The Witch of Tin Mountain by Paulette Kennedy EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Author Name: Paulette Kennedy
- Book Genre: Fantasy , Fiction
- ISBN #
- Edition Language: English
- Date of Publication: February 02, 2023
- File Format: PDF / EPUB
- PDF / EPUB File Size: 8 MB
GRACELYNN
1931
Thursdays are town days, and it’s town days I dread most. People’s eyes
swarm all over me like flies on a wet dog, their mean words humming like
hornets around my head. They hardly wait until I’ve passed by before they
spit in my path. Granny tells me to ignore it—that folks here have their
superstitions and it’s nothing for me to worry over. But I’ve learned enough
to know you can’t put much trust in people who want what you have on
Thursdays but won’t talk to you come Sunday morning.
If it weren’t for Granny, I’d be long gone from Tin Mountain and the
people here who’d break me if they ever got the chance.
I pick my way down the slump-drunk shoulder of the hillside, mud
seeping through the holes in my Salvation Army boots. My yarb bag swings
low and heavy at my hip. Inside, there’s a whole pound of fresh-picked
morels and a screw-top jar full of green sludge that’ll get old Bill Bledsoe’s
bowels to moving and buy us enough food for a week—if he’s feeling
generous, that is. We never charge for our cures. We take whatever sort of
payment folks can give. Sometimes that’s money. Sometimes it’s no more
than a can of beans or evaporated milk.
At the edge of town, the sweet, half-burnt smell of sawdust curls up
my nose. Northrup’s Mill sits at the end of Main Street, as it has for the last
fifty years. Timber and sharecropping are about the only work folks can
find in these parts. And if you don’t do one of them things? I reckon you
ain’t worth too much around here.
“Well, lookie here. If it ain’t the high and mighty Miss Doherty.” The
low drawl is followed by a puff of blue tobacco smoke, and a lanky form
unfolds from the shadows next to the sawmill. A slow smile spreads across
a pockmarked, narrow face that wears its twenty years hard. Harlan
Northrup. All sorts of trouble, and none of it the good kind.
I ignore him and keep on walking. He follows me, his big feet
punishing the dirt. “Where you goin’, Gracie? Too full of yourself to stop
and talk to me?”
I spin to face him. “Get on your way, Harlan. I got deliveries to
make.”
“Is that right?”
“I mean it. I’m in no mood for triflin’ with you.” I draw myself up tall
and cross my arms, glaring over the edge of my scarf.
“Easy now. I don’t mean no wrong.” He tosses his cigarette butt into
the gutter and widens his stance, trying to block me. The old men jawing on
the mercantile porch fall silent. Their eyes skim past us like dragonflies
skating across a pond. “I jus’ want to bend your ear for a spell.
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