Me and Rupert Goody
Page 8
We gave everybody a raffle ticket for a free turkey and Uncle Beau put dried beans in a fish bowl and gave a clock radio to the closest guess. (Nine hundred and thirty-five. I counted.)
We tried our best to make the new store feel right. Uncle Beau got a couch from the Salvation Army and Vernon and his friends brought it in and put it in the same spot as the old one. We put in a bench and a stool and even a calendar from Dixie Hardware and a lucky horseshoe over the door, just like before.
It was nice and clean and smelled good, but we all knew it was going to be a while before it felt like home. Uncle Beau said it just needed some life and that didn’t come from a paint can, that come from living.
After folks went on home, me and Uncle Beau and Rupert set up the card table out on the porch. I think we took some comfort in being out there where things were old and used and familiar.
We played crazy eights till it was too dark to see. Then I sat on the steps with Rupert and listened to the squeak, squeak of the glider as Uncle Beau pushed it back and forth.
Before long, the squeaks stopped and Uncle Beau’s chin dropped down on his chest and he started snoring that whistling kind of snore of his.
“What time is it, Jake?” Rupert said.
Thump-thump went that tail.
“Quittin’ time,” I said.
I stood up and looked at Uncle Beau, his cheeks puffing out with every snore, his whomper-jawed hands laying limp in his lap. Then I stretched and yawned and said, “Button the door, Rupert.”
ALSO BY BARBARA O’CONNOR
Beethoven in Paradise
Copyright © 1999 by Barbara O’Connor
All rights reserved
Designed by Rebecca A. Smith
eISBN 9781466811744
First eBook Edition : February 2012
First edition, 1999
11109876543
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
O’Connor, Barbara.
Me and Rupert Goody / Barbara O’Connor.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Eleven-year-old Jennalee is jealous when a slow-thinking black man arrives in her Smoky Mountains community and claims to be the son of Uncle Beau, the owner of the general store and Jennalee’s only friend.
[1. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 2. Stores, Retail—Fiction. 3. Mentally handicapped—Fiction. 4. Racially mixed people—Fiction. 5. Great Smoky Mountains (N.C. and Tenn.)—Fiction. 6. Mountain life—North Carolina—Fiction. 7. North Carolina—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.0217Me 1999
[Fic]-dc21
98-30235