Katie's Dream Read Online Free

ever’thin’ already, maybe we wouldn’t have nothin’ to talk to him about, nor look forward to,” he said.
    And I marveled. At God and at Franky.
    â€œAs high as the heavens are above the earth,” Samuel quoted. “So are his thoughts above our thoughts and his ways above our ways.”
    â€œAin’t that somethin’?” Franky added. “I guess that means there’s a lot we can’t figger out.”
    Why didn’t Franky’s teacher or his father or his brothers see what a marvel he was? All they seemed to notice was that the poor kid couldn’t read and kept to himself a lot. We knew his eyes were fine, so they took him for an oddity, or worse, an idiot.
    â€œWhat’s that mean, ’bout his thoughts above our thoughts?” Rorey suddenly asked, lifting her head. She and Sarah were alike in that. They always heard, even if it didn’t look like they were listening.
    â€œIt means God knows better than we do,” Samuel explained.
    â€œOh.” Rorey turned her attention back to Sarah and the dolls. “I knew that already.”
    The rest of us grew quiet, and my eyes rested on Franky. He liked to sit and think more than anybody I knew, adult or child. He was obviously bright, able to quote the preacher’s sermons or most anything else he heard. Young as he was, he’d loved it when I read Pilgrim’s Progress to him over the winter, and I knew he understood it betterthan many grown-ups because of the things he had to say. How could anyone consider him slow, though he still struggled and continued to fail at trying to decipher even the simplest written word?
    â€œHe doesn’t seem to be learning anything,” the schoolteacher had complained to me once. “Doesn’t even know an A from one day to the next. I just don’t know that there’s much hope for him.”
    We’d tried him out at threading needles and sighting birds in the trees. He could see just fine. But he still couldn’t read his own name.
    So maybe there was no hope for him in that one-room schoolhouse with kids of every grade level right there to watch and laugh as he tried so hard but continued to fail. Lizbeth and I were already planning to keep him at home when the next school term started and do the best we could with him ourselves. It had been the teacher’s suggestion. And Lizbeth, who wanted to be a teacher herself, was looking forward to it, though I wasn’t sure how she could concentrate on that and keep up with her own studies.
    â€œMommy, Bessie wants a lullaby.” Sarah looked hopefully at me in the moonlight, calling my thoughts back to the bumpy truck ride. “Please, please, Mommy, sing her the sleepy song.”
    I squeezed Samuel’s hand. The sleepy song. I’d made it up a few months back when trying to soothe baby Emma Grace through a bad cold; I hadn’t wanted to leave it all on Lizbeth when she was studying for a recitation. George and Samuel had been planting then, putting in long hours, and I’d had most of the children, particularly the younger ones, with me almost every evening.
    I took a deep breath, and Sarah brought her dolly closer to me. Sarah was the sleepy one, I knew that. Bessie only needed a lullaby when Sarah was feeling tired but too big to admit it. I patted my little girl’s hair. My little angel. Shenever seemed to mind how much attention I gave to the Hammond children. She’d understood it all along.
    â€œSing, Mommy,” she whispered.
    I touched her hair again, and she and her dolly settled across my lap.
    Sleep, baby, sleep, baby, close your little eyes.
Sleep, baby, sleep, baby, quiet those cries . . .
    I sang the whole song, marveling at how it stuck in my memory and in Sarah’s fancy. It was nothing special, though Emmie Grace had liked it too.
    Rorey snuggled closer against my leg. Both girls were very still. We turned the corner past the