Free Francie by Karen English

while she filled me and Prez in on everything. She leaned back and squinted her eyes. “Let me tell you. That baby’s going to be something, being born between the two lights like she was.” Daybreak and sunrise, she meant.
    Granny believed a host of superstitions. Mama hated superstition, so I had a little guilty thrill sitting there listening to her. “Betcha she ain’t gonna have no problem making it to her second birthday You watch.”
    I hoped Granny would get started telling me some stories about haints and ghosts. She slept with a fork under her pillow, and when the “witches rode her,” she slept with a sifter under her bed, so they’d have to go through every hole before they could bother her. I wanted to hear the story about her waking up to see a haint sitting right on the foot of her bed watching her sleep. That gave me nightmares the first time she told me.
    â€œThat’s pure ignorance,” Mama always said when I asked her about such. “Just some old stuff from slavery times.” I waited, but Granny wasn’t up to her stories this morning. She was so tired she started to doze right there over her tea.

Scooter Pie … at Last!
    After Granny left, Prez went down to Perry’s to see if he wanted to go fishing, and I wrote a short letter to Uncle June, put a stamp on it, and left it in our mailbox. Then I walked over to Miss Beach’s, then to Green’s to get Mama’s coffee and me and Prez Scooter Pies. Mama always bought Chase & Sanborn. I put the can of coffee and the Scooter Pies on the counter, but no one was around, not even Vell. Finally, he came shuffling out of the storeroom, carrying a box of canned goods.
    â€œWhere’s Mr. Green?” I asked.
    â€œOut back, talkin’ to some men.”
    â€œWell, I want to buy this coffee and these Scooter Pies.” I jingled the money in my pocket and looked at my treat with longing. “Can you go get him?”

    â€œNaw.”
    â€œWhy?”
    He looked down, embarrassed like he didn’t know what to say. “He’s back there with them other men and they’re talking like they’re mad.”
    â€œAbout what?”
    â€œI ain’t gonna go interruptin’ them, neither.”
    â€œWell, can you take the money for these?”
    I put the money on the counter. He looked at it. “I better not,” he said.
    â€œCome on, Vell. Mr. Green won’t mind.”
    â€œHe might get mad.”
    â€œNot if you get the right amount.”
    He pinched his lips together, thinking.
    â€œHe ain’t gonna get mad, Vell.” I pushed the money toward him. He stepped back like he was afraid of it. Then he slapped his hand down over it quick. I grabbed my coffee and Scooter Pies just as fast, before he could change his mind.
    Â 
    I dropped the coffee off, set Prez’s Scooter Pie on our table, fetched my Nancy Drew, and made it to my hill with time to spare. The sun was scorching. In the direction the train would approach, all was still, like nothing moving was ever going to come that way. The tracks, shimmering a gleaming silver, wound out of sight where the woods met the gully running next to the tracks’ incline. I pushed my bare feet into the cool grass and slowly tore
the cellophane wrapper off my Scooter Pie. Once all of it was off, I held the pie up and turned it slowly, studying it with anticipation. I scraped a bit of the hard chocolate frosting on the edge of my teeth and let it melt on my tongue. I had my book once again and my pie—I was happy.
    Just then I heard someone singing behind me, at the bottom of the hill—riverside. I could hear a banjo, too. I crept to the other side of the hill and lay flat on my stomach. There was a hobo camp down by the river—by the viaduct. I knew about hoboes. Sometimes one would come to the door for a handout, and if Mama thought he was harmless, she’d hand him out a sweet potato or