Free The Boy on the Porch by Sharon Creech Page B

leave?”
    â€œâ€™Night, John.”
    The next morning, Marta called John into the room where Tyler and Zizi had slept.
    â€œLook there,” she said, indicating the wall next to Zizi’s bed. Zizi had drawn a heart beside this note: It was okay here .
    â€œThat’s a compliment, right, Marta?”
    Beneath each bed was a pair of shoes.
    â€œLook at that, John. They left their old shoes behind.”
    â€œMakes me want to bust out crying. I found an old pair of Jacob’s the other day, too.”
    That evening, when Marta came in from planting her vegetable garden, she saw that John had built a shelf on one wall of their bedroom. On it were three pairs of shoes.

48

    C hildren came and children went. John and Marta built an addition on the farmhouse and added beds. The fewest children they ever had at any one time was two; the most was seven. Kids needed homes, and neither John nor Marta could say no when Mrs. Floyd called.
    At the general store, Shep Martin said he was going to have to start a whole new store just to stock jelly beans. The manager of the shoe store in a nearby town gave them a permanent discount because they bought so many pairs of shoes.
    John added shelves to the original one in their bedroom. There were now twenty-nine pairs of old shoes lined up. Before John and Marta went to sleep each night, they went down the rows of shoes and said the name of each child who had been with them. Many had acquired nicknames; all had left their marks.
    â€œJacob, Tyler, Zizi, Meggie-moo, Boyd, Sammy-salami, Shayna, Delaney, Bitsy-bo, Luke, Mike-a-like, Hunter, Laina-napalong, Mack, Shareka, Roy-boy, Harry, Jesse-messy, Karlee-darly, Nile, Lily, Oshen, Rosie-girl, Joey, Freddy, Ginny-jumper, Hank, Susanna, and Frank.”
    Each one had come with a story and each one left a story behind.
    â€œRemember when Mack fell asleep in the truck and we thought he’d run away?”
    â€œRemember when little Bitsy-bo jumped out of the tree and landed on mama goat and mama goat took off and dumped her in the pond?”
    â€œRemember when Lily sang you a song when you were sick?”
    â€œRemember when Freddy and Ginny-jumper tried to make pancakes?”
    Some of the children were there a few months, some of them a year or more. Soon after they arrived, they would notice the shelf of shoes and ask about them. Either John or Marta would tell them the story of Jacob, whose shoes were the first on the shelf.
    Nearly every child after that wanted to know the story behind each pair of shoes.
    â€œAnd those red ones, whose were those? And the sandals, whose were those?”
    And so John and Marta told their stories: they told when each child came and what they were like and how long they were there.
    Boyd, a serious nine-year-old, asked John, “And what will you say about me when I’m gone? What will my story be?”
    â€œWell, now,” John said, “I’m not sure yet. I won’t know until you’re gone.”
    Shareka, a wild-eyed, wild-haired twelve-year-old said, “Tell my story like this: Shareka came to us on a thundery day, and she didn’t trust anybody, and she fell in love with a kitten, and she didn’t want to leave, but she had to, but she’ll come back. The end.”
    Early one morning, they found Luke and Bitsy-bo on the front porch staring down the drive. Marta thought maybe they were hoping their mother would show up.
    â€œLooking for somebody?” she asked them.
    Bitsy-bo, who had green eyes and a perpetual worried brow, said, “Yep.”
    â€œYou want to say who that might be?”
    Her brother, Luke, answered. “We’re looking for that boy.”
    â€œBoy? Which boy?”
    â€œThat boy you found on your porch. The boy that rode a cow.”
    Bitsy-bo twisted a strand of hair round and round her finger. “He’ll be back.”
    â€œOh,” Marta said. “You sound so sure.”
    â€œSure