The Lost Saints of Tennessee Read Online Free

cookies, Zeke,” Carter said with a sorrowful look, shaking his head.
    Mother stormed down the back stairs strangling a dish towel in her hands. I wanted to run but knew it would only postpone the punishment.
    â€œYou just broke a brand-new window your daddy put in last week. Last week, do you hear me?”
    She strode toward us, the wide skirt of her dress whipping against her legs. When she saw the garden, she stopped—the rows were no longer rows, and broken tomatoes spilled red goo over the ground.
    â€œYou break my window and ruin my garden? The whole family will go without vegetables for a month. I work hard so my children will have something on their plates that isn’t brown or white.”
    Violet pointed out that there were a few tomatoes left on the vines.
    â€œNot many,” Daisy said, always helpful.
    â€œGirls, hush up. I’ll deal with these two.” She pointed at the back door. “Inside. Now.”
    â€œWe’re going to get whupped, aren’t we?” Carter whispered.
    And we did, the sting of Daddy’s leather belt across our backsides easier to bear when the two of us took it together.
    My brother was different in a slippery sort of way. As a little boy, he looked normal and most of the time acted normally, if a little quiet. But things changed when we started school. Lucille Ryder taught first through eighth grade in Clayton’s one-room schoolhouse on the east side of Highway 57. Miss Ryder made you pick the switch to be hit with from the hickory tree in the yard if you got in trouble.
    On the second day of school, Carter and I sat at our desks working on the morning’s writing assignment. Violet and Daisy had stayed at home with a bad case of poison ivy. The girls got it while picking blackberries the day before. Daisy wanted to make the biggest berry pie ever and ignored her older sister’s warnings to mind the plants with the three leaves. When it was too late and Daisy picked a leaf off just such a plant because it looked pretty, she got mad and ran up to Violet, rubbing her hands across Vi’s cheeks so Daisy wouldn’t be the only one miserable.
    My brother was having trouble writing his name—it would be two more years before he could print it legibly—so I scribbled it for him at the top of the page, dotting the letters so Carter could trace over them with his pencil. Miss Ryder caught sight of this.
    â€œEzekiel Cooper, come here.”
    The last place anyone wanted to go near was Miss Ryder’s desk. She smelled of old shoes and rotting bananas. I put down my pencil and stood up. As I walked to the front of the class, the boys started chanting, “Trouble, trouble.”
    Miss Ryder grabbed my right hand. “Did you or did you not write on your brother’s assignment?”
    I nodded. She wrenched my wrist.
    â€œYes, ma’am . I did.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
    When I told her my brother was having trouble writing his name, a strange smile spread over her face. She released my hand, leaving a red welt around the wrist.
    â€œGo sit. Mr. Carter Cooper, come here.”
    My mind scrambled for a way to get Carter out of there without earning both of us a whupping. He walked slowly up to the front and we passed each other in the aisle.
    As our shoulders brushed, I whispered, “Keep your eyes down. Don’t look at her. You’ll be okay.”
    One of the older girls, Betty Streit, hissed, “Stupid, stupid,” as Carter passed her desk. Miss Ryder told him to go to the chalkboard. My heart began to beat so fast I could hear its thrumming in my ears. The urge to throw up pricked at the back of my throat.
    â€œCarter, please write your name on the board ten times. You will not be excused from class today until you finish.” She grimaced in a way that was supposed to be a smile before adding, “I’ll even give you a brand-new piece of chalk. How’s that?”
    He