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Read Ebook: Games by MacLean Katherine Ashman William Illustrator
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Ebook has 65 lines and 6536 words, and 2 pages
It would have been nice if the jailers had come in and he had been able to say something noble to them before dying, to show that he was brave.
Ronny decided to be Indian braves again. They weren't very real, and when they were, they had simple straightforward emotions about courage and skill and pride and friendship that he would like.
Ronny stood on the other foot and scratched the back of his leg with his toes. He didn't want to remember. He always forgot right away, but this grownup was confident and young and strong-looking, and meant something when he talked, not like most grownups.
Grownups always want you to do something. Ronny stared back, clenching his hands and moving his feet uneasily.
"That was a good game. Are you going to play it any more?"
His mother would not like it. She would feel the difference in him, as much as if he had read one of the books she kept away from him, books that were supposed to be for adults only. The difference would hurt her. He was being bad, like eating between meals. But to know what grownups knew....
He tightened his fists and looked down at the grass. "I'll play it some more."
The grownup straightened away from the fence, preparing to walk off. Behind a dam pressed grief and anger for the death of the man he called Purcell.
Grief and anger pressed more strongly against the dam, and the man turned and left rapidly, letting his thoughts flicker and scatter through private memories that Ronny did not share, that no one shared, breaking thought contact with everyone so that the man could be alone in his own mind to have his feelings in private.
Ronny picked up the empty glass that had held his chocolate milk from the back steps where he had left it and went inside. As he stepped into the kitchen, he knew what another kitchen had looked like for a five-year-old child who had been Purcell ninety years ago. There had been an iron sink, and a brown-and-green-spotted faucet, and the glass had been heavier and transparent, like real glass.
Ronny reached up and put the colored plastic tumbler down.
"That was a nice young man, dear. What did he say to you?"
Ronny looked up at his mamma, comparing her with the remembered mamma of fifty years ago. He loved the other one, too.
"He tol' me he's glad I play Indian."
--KATHERINE MacLEAN
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