Read Online A Morning Like This by Deborah Bedford - Free Book Online Page B

bison in Yellowstone.
Your brain, don’t leave home without it
.
    More often than one could believe, visitors camping in the Tetons allowed their children to wander farther afield than those
     same children would be allowed to wander at home. Now David and Nelson hurried toward these two little girls. Though they
     were protected from the hail, a mad gush of water had entered the gulch of their hiding place, threatening their feet. They
     huddled among a vast assortment of accessories: two dolls dressed in sweaters and mountain gear, a trunk, and a table with
     a plastic birthday cake, all arranged upon one dry strip of earth.
    Nelson bent down and peered in at them, noting their somber, serious faces. “What are you girls doing up here?”
    One tucked her knees tighter beneath her chin. “We climbed up this far with her brother and her uncle. But when we got tired,
     they said we should stay down low and wait.”
    The other clutched a pair of tiny doll crutches and a yellow plastic foot cast made to open and shut on tiny hinges. “We had
     to bring them someplace dangerous,” she said. “Our dolls wanted to break their legs so they could use their crutches.”
    “We didn’t pass anybody climbing this route.” David surveyed what he could see of the mountain’s summit. “They must have tried
     the Exum Ridge instead.”
    The hail tapered off even as the rain came harder. Tiny pellets of ice covered the ground. Lightning cracked in the trees
     below them, sending up sparks and the splintering crash of breaking wood. Thunder boomed against the rocks.
    “How good are you two at piggy-backing? Bring your Barbie stuff and let’s go.”
    Indignant, one of them said, “This isn’t Barbie stuff. They’re American Girl dolls. Don’t you
know?”
She began loading the dolls and the little birthday cake into a sodden paper sack. A minute later, they were fording the
     washout and getting soaked to their bones. Nelson lifted the child in the yellow raincoat. David took the one in the pink.
     She grabbed on and hung there, a dangling weight just like the pack beside her on his back. Slippery legs wrapped around David’s
     ribcage, ankles plaited in front of his midsection. He hitched up her knees and locked them against his hipbones with his
     elbows.
    A wet little girl felt contradictory to everything he’d ever known on his shoulders—light and willowy, like driftwood or a
     sparrow, so opposite from Braden’s robust, square weight. She held on to him for dear life, her doll’s sharp plastic fingers
     jabbing David in the ear. The two of them together, doll and girl, smelled like dust and vanilla and toothpaste.
    Down they went, flapping pink and yellow coats behind them like flags. David wondered who on earth could have been stupid
     enough to climb a mountain and leave two little girls waiting behind with no one to make sure they were out of danger.
    “We’re in a tent in the campground,” the girl atop David said. When she spoke he could feel the jut of her chin working against
     his scalp.
    “Try this way.” Nelson edged over to one side of the path. “It might be easier.”
    But there wasn’t an easier way. David’s feet slid and his ankles buckled every time he broke through into a hole in the scree.
     His knees ached from going downhill. His calves burned.
    Just when he’d managed a steady gait, the little girl atop him began to sing, the cadence a jarring rhythm to each of David’s
     steps.
    “The een-sy, ween-sy spi-der went up the wa-ter spout…”
    Her innocent, clear voice resounded all through David. On one side of his head, doll fingers poked holes in his scalp. On
     the other side, two small, real fingers walked up his temple and into his hair, sending goose bumps the length of his neck.
    “Can you not sing, please?” he asked, feeling her fingers meddling with his hair.
    “How come you don’t have very much hair on the back of your head?” she asked back.
    Mercifully, the thunder