Dark River Road by Virginia Brown Page A

okay?”
    “Yeah, Mikey. You did good.” He gave his hand a little squeeze just to let him know he meant it.
    “Shadow tried to bite that fat boy,” Mikey said after a moment, and Chantry looked down at him, surprised.
    “He did?”
    “Uh huh. But I held on to him so tight he didn’t get to. Now I wish I hadn’t.”
    If his face didn’t hurt so bad, he would’ve smiled. Instead he just said, “Me, too.”

CHAPTER 5
     
    He was right about Mama crying when she saw his face. He tried to clean up outside with the water hose, but she came out. He didn’t want to tell her what happened. Mikey couldn’t stop talking about it. He told her over and over how Chantry had fought those three big boys, and how he’d kept Shadow from biting them and wished he hadn’t. Chantry just kept quiet and let Mama try to fix his face. She had this tight look in her eyes, like she wanted to say something but didn’t.
    Later, when he took off his shirt, he saw huge purple splotches all over his ribs and belly and remembered that someone had kicked him a few times, too. He’d be sore for a while. He was just glad Mr. Ledbetter had come along when he had, or things might have gotten even worse. He didn’t know what to think about Mr. Ledbetter. He’d made it pretty plain that he didn’t much like Chris, but maybe that was because he wasn’t mayor anymore and blamed old man Quinton for it.
    He didn’t go to church with Mama and Mikey the next day but stayed home, and Tansy came over while Rainey was still asleep and knocked on the front door just lightly enough to alert Chantry, but not hard enough to wake Rainey.
    “You look like you French kissed a blender,” she blurted out when Chantry opened the door, and he tried to smile but it hurt too bad so he ended up just shrugging. Tansy sucked in a deep breath. “Daddy told me they all jumped you. Chris, too. Is that true, Chantry?”
    “How’d he hear that?”
    “You know Daddy hears everything. So. Is it true?”
    He didn’t answer, just leaned against the door frame with the screen door still between them and looked at her. After a minute she turned around and went to sit on the porch steps. He followed her out, sat down beside her without saying anything.
    “I don’t guess you want to tell me why this time either,” she said after a few minutes of silence, and when he didn’t reply, she shook her head. “Sometimes I don’t know what to think.”
    Since he couldn’t tell her what to think, he just stared off at the fields across the road. It had gotten cool during the night, and smelled like autumn at last. Brown furrows lay in neat rows of stubble where the harvest machines had come through a few weeks before. There was a chill in the air that dissipated during the day, crept back at night. Tansy let out a long sigh.
    They were a lot alike even though he was a boy and she was a girl. They didn’t have anybody else, had grown up within spitting distance of each other. Chantry had taken to getting out of the house as much as he could when he was a little kid because Beau and Rafe made his life such a misery, and Tansy  . . . well, she just liked being by herself too, he thought. Always making up words in her head, pretty words that sounded good when she said them to him, and she said she liked it that he never laughed or made fun of her like other kids did.
    “Ever think of leavin’ here?” she asked after a few minutes, and he looked at her.
    “Every day. Why? You want to leave?”
    “I will leave. Just like my auntie and cousins. They’re off up in Chicago now, don’t ever come back down to visit anymore. Daddy says it’s better that way. He and my auntie got in a big fight a long time ago when I was little. I heard her say one time that he shouldn’t have ever married my mama, but I don’t know why she’d say that.”
    Chantry went quiet. He’d always liked Tansy’s mama, thought Julia Rivers soft and strong, just like his own mama. But there had