Goldeline by Jimmy Cajoleas (i read books txt) 📕

and let me feed y’all. ’Cause I know y’all are hungry. I been knowing that for about two weeks now. I got plans. Now come on up and stop making me wait on my own dinner.”

“I think we should go,” says Tommy. “Don’t you?”

My first thought is Of course we shouldn’t. Don’t you know what happens to hungry kids who go into strange houses?

But the singing is so loud, so sweet. It’s right inside my ears, I can almost taste it. It reminds me so much of Momma, like she’s right here with me, something that isn’t just me remembering. I feel the tug of the invisible string, the desire to go. I want to go up to her house. I have to.

“Please?” says Tommy.

“I don’t know.”

“Please, Goldeline? Please?”

I know her song, Momma’s cooking song. The song means it can’t be bad. The song means it has to be a good thing. Besides, I’m so hungry.

“Let’s eat,” I say.

“Are you sure?” says Tommy.

“Of course,” I lie.

I test the rope ladder with my foot and it’s sturdy. I haul myself up and through the floor into the tree house.

The house is crammed full of furniture, clothes, knickknacks. I’ve never seen so much stuff piled up anywhere, not to mention in one single house. There’s a giant wood table with heaping plates full of cornbread and roast duck and turnip greens and mashed potatoes and beans and rice and gravy for days. The table has three chairs around it, just for us, carved with symbols of owls and stars and wolves. A blue fur hangs on the wall next to a carving of an old man holding a skull. There’s a woodstove and a kettle fire and shelves and shelves of books, more books than I’ve ever seen in my life, thick books and skinny books and books with pages hanging out of the bindings. A giant spoon and fork are nailed to the walls like they were paintings, jars full of roots and vegetables and spices hang from the ceiling, a wall of plates and pans and pots and a row of cooking knives hanging like icicles, an opossum mounted with its fangs poking out. A massive clock shaped like a church tower leans a little toward us as if it could topple over and smash everything at any minute. It’s just the kind of home I’ve always wanted, wild and full of wonders.

Moving all through the chaos is the fattest lady I’ve ever seen in my life. She’s in a red dress down to the floor and she seems to glide like a giant floating strawberry. She has big red cheeks and the biggest belly and she’s singing that song. It’s my momma’s song and it’s my song and it comes straight from her heart, she doesn’t even have to sing it. Her blue eyes sparkle, her gray hair is all bunned up on her head, her hands are big and wide and in pretty white gloves. I want her to hold me. I want to lay my head on her chest and sleep for days.

Already I love her. I don’t know how, but I do. I feel like I’ve known her my whole life and longer.

“Are you my grandma?” I ask, and I don’t even mean to.

“No, child. I’m nobody’s grandma. But you can call me Bobba.”

“Bobba’s kind of a grandma name,” says Tommy.

I’m so enchanted by the house I didn’t even hear him come up behind me. It’s the most beautiful house I’ve ever seen. There’s a stuffed raccoon hanging off the wall and when I touch its fur it bristles.

Bobba smiles at Tommy. She’s still got all her teeth.

“Now sit on down,” she says. “Calling me grandma. Lay all y’all’s stuff down, now, we are fixing to eat. Set your heavy bag down, right there, right by your chair.”

It seems like a miracle, but there’s an empty spot in the house, just big enough for my pack. I feel my shoulder ache from it, where it’s worn me down red and raw. I lay the pack down, with everything me and Tommy got in the world in it, Zeb’s money, his momma’s cloak. I set it right down and all of a sudden feel lighter, freer, the whole weight of what we’ve done and what’s been done to us and where we have to go next and the Preacher and Gruff and Momma, all of it gone, even if it’s just for a moment.

“Don’t that feel good?” says Bobba. “Don’t it feel good to lay your troubles down?”

It does. It feels wonderful, like coming home. I feel freer than I’ve felt since Momma died, since before I took off to the woods with Gruff. I haven’t felt so good in ages.

“You two look like the Evil One crawled up and bit you. Seen winter rabbits look less starved than y’all two. Sad days, children running around, needing old Bobba to cook for them just so they don’t starve to death. Heaven almighty, bad times afoot, good Lord.”

“We are pretty hungry,” says Tommy.

“Then eat, sweetheart. Been cooking all day for y’all.”

“How did you know we were coming?” I say.

“Oh, old Bobba has her ways. Shush up and eat now. We’ll talk about all that later.”

“Are you magic?” says Tommy.

Bobba smiles a little smile and holds a fat gloved finger to her lips.

It’s okay. I already knew she was anyhow. Something weird in my blood that’s been there since always, something that was Momma’s—that’s what told me. That’s how I knew Bobba was magic.

We eat. The food never seems to run out, and it’s been so long since we’ve had a real meal. I eat and eat and somehow I’m not even full yet, not close, not even after four helpings of mashed potatoes and gravy, which is my favorite. I eat until my plates are stacked and my stomach is so filled up the food just sits in my mouth, I can barely even swallow it. I’ve never