Free The Secret Sense of Wildflower by Susan Gabriel

said, your boy and I have come to an understanding. I trust there won’t be any more trouble.”
    “Well if there is, you just let me know, and I’ll knock the shit out of him,” Mr. Monroe says. “That’s all that boy understands, anyway.”
    Mr. Monroe blows his nose on the same dirty rag he used to clean his gun and shoves it into his back pocket. He walks away and staggers against a pine before righting himself.
    We go in the opposite direction, moving quickly through the brush. When we reach the road I breathe deep, relieved to be out of the woods and away from Arthur and Johnny Monroe. But something tells me I may never get away from them.
    “I feel sorry for that Melody girl,” Mary Jane says, her voice just above a whisper.
    “She’s got it rough,” Daniel says. “Maybe she could help Jo out after the baby comes. We can’t pay her much, but at least it would get her out of that house.”
    I like the idea of getting to know Melody better, as long as her brother isn’t anywhere around or her father.
    “I couldn’t believe she wasn’t even wearing shoes,” Mary Jane says, like there isn’t anything more disgraceful. Whenever I see the part of Mary Jane that is like her mother, I try to ignore it, otherwise I might question why we’re friends.
    “And poor Ruby,” Mary Jane continues. “Accidentally killing herself. Have you ever heard of something so awful?”
    “She’s in a better place,” I say, sounding too much like Preacher. But in the back of my mind I’m thinking that what happened to Ruby was no accident.
    “Any place would be a better place than that old shack,” Mary Jane says.
    Mary Jane doesn’t even know the part about Ruby going to have a baby and for some reason I feel protective of Ruby’s secret.
    We reach the crossroads where Mary Jane and I will turn to go to her house.
    “I’d better get back. Jo’s probably got the okra ready,” Daniel says. “You all promise to tell me if there are any more problems?”
    “Promise,” I say.
    “Promise,” Mary Jane echoes.
    When Mary Jane and I sit down to dinner at her house we don’t mention a word about the Monroes.
    “Welcome, Louisa May,” Mary Jane’s father says and then sets out to say the longest prayer in history. I am certain the mashed potatoes will be as cold as buttermilk by the time he finishes and I am right.
    We have roast beef, something we eat rarely at my house, but the meat is tough and by the end of supper my jaws hurt from all the chewing. What a waste, I think. Mama could have done a much better job with the meal. The mashed potatoes have huge lumps in them and the peas taste scalded. But the plates we eat off of don’t have a single chip.
    Mary Jane’s father has a wooden leg attached at the knee. He took it off and showed it to me once and I studied it for a long time. His knee looked like the nub of an elbow and hung there like a hunk of sausage in the window of Sweeny’s store, which Mary Jane’s father owns. He lost his leg in a tractor accident when he was eighteen and then gave up farming to open the store in Katy’s Ridge. He told me once that his actual severed leg is buried in his mother’s back yard in Arkansas, right next to all their dead pets. For some reason a leg buried among cats, dogs, and rabbits gives me the creeps a lot more than any graveyard.
    Mary Jane’s brother, Victor, is two years older than me and has all his arms and legs. He works for Mary Jane’s father at the grocery store, located on the road to Rocky Bluff. We go there to get bubble gum sometimes and Victor always throws in an extra piece for me. Victor is as close to having a brother as I’ve ever come. He respects nature, like Daddy taught me, and won’t squash a mosquito unless he has to, figuring they have as much right to be alive as any of us.
    We used to catch lightning bugs together—me, Mary Jane and Victor—and we’d fill a Mason jar with holes cut in the top. But Victor always made us let them