this place is alive. The flowers seem to turn their heads and stare at us.

“Tommy?”

He’s laughing, running toward the smell. But when he sees where it comes from he stops.

At the edge of the clearing, right before it fades into forest again, is a house. A big blue thing sat eight feet up in a tree that comes down through the floor like a big fat chicken leg. It doesn’t look like a tree house though. It looks like a real house, with a roof and a chimney. It’s like somebody took a house off a street somewhere and stuck it in this tree. I’ve never seen anything like it. The house leans down toward us like it’s trying to hear what we’re saying. It’s got one big window facing us like a great eyeball, but the curtains are drawn and I can’t see inside.

“I’m scared,” I say.

“But it smells so good,” says Tommy. “And I’m so hungry.”

I feel the tug in me, the tiny invisible string attached to my insides, pulling me forward. The sweet singing louder and louder in my ears.

“I know that song,” I say.

“What song?” says Tommy.

“It’s a song Momma used to sing me. It’s her cooking song.”

“Goldeline,” says Tommy, “there isn’t any song.”

“Of course there is. It’s all over the place,” I say, pointing to my head. “It’s right here in my ears.”

“Y’all just gonna stand there yapping or you gonna come up to my house?” The voice is a lady’s voice, thick and rich as gravy, like a fat grandma voice. It sounds old and warm as a family quilt.

Me and Tommy look at each other.

“Y’all late,” says the voice. “Dinner’s been ready for a long while now. Y’all coming up or not?”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” says Tommy. “But we don’t know how to get up there. To your house.”

“Try the ladder,” says the voice.

A rope ladder hangs down from an open trapdoor in the house’s floor. I don’t know how we both missed it before.

“Bunch of hungry kids I cooked for,” says the voice. “Now come on up the ladder