Free Walking Through Shadows by Bev Marshall

pebble can grow into a boulder and over time will become a towering mountain. Let Daddy pickax his way up the mountain alone, I thought to myself. But, as if reading my mind, he reached out and pulled me toward him. He bent forward until his face was even with mine. “No harm done, honey,” he whispered. “It was all in fun. Don’t be so hard on your poor old daddy.”
    A whiff of cheap perfume sailed off him and nearly hardened my softening heart back to granite, but when I saw his same old smile, his eyes clear and kind like the ones he’d come with, I forgave him. I nodded; a co-conspirator in his lie, I turned to Sheila and Stoney. “Yeah, we were looking everywhere,” I said.
    After the Ayrshires were put in their new stalls that night and Mama had admired them enough for Daddy’s satisfaction, I lingered at the barn. I walked up to the Ayrshire with the longest horns and looked her in the eye. “I hate you,” I said. “Your real name is Salome, and someday I will butcher you and carry your head to my mother’s table.” The cow lifted her head and stared back at me. When she lowed mournfully out into the dark barn, I knew she understood.

C HAPTER 8
    I learned about the awful pain that love can bring on the morning Sheila was supposed to come up to our house to make blackberry jelly. Year after year, every jar of Mama’s jelly turned out so perfect it wiggled on your spoon and spread smooth on a biscuit. Mama had promised to share her cooking secrets with Sheila, who told us that her jelly always turned out too runny or too sugary. Our bushes were bursting that May, and I filled several gallon buckets with plump juicy berries. My purple-stained fingers were covered with briar nicks and my waist was ringed with red welts from red bugs who preferred my blood to berries. I was thinking that biscuits tasted just as good with syrup when Sheila came in laughing.
    “Lordeee, lordeee, y’all should’ve seen old Sid down to the barn. Stoney didn’t get her mule collar on fast enough, and she started sucking her milk out ’fore he knowed it. When he tried to get her head back round, she butted him clear cross the barn.” Sheila sat at the table and laughed hard. “Then Stoney, he got hisself up and went back over to her, and she’s sucking fast as she can, one eye on him. ’Fore he got there she done backed up and turned her tail. I knowed she were ready to kick him like a mule, and he knowed it too.” She looked over at Mama. “And you know what he done then? Stoney lit up a cigarette and walked right outta the barn. He said, ‘Sid, you welcome to your breakfast. I ain’t gonna get killed trying to keep you from it.’ That cow got the best of him.”
    Mama and I laughed, but we were enjoying Sheila more than the story itself. Lil’ Bit, who had been busy all morning stacking blocks on the floor and then knocking them down, heard our laughter and smiled up at us. He said in a most solemn voice, “You funny, Sheshe.” That set us all off again.
    Mama wiped her face on her apron. “Okay, now we’d better get to work if we’re going to get these berries put up before dinner time.” I had already washed all the mason jars, and when Mama went to hand the first one to Sheila, it slipped from her grip and crashed on the floor beside the tower of blocks. We all screamed, “Lil’ Bit, no,” as he reached out toward the glass. Mama grabbed him up into her arms at the same time that Sheila’s arm shot out to move the broken pieces away from him. Her hand came down on a shard and blood began to drip from her palm.
    “Oooh, you’ve cut yourself,” I yelled.
    Sheila held up her hand and licked the blood. The cut wasn’t too deep, but it was nearly an inch long. “It ain’t too bad,” she said.
    When Mama came over to get a closer look, Lil’ Bit started to cry. “Shhhh, Sheshe is okay,” she reassured him. Then she turned to me. “Annette, get some gauze and tape. Run.”
    After we got Sheila