Free Whistling Past the Graveyard by Susan Crandall Page A

fight at all. I had to do better, be faster, smarter. Meaner.
Mamie had smacked me before, and I’d been knocked down in a fight on the playground, but I’d never been jerked around and dragged like I wasn’t even a person at all. I wondered if Wallace treated Eula like this all the time. Maybe she had tried to fight once—Wallace was so big, and poor Eula wasn’t more than skin on bones, she couldn’t beat him, or even get away most likely.
“Eula?” Her eyes were like glass. I’d never seen a grown-up woman so helpless and scared. She’d just switched off, like she wasn’t even on the inside of herself anymore.
The sound of the hounds yippin’ and howlin’ was close now, maybe even in the yard. I jumped up and looked out the little window, but couldn’t see nothin’ but trees and a couple of squirrels scared up ’em by all the barking.
Kneeling back in front of Eula, I asked, “Who’s comin’ with the dogs?”
Her eyes stayed empty.
“Eula?” I touched her cheek and turned her to face me. There was a muddy place where her tears had mixed with the dirt from when she’d been knocked to the ground. “Who’s comin’ with the dogs?”
I heard Wallace’s grumbly voice mixed in with the yappin’ of the dogs. But I couldn’t hear any other person.
“Eula!” I said, more of a sharp hiss than a yell. I couldn’t yell until I knew who was outside.
She blinked. Then her eyes shifted and looked at me.
“Who is it? Who come with the dogs?”
She swallowed hard, like there was something blocking her throat. “Prob’ly Shorty. He come by most days.”
“He huntin’?” Which would mean he had a gun he could use to fend off Wallace once he got to rescuin’ us.
“He don’t hunt, not no more. Not for years. Just got the one arm.”
Dang, most likely no gun, then. I chewed my cheek for a second. “He white or colored?”
Her brow wrinkled and she looked at me like I’d gone crazy. “Why would he get dragged behind a car and had his arm tore off if he was white?”
My stomach went sour and I tried not to think about someone’s arm being tore right from its socket like that. It seemed there wasn’t no limit to the meanness of some people. I felt sorry for that man, but even sorrier for me and James and Eula. A man like that wasn’t gonna be interested in making Wallace mad by rescuin’ white children.’Sides, with only one arm and no gun, he wouldn’t have a chance against the bear.
I flopped backward and looked at the plank-board ceiling. If only Eula hadn’t taken James. Then Wallace would be happy to take me out to the highway and never see my white face again; he wouldn’t be so scared of Shorty findin’ out I was here and blabbing it all over. Or even if James had been a colored baby.
A while passed before the dogs seemed to settle down.Then I heard one of them snufflin’ and rubbing the underside of the floor. There wasn’t any latticework to keep animals from getting underneath the house. If only dogs could save a person—they don’t care if you’re white or colored.
I finally sat up and made myself ask,“What did Wallace mean when he said you know what’s got to be done?”
Eula looked like she’d switched mostly back on. “He calm down now. Everythin’ goin’ be all right. You see. Just goin’ take some time.” She nodded and breathed an “Uh-huh.” Then a few seconds later, she whispered, “We be fine.”
She crawled over to James. Her gentle hands smoothed his blanket as her hunched shoulders curved over that baby. I felt like I’d turned invisible and started to wonder if she was going away in her head again.
“Eula?”
She started humming, soft and low and oh so sweet. Her head tilted sideways and her eyes stayed on James. It was like she thought she could make the rest of the world go away by just ignoring it.
And right that minute I understood; there was something broke deep inside Eula. Like maybe she hadn’t been able to feel right in her world the same way I