Blossom Promise Read Online Free Page A

ground.
    “You’re never going to see more water than this in your whole life, Mud. The valley’s more water now than it is land.”
    Pap’s old eyes shone. From the time he was a boy, Pap had had a fascination with water. He’d almost drowned four times before he reached the age of ten.
    He had just finished telling Mud about the first time—he was one year old and he fell into the toilet which his family had just gotten installed. It was the first indoor toilet in the history of the Blossom family, so naturally it was a fascinating thing to all of them.
    If his mother hadn’t heard the splash and come in saying, “Alec, if you’re playing in the toilet again, I’m going to wear you out,” well, he wouldn’t be here today.
    Now, as he and Mud started around the flooded pasture, he began telling about his second near-drowning. Mud broke away to take a shortcut. He ran through the shallow water, his long legs glistening in the sunlight.
    Pap kept walking slowly, taking the long way around, the way that favored bad knees.
    “Mud, I had a brother Jess that was a lot like Junior,” Pap said, even though Mud was too far away to hear him now. “Jess would make things, only he wouldn’t test them himself the way Junior does. He had better sense. He’d get us, his little brothers, to test them. I was the water man. If it had anything to do with water, then Jess would offer it to me.”
    Mud ran back. He leaped nimbly over a fallen tree. Pap climbed over, holding on with both hands.
    He sat for a moment on the wet wood, giving his knees a rest.
    “One time it was floating shoes. Jess swore I could walk clear across the pond and not even get wet if I’d put them on.”
    Mud circled back around the clearing with his nose to the ground, on the scent of something. Pap got up slowly and started walking.
    “I put up a little struggle, but I ended up letting him tie the fool things on my feet. They was inner-tubes folded in half with my feet tied in the middle.
    “Well, I went out on the dock where we fished. The floating shoes was big clumsy things, but I knew they’d float because they were blowed up tight.”
    Mud paused at the foot of a large tree. He looked up intently into the dripping branches. His look sharpened. His ears flopped back. In a bound he put his paws on the trunk and let out a piercing bark.
    “What is it Mud? Possum?”
    That was Mud’s attack word. Whenever Pap used it—whether he was pointing to a hole in the ground with his boot or a cat in a tree, Mud knew what was expected of him.
    Now he began leaping excitedly up the trunk of the tree. His high, shrill barks rang through the afternoon air, above the roar of the creek.
    Pap looked up the tree. “Well, it is a possum for once, Mud.”
    Pap watched the possum. It was a miserable ball of wet fur curled in the shelter of a forked limb.
    “He probably got flooded out of his home. We won’t give him any more misery than he’s already got. Let’s let him be, Mud.”
    Mud did not obey immediately. Pap had to say “Let him be” one more time before it had the desired effect.
    Mud got down reluctantly. “Good dog,” Pap said. As they started around the field, side by side now, Pap took up his story.
    “Well, Mud, I went out there on the dock, waddling like a duck. I was just going to take a few steps with my brothers holding me, but soon as I got my feet on the water, they let go.”
    The memory caused Pap to pause for a moment, drawn back in time. He put out his arms the way he had that July Sunday, then he shook his head.
    “Oh, them shoes floated all right, Mud. Jess was right about that. They floated. Only I didn’t. I was turned upside down in two seconds flat.
    “My brothers never were ones to do the smart thing. They went running to the house, yelling ‘Mama, Alec’s drowning!’ If they knowed I was drowning—which I was—why didn’t they jump in?
    “I couldn’t hear none of this. I was too busy holding my breath. Well, my