Unraveled Read Online Free Page A

than usual when they started clearing the creek bottoms, but the rising water ran ’em out in numbers the old folks were talking about up at the store.
    One week before, someone ran over a big old timber rattler close to the house. Uncle Cody called us down to see it. He cut its head off, then gave the tail a shake so we’d know what a rattler sounded like. It had thirteen rattles and a button, and I hoped I’d never run across one without having a hoe close by.
    Pepper jogged through the trees and I had to hurry to keep up. Minutes later we came out in an open pasture. Hot as it was, we still loped through the deep grass until we came to the woods bordering the branch.
    The clear spring water of Center Springs Branch ran across both sand and gravel bars. Grandpa said the Indians used to come out of the Oklahoma Territory and camp there before he was born. The sites were somewhere nearby and the Indians traded with the white settlers who started our community. We were always finding arrowheads and old rusty pieces of metal, and once I found a spear point that saved my life.
    Uncle Cody and Grandpa liked to hunt quail and squirrels along the branch, too. I’d been down there often enough to know the land, and where the big old red oak tree Pepper was headed for had fallen across the branch. The last time we hunted down there, Uncle Cody and I used the foot log to cross to the other side.
    That was the day we sat on that log and he told me some things about my mama that I’d never heard. She and Daddy died in a car wreck right before I came to live with Grandpa and Miss Becky, and there was a lot I didn’t know.
    ***
    Uncle Cody pointed toward the deep branch. “See that foot log there?”
    The steep bank fell off to the trickle of water far below.
    â€œIt’s a long way down.”
    â€œYep. That tree’s been there before you was even thought of. I crossed it with your mama and daddy the year before you were born, on the way to catch some crappie out of the creek. I’ve always been a little skittish over footlogs, especially them that are so far above the water, but your daddy walked across like it was a sidewalk. I don’t believe I ever saw him afraid of anything.
    â€œThat’s when your mama surprised me. She was in a dress, but she took off her shoes and went barefoot across right behind him. I was shocked to see her do that and I asked her, ‘When did you learn that ?’ She whispered something to your daddy and they laughed, arms around each other on the far side. She said ‘You’d be surprised at what I can do.’”
    Uncle Cody shook his head and grinned. “Until then, it hadn’t occurred to me that the young girls I knew would someday grow up to be mothers, and she looked completely different to me all of a sudden.”
    ***
    At that moment, thinking about what Uncle Cody had told me, I had something happen that I’d never experienced. I saw Mama standing there in a blue print dress, clear as day and as solid as the woods around us. She was twisting her wedding ring like she did when she was thinking or worried. She shook her head and watched over her shoulder toward the dam. Then she faded away and there was nothing left but the woods.
    Every hair on my body stood up and I knew what Miss Becky called the Poisoned Gift was working again, but it had never actually brought ghosts in front of me. Uncle Cody saw one once, and I wished he was there beside me right then. My heart skipped a beat and I could feel my jaw moving with me trying to talk but nothing coming out but the sounds I make when I have an asthma attack.
    â€œWhat are you doing?”
    Pepper’s voice jolted me back from wherever I’d been and I realized for only the second time in my that life I’d experienced the Gift while I was awake.
    It scared the pee-waddlin’ out of me.
    I finally snapped back to Pepper. “I just saw Mama.”
    She knew I