Billie Green In Annie's Eyes (pdf)

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needles you had swiped from your aunt and tied them to those tacky-looking
kites."
"Vicious brutes, weren't we? Talk about bloody dogfights. Come on, we
only have a couple of hours, so get your butt in gear. Time, that old bald
cheater, is a-wastin'. It's putting its winged chariot into third gear. While we
stand here talking, old tempus is Jugiting. ..."
She couldn't stop laughing as he dragged her to the car. "You idiot. This is
March. What makes you think the wind is going to stop blowing in a couple
of hours?"
"Alf Woodard said the wind will definitely die down by early afternoon."
"Why on earth would you listen to Alf?" she asked as she fastened her
seatbelt. "He's a sweetheart, but ever since that fly ball landed on his head,
he's been getting weather predictions from the pigeons at the courthouse,
and those dumb birds are always wrong."
This time, however, the pigeons knew what they were talking about. Anne
and Max managed to get in only two and a half hours of flying time before
the wind abruptly died. But it was enough.
She had beat him twice in unmanned, unarmed dogfights. "If that happens
again, I may have to hurt you," Max had warned her after the second time.
Anne had laughed, running to send her kite soaring through the sky toward
his.
It was a day straight out of a storybook. Never had the sky been so blue.
Never had plain grass been so green. They raced each other across fields
covered with unending flowers, giant patches of blue and pink and yellow.
And as she stood, letting the wind whip around her, the same wind caught
his laughter and carried it across the field to bathe her in the wonderful
sound.
And finally when, as the pigeons had foretold, the wind subsided, they
dropped down, exhausted, to lie on the cool, soft winter grass and talk in
lazy whispers.
"I haven't asked where you're living now," she said after a while. "In
Texas?"
He had been propped up on one elbow, a long stalk of grass between his
teeth. Now he rolled onto his back and stared up at the sky. "In Texas," he
confirmed. "And in California . . . Indonesia . . . Venezuela. Everywhere and
nowhere. That's why I'm driving a rented car. No place to park one." He
closed his eyes. "I can't seem to settle in one spot. I like them all. So I just go
where the wind blows me."
"Like little Japanese islands?"
He turned back to her, cushioning his head with his folded arm. "You know
about the time I spent in the Ryukyus?" When she nodded, he said, "I stayed
there longer than anywhere else. It was a strange place. Time skips right
over those little islands. The people live exactly the way their grandparents
and great-grandparents did." His brown eyes suddenly took on a gleam of
amusement. "Remember during our Tarzan phase when I tied a rope to the
chinaberry tree in Ellie's backyard and we pretended it was a jungle vine?"
"Are you kidding? Of course I remember." Tarzan had come after the Three
Musketeers and before Superman. Max, being the only one willing to bare
his chest, took the role of Tarzan.
"Ellie got to be a gunrunner and a jungle warrior and an evil queen," she
said, "but you left me up in that dumb chinaberry tree."
"Where else would Jane stay?" he asked, grinning.
"What made you think of our Tarzan games?"
"Well," he said slowly as he tickled her chin with the stalk of grass. "On my
little Japanese island there were real jungles. Real vines."
"You didn't," she said, laughing in disbelief.
"Didn't I? I'd only been there for a couple of weeks when the villagers took
me with them to gather fruit. When I saw those vines they were hanging
everywhere I couldn't resist." He laughed. "I went through the whole bit.
Standing on a limb, beating my chest. I even did the yell. My island friends
got a big kick out of that."
"How did it feel? Was it as wonderful as we imagined it would be?"
"It was wild. Fighting gravity and the wind. It made me feel powerful . . ,
until the vine broke. I cracked a bone in my foot when I landed. Then I
picked up an assortment of scratches and bruises on the trip back to the
village because my buddies were laughing so hard, they kept dropping me."
Anne had started laughing even before he got to the end. "I wish I had been
there to see it," she said, still shaking with laughter. "I wish I had been there
to do it. I would have done a better job."
"Sure you would," he said, openly skeptical. "You couldn't even stay in that
stupid chinaberry tree for half an hour without falling. I never could figure
that out. You didn't fall when you were the imprisoned queen, but you were
a lousy Jane."
"I didn't fall out when I was queen because I was terrified of heights. I was
afraid to move." She gave a soft laugh. "I sat hugging the limb for dear life
until I heard you and Ellie coming back. Then I would pretend I was right at
home up there."
"Why didn't you tell me that you were afraid?" he said, frowning.
She shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I was even more afraid that you and
Ellie wouldn't play with me anymore. Anyway by the time I became Jane, I
was used to heights and I got braver." She grinned. "While you and Ellie
were out fighting jungle wars, I was practicing on the vine. And I was better
than you. I never landed in the azaleas."
When he raised a threatening fist, she laughed. "You should have taken a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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