Free Five Minutes in Heaven by Lisa Alther Page B

knew the punch line to but herself.
    â€œWell, I don’t know exactly, baby.” He turned around to look at her in the light from the flashing neon pig. “The Cherokees used to say that beneath different appearances, all creatures are merely manifestations of the Great Spirit. So that those who harm others unnecessarily disturb the balance of the universe and therefore harm themselves. But many people nowadays seem to feel separate and superior, so it doesn’t bother them so much to hurt others.”
    â€œWhich do you believe?” Molly asked.
    â€œYou don’t need to believe or not believe something once you experience it.”
    Jude and Molly looked at him blankly.
    â€œThat means I agree with the Cherokees,” he said.
    Jude and Molly looked at each other. Jude thought that if anyone hurt Molly, she, too, would feel the pain. But if someone hurt Ace Kilgore, she’d feel glad. So which category did she fit into?
    Your daddy’s so sweet, Molly gesticulated in wolfspeak as he carried their trash to the can and handed their tray to the goose-bumped cowgirl. Jude felt proud of him.
    Since her parents were out of town, Molly spent that night at Jude’s house, and she taught Jude a game she’d just invented called Pecan. Jude lay on top of Molly, stomach-to-stomach, chest-to-chest, nose-to-nose. They looked cross-eyed into each other’s eyes. Then Molly began to giggle. Jude could feel Molly’s chest and stomach trembling and heaving beneath her own, so she started giggling, too. Soon it was impossible to tell who was and wasn’t giggling.
    Molly grabbed Jude’s wrists and forced her over onto her side. Then she scrambled to her knees and sat astride Jude’s chest, pinning her arms above her head. Breathing heavily, she look down at Jude with triumph, eyes so fierce that they were almost purple. “I could pin you like this with one hand tied behind my back,” she announced in her husky voice.
    â€œProbably,” said Jude. But she hadn’t been fighting back very hard because she had been too interested to find out what Molly would do next.
    Before they fell asleep, they agreed that Pecan was such a good game that they should play it a lot, taking turns lying on top.
    T HROUGH THE BARE BRANCHES across the cave mouth Jude watched the river wind through the valley, a slithering brown snake. Holsteins stood to their knees in the water, patches of black spread across their barreled backs like continents on a globe. A hawk, fringed wing tips fluttering, swooped and dipped and floated on a column of air that was spiraling up from the valley floor. The Smokies rippled like blue sand dunes to the edge of the earth. Wispy puffs of smoke rose up from the mountain coves, where farmers were curing their tobacco.
    A dozen yards below, Ace Kilgore was yelling commands to the patrolling Commie Killers, unaware of Molly and Jude overhead. Jude’s father had shown them this cave, high up on a cliff, concealed by a thick tangle of mountain laurel, where Abigail Westlake had hidden while soldiers down below marched her family off to their deaths in the Ozarks. Jude and Molly were sitting on a cushion of pine needles, quiet as hunted game, playing Trail of Tears. They had even persuaded Sidney to halt his amiable panting.
    Although she tried her best to stay out of Ace’s way, Jude often stole glances at him on the playground or in the lunchroom or around the neighborhood. If she and Molly were wolf boys trying to pass unnoticed on the fringes of the forest, Ace was a wolf boy who had refused to come in from the wild. He was completely untamed, frightening but also admirable.
    The Commie Killers swept down the cliff face on their mission of national security. Jerry Crawford, Ace’s best friend, brought up the rear. He was much taller than Ace, but he always hunched over in an attempt to be the same height. A couple of the others, twins with sleek dark hair