Free The Storycatcher by Ann Hite Page A

wasn’t a truthful type, so why would she have told me about a baby?
    “I got this for you, ma’am. Made it from some nice maple a man letme have for pay. It took me two weeks of working to get this done.” He shoved something smooth and shiny at me. “I worked for a man who made real nice furniture. He fed me and showed me how to make this. Then he put me on a train in Macon, and I rode it to Savannah. He was a special white man. They don’t come around too often.”
    It was a little box—square, shiny, and perfect in every way.
    “I figured anybody could use a nice trinket box. See, I’m useful.”
    Them tears I’d held in way too long came out of nowhere. “This is beautiful. I don’t reckon no one has ever gave me something so pretty.” I swiped at the tears as he looked off, pretending not to see. “You like crab?” I asked.
    “I ain’t never had none.”
    I hooted. “Lordy Jesus! You call yourself a Tine? Tines have crab in their blood, boy. You’ll like mine. I’ve been told I’m the best cook in these parts.” Maybe Willie Tine did one thing right. Maybe he sent that boy ’cause he knew how bad we needed each other. I touched his shoulder. “You come on home with me. I’ll teach you all I know. Is anyone looking for you?”
    “No, ma’am. I don’t reckon a soul will come.”
    I studied the shiny box in my hand. What kind of mama lets a boy like this slip away? “I can use help. I be your aunt that never married. You be my boy now.”
    “Pardon, ma’am. I’m not a boy. What you do for a living here?” He looked around at the palmettos and tall oaks. The moss hanging out of the trees, waving wild-like in the wind. The rows of stones marking family after family of folks that lived on the island for longer than most could remember.
    “I make baskets. I used to work here on the island when I was real young, but now I work every summer on the Ridge for a white family my mama worked for. It be real rare any of us work off the island unless we fishing. And that’s what I hope I’m going to do. I just got me a boat. You think you could be a fisherman?”
    He grinned big.
    “I got me a shrimp boat by the name of Sweet Jesse. We both going to learn us how to fish. It’s in our blood. What you say to that?”
    “Yes, ma’am. I reckon I can learn real fast.”
    I had no doubt that Will Tine could be anything he set out to be. And there it was. Sometimes a loss be so big a soul felt like she was going to die, and then along came something good to take her home in the right direction again.

PART TWO
The Bottle Tree

    June 1939
    “A old, dead cedar tree be best. The branches are cleaned smooth. Bottles of all kinds are slid on. Get you some red, yellow, blue, and brown ones. Mr. Sun shines through the glass and draws them haints into the pretty colors, trapping them before they know what happened.”
    —Amanda Parker

Shelly Parker

    T HE SUMMER FAITH TOOK HERSELF down the mountain without telling no one—you’d have thought she escaped from jail—the whole house was in a tither. Now, it was the plain truth that I didn’t like the girl, but she’d been acting strange, odd—that was a new word I read in one of her magazines. Even Amanda noticed how she fretted whenever Pastor and Mrs. Dobbins came in the room. It was catching, ’cause then I started watching them, especially Pastor, too. Anyway, Faith had gone against Pastor and Mrs. Dobbins. She wasn’t even real smart about it. Didn’t try to hide a thing. She went to the mercantile to buy thread for that silly quilt she was working on with my great-grandmama’s sewing basket that she stole and flashed in front of Nada’s nose every chance she could. Four years of that mess, and still Nada hadn’t brought it up to Mrs. Dobbins, like the basket just be worthless. And Nada turning her head stuck right in my ribs and twisted like a knife. Anyway, “unchaperoned”was the word Pastor kept shouting. He shouted and shouted, but Faith