The Color of Your Skin Ain’t the Color of Your Heart by Michael Phillips Page A

though we had more milk and cheese than we could eat.
    We’d done some vegetable canning in the summer, but the flood destroyed what was left of the vegetable garden too. There were a lot of apples on the trees roundabout, so we went out picking and making and canning applesauce so we’d have it through the winter.
    Henry helped us plant a new batch of potatoes and sweet potatoes with cut-up pieces from what we still had left over in the root cellar. And of course we kept making cheese and churning butter. And we had plenty of eggs.
    Another thing we were running out of was meat. Katie mentioned this to Henry and his solution was simple enough.
    “You got enuff hogs out dere—we’ll butcher one ob dem, an’ maybe one er yer cows too an’ smoke an’ cure an’ salt it an’ you’ll hab plenty er meat fer winter.”
    “Ugh!” said Katie. “I don’t think I could stand to watch.”
    Henry laughed. “You’d rather starve dan kill some ol’ hog!”
    “No, I don’t suppose,” said Katie. “It just sounds so horrible.” Katie’s squeamishness didn’t stop Henry. The very next week he came out planning to butcher one of the hogs.
    “Do we have to watch, Uncle Henry?” asked Aleta.
    “No, chil’, you don’ hab ter watch me kill it,” said Henry. “But you two older girls,” he added, looking at me and Katie, “you’s gwine hab ter help me lift it into da pot. So you jes’ fill yer biggest tub plumb full an’ git a good hot fire aneath it, ’cause we gots ter hab boilin’ water ter git a good scald on dat dere pig. You take care ob da fire an’ I’ll take care ob da killin’, an’ we’ll hab dat ol’ hog sliced an’ hangin’ in yer smokehouse an’ in dat brine barrel in no time.”
    I was used to things like that, so I helped Henry most of the afternoon, and Aleta and Katie came and went as much as their stomachs could handle.
    Aleta was gradually warming up to Uncle Henry, as she called him now. She was starting to grow like a weed. So was William! He was getting chubby and round, and even Emma was putting on a little weight. She was calming down too. Whenever Henry came to visit, Emma followed him around like a puppy dog, like she had Katie earlier. Henry was so kind and tender to her. I doubt if a man had ever been so kind to her, and Emma drank it in. She’d have done anything for Henry. For all I knew, she’d hardly known her father. Henry was just about as gentle a man as I’d ever seen. As kind as he was to all of us, you could tell he had a special place in his heart for Emma and William. Maybe it was because he knew they had no one else. And as the months passed, he became the father she’d never had.
    Slowly the winter passed. There was more rain now and then, and it turned colder, but no more flooding.

A V ISIT AND AN A TTACK
    13

    O NE DAY A COUPLE WEEKS BEFORE C HRISTMAS , late in the day, Jeremiah came to call. It had been a warm day and sunny and everything smelled wet and warm and nice. Jeremiah was all cleaned up and he had a sheepish look on his face when he came to the door. I knew immediately that he hadn’t come to help us with our chores.
    “How do, Miz Mayme,” he said. “I thought … uh, maybe you an’ me could go fer a walk.”
    I nodded and went outside with him.
    We walked away from the house. Dusk was settling in. A huge full moon was just rising over the trees. It was just about as nice an evening as I could imagine. It was quiet as we walked. Neither of us seemed to have anything to say. He glanced around a few times, almost like he thought somebody else might be around or watching us, though I don’t know who it could have been because Katie and the others were all still inside. Then he seemed to settle down and took my hand and we just kept walking and walking till we were in the woods by Katie’s secret place and the house was out of sight. I wanted to show him the little meadow and to see what it was like in the moonlight, though I didn’t want