Free The Painted Ponies of Partequineus and The Summer of the Kittens by Peter H. Riddle

and suitcases in the hatchback that they had it tied part way open, and some other stuff piled on the roof. Oh yeah, and a mountain bike mounted on the bumper. The car had an Ontario license plate. They turned off onto our street about three-thirty in the afternoon and just sort of coasted along as if they were looking for something.
    Jimmy and I had been talking like we usually do after school, me in the tree and him down there in his wheelchair. He’s my best friend, and I guess I’m his. Jimmy doesn’t have many friends, ’cause he can’t do stuff like the other kids do, only he never seems to mind. At least if he does, he doesn’t let it show, ’cause he’s always smiling like he’s really happy. Mom says the sun follows Jimmy around like he owns it.
    We argue a lot, but we never fight. I like him.
    I was watching Mr. Harding, the old man who lives next door, behind the big fence that Jimmy can’t see over, but I can from the tree. He was hunched over kind of double in a scratched-up old rocking chair on his front porch with his elbows on his knees, just sort of staring out at the woods across the street.
    â€œHe’s there again,” I told Jimmy, as softly as I could so Mr. Harding wouldn’t hear me talking about him.
    â€œWhat’s he doing?” Jimmy asked. Jimmy’s curious about everything and everybody, only his world isn’t as big as mine, so sometimes I have to be his eyes. 
    â€œJust sitting,” I said, “like he does most days.”
    Mr. Harding doesn’t like kids. Dad says he doesn’t like anybody, even himself. Especially himself. One day I accidentally rode my bike across one corner of his lawn when he was sitting out there, and he yelled at me something awful. I don’t know what he was so upset about, his crumby old grass is mostly weeds anyway, but he called my Mom about it. She told me just to stay away from him, that he was an unhappy old man and there wasn’t anything anybody could do to change that.
    â€œI wonder what he’s thinking about,” Jimmy said. He always seems to be super curious about Mr. Harding, because the man sits around so much, just like Jimmy, even though he doesn’t have to, ’cause he can still walk, well, sort of limp I guess. He’s got to be at least a hundred, don’t you think? Jimmy figured that anyone who could walk ought to do it as much as possible.
    â€œHe’s probably wishing it would rain or something,” I said. “That way we’d all be sad like him.”
    â€œYou think maybe he’d like that? For everybody to be as miserable as he is?”
    â€œI’m just kidding. Who knows what he thinks about? He doesn’t talk to anybody, and no one ever comes to visit him.”
    â€œHe must be lonely,” Jimmy said.
    Jimmy knows a lot about loneliness, I guess.
    â€œHe probably likes it that way,” I said. “Otherwise he’d make some effort to get along with people, instead of being so disagreeable all the time.” I was tired of the topic. “How’s the new airplane coming?”
    â€œAlmost finished. I just have to hook up the battery and the servos. Dad’s gonna take me out to the field on Saturday to try it out. Wanna come?”
    â€œSure.”
    Jimmy builds model airplanes. They’re neat, with little engines that sound like miniature chain saws, and they go really fast. He’s got this radio thing with a couple of joysticks on it and lots of switches, and he sits in his wheelchair and makes the planes take off and land and do loops and all kinds of things. He’s pretty good at it.
    Jimmy says he’s going to fly some day. Himself, I mean, not just his models. He says they can put hand controls in airplanes, so it doesn’t matter that he can’t use his legs because of his spina bifida that he was born with. He says that the airplane will be his elm tree, and let him see the