Free Sweeping Up Glass by Carolyn Wall Page A

roaring along under the streetlamps. Through the windscreen I could see Alton Phelps’ face, and I guessed that was his brother, James Arnold, with him. They fishtailed on the ice, and by the time they opened their doors and fell out, I was miserable over not having run for my life.
    Too late, I dodged.
    But Alton was already reaching for my arm, and he slammed me up against the truck. “All right, girlie,” he said, sounding like his tongue was too big for his mouth. “You go on and leave us alone with Ida Mae now. We’ll fetch up with you when it’s time.”
    I wrenched free, cut between buildings, and set off across the field. Before long, the stumpy ice slowed me down, but at least I could no longer see, or be seen from, Main Street, the dark hotel, or the bakery with its kitchen light on. It was bitterly cold. After a while, my boots filled with snow, and the wind whipped so fierce that it froze my ears. They hurt clear to the middle of my head, and I clapped my hands over them, but my fingers already ached like rows of bad teeth. I was not going back to Ruse’s for my scarf and mittens. Instead I would find Pap, and when I did I’d tell him what happened.
    But I could not remember which was the turnoff to Lansing. After a while, I began to cry with the cold. The cold wind howled. I longed for the trousers I’d given up in the fight. Worse, I could no longer feel my feet, and before long fell into a deep snowbank. Whimpering for Pap, I spotted faint light far away, and I cut through a field, struggling over the frozen stalks of last summer’s corn, and sinking into blown drifts.
    Finally I just lay there and closed my eyes. If I was going to die here, I hoped Pap would find me and be sorry he’d ever brought Ida home. But there were three sets of lights, and one of them not too far off. I hobbled along, hearing dogs bark and fearful of being eaten alive. It was likely dogs would drag my bones off for burying, and then nobody would know how I’d suffered at all. Maybe they’d have an all-out search with great weeping when they found me. If that happened, I hoped it was not Big Ruse who found my frozen body. On the other hand, if he did, maybe he’dremember what a fool he acted on the night of Ida’s birthday, and be mortally sorry.
    On my knees, I slid down an embankment and across a creek where the ice was jagged but did not break under me. Then I made my way across a yard and knocked on the first door I came to. Mrs. Nailhow opened it.
    I fell into her arms. Then Pap was there, the cat’s blood on his shirt, and he carried me to her sofa and laid me down. Mrs. Nailhow took off my boots and stripped away my torn stockings. My legs were clotted with blood, and burned like fire. My hair stuck out in frozen spikes and Pap cautioned her not to touch it, for fear of it breaking off. She set to rubbing my feet, and several of the Nailhow children rubbed, too, until I cried out with the pain, and I stumbled to the kitchen to where Pap sat on the floor beside the poor mewling cat.
    Poor thing, she was worse off than I. Pap had muzzled her and bound her paws so that she could not claw him. With one hand he kneaded her swollen belly, and with two fingers of the other he probed inside her.
    “How one cat can have so many ass-backward kits—” he said, looking at me, but not seeing. He was thinking about Mrs. Higgins’ innards. He’d rescued three kittens already. If I’d been the fourth he’d have seen me better, and bandaged my hurts. He laid the kittens beside their mother.
    Suddenly I was embarrassed by my bare and wounded legs, and I pulled my knees up under my skirt so Pap could not see the mess I was.
    “I count two more,” he said. “Gotta take ’em slow, or she’ll bleed to death.”
    I suspected Pap hadn’t remembered Ida’s birthday dinner at all, and I was not going to mention it. He’d hear about that soonenough. I wondered if, by now, Mrs. Ruse had come out of her kitchen and beaten Ida to