The Adventures of Flash Jackson Read Online Free

him up in his shed without getting her front teeth kicked out was incredible. He was that temperamental. To tell you the truth, it made me a little jealous. But, as low as I was, I took it all in stride.
    â€œMa,” I said. “I don’t feel so good.”
    She reached down and felt my forehead.
    â€œYou have a fever,” she said.
    â€œI’m sorry for every rotten thing I’ve ever done and said.”
    â€œOh, my, you are sick. I better go for your grandmother,” she said.
    â€œI’ve been a lousy daughter,” I said.
    â€œI’ll go get her right away.”
    I must have been as delirious as a drunk on the Fourth of July to say things like that. And I didn’t even flinch when she said she was going for the old bag. Normally that news was enough to send me off into the trees until the coast was clear again. Call me crazy, but I had an aversion to old ladies whose faces are hairier than some men’s, even if she was my own flesh and blood. Besides, I could barely understood a word my grandmother said, so there wasn’t much point in me talking to her. She didn’t have any teeth left, and she spoke half in some weird kind of German and half in English. But at that moment I didn’t care how scary or ugly she was, because I knew she could make me better. She always did.
    â€œI’ll wear a dress every day from now on if you want me to. I’ll stop climbing trees. I’ll be good,” I said.
    â€œYou’re a good girl, Haley,” said Mother. “You’re not that bad. You’re just willful .”
    â€œI don’t wanna have a broken leg anymore,” I said. “It hurts. I hate it.”
    Mother brought me a glass of water and tried to give me another pill, but I didn’t want it. I was confused enough already, what with having lost six or so hours of the day. Even though everything on me hurt now, I wanted to feel it. I wanted to let the fever burn me clean.
    â€œI’ll be back in a couple of hours or so,” she said. “It’ll take her that long to get her things together.”
    â€œCan’t we just have a regular doctor for once?” I mumbled.
    But I didn’t really mean it. That was just the “willful” me talking, the me that didn’t care who thought ill and who didn’t. I knew that when it came right down to it, there was nobody in the world as good at curing illness as my mother’s mother, the old lady who everybody thought was a witch, even in this day and age.
    Here’s the story about my old Grandma. She was a Mennonite, which is a kind of religion, in case you hadn’t heard. People tend to get Mennonites confused with the Amish, which I guess is understandable, considering they’re both Anabaptists. The Amish are a lot more old-fashioned, though. Somewhere back in time, the Amish and the Mennonites split off from each other—I don’t know exactly when, history not being one of my strong points. It seems some folks felt they weren’t being hard enough on themselves, so they stuck with the horses and buggies, and got rid of all the electricity, et cetera. I guess they decided that would bring them closer to God. Only thing I’ve never been able to figure out is, when the Amish separated from the rest of us, electricity hadn’t been invented yet, and everybody was riding in horses and buggies, because there weren’t any cars and wouldn’t be for another couple of centuries. Kind of makes you wonder that maybe if the whole thing happened today folks’d be saying, We’re sticking with our old-fashioned VCRs and cassette tapes—none of those newfangled CDs for us! Anyway, we have the same beginnings, but our kind of Mennonites have less restrictions than the Amish do. We can ridein cars if we feel like it, or have electricity, or any dang old thing we want.
    I don’t go to church anymore, and never got much out of it when I did,