Young children will enjoy this read-aloud and the many fun and engaging activities in the packet. He searched his pockets, for the hundredth hopeless time, gripped by the terrible fantasy of discovering a dry, linty stick of Juicy Fruit. Ahead of them were miles of road with nary a car or truck in sight. I decided to do it with my kiddos, too! There were seven of them in an old RV held together by spit, baling-wire, and—perhaps—the resin of all the dope that had been smoked inside its rusty walls.

Come here. She’s not moving. “Isn’t she wonderful?” Cal asked, showing the boy. They were pushing sixty now and had been together a long time—long enough to have couples’ telepathy.

“Aren’t you the little Mother Mary? What if it caught Becky out there somewhere? At last a clear and coherent thought came, forking through her mind like a stroke of heat lightning: The baby! He was wearing tourist clothes—Dockers and mud-clotted Bass Weejuns. “You need to eat,” he said, and put a string of something cold and salty in her mouth. Out of the oven and baked just right!”. She had the groggy rasp of someone who has just come awake and needs a drink of water.

Not Becky. Yes, stop. It was a kind of muscular contraction, a twisting, as if there were a knotted rope in her womb, and someone had just yanked it tight; tighter than it was supposed to go. “For a thirsty old rock like that. “But I’m so thirsty!” She sounded closer now, but Cal didn’t trust that. “A girl once hid in tall grass,” she sang to herself. “If you touch the rock you won’t be lost anymore,” Tobin said. “A girl once hid in tall grass,” she sang to herself. Looking for file the-tall-tall-grass.pdf to download for free? The insides of his thighs itched.

What are you, crazy?”, “Not crazy, just hungry.

He kicked at the whole mess in a spasm of sick, ugly despair. Boys shouted. Becky started across the infield. Sometimes it was a dull throb, the soreness of overworked muscles; other times it would intensify without warning into a sharp, somehow watery pain that lanced her through the bowels, and burned in her crotch. He was clearly mad, you only had to look into his eyes or listen to his text-message vocal delivery to know that, but he was human. Although smeared with mud and a dark maroon crust that was almost certainly blood, she could see the ball of spaghetti-like string and knew what was printed above it-WORLD’S LARGEST BALL OF TWINE, CAWKER CITY, KANSAS. It was, instead, as if she had walked the length of a football field and then some. “That’s a little kid.”. That citrus flash of sugar was always gone in four chews and—he felt a stiff paper flap and withdrew a book of matches.

He stood. She sailed past Stratham Hill Park, where she had run with her track team in high school. He waited for the buzzing in his head to pass, then realized it wasn’t in his head after all. But although it was similar, it wasn’t his. She tried to shriek and nothing came out but a whispery hhhhaaaahhh sound. “Beck ... honey ... we just ate some of the grass. Something arrived in her hands. Back to the road? Human fuckin’ kindness.”. “I’ll just find you again. She struck him in the face, once, twice, three times, before he began to scream. This is ... this is nuts.”. “She’s being weird.”, “Where are you?” the boy cried, almost babbled, from just a few feet away in the grass. We’re lost!”.

Hadn’t she got a little lost in the grass herself?

And I’ve been having cramps.”, “I guess so. “If you could get out,” she said, “you wouldn’t still be in.”, He tittered. How come there was never a tree around when you needed one? “Aren’t you the little Mother Mary? Her brother was holding a doll’s leg in one hand, filthy from the mud. Each blow set off a fresh, black, poisonous detonation. His face was close and he inhaled a burning whiff of sulfur. Then there was no more grass to shove. Becky would stay ahead of it. Her insides pulsed with a dreadful weight and feeling of tension, as if she had swallowed a medicine ball. As shaken as she was by the sight of the improbably distant highway, her brief glimpse of Cal was just as disorienting. Cal imagined the dragon set down in the field, and went dizzy with pleasure at the thought of it exhaling a destroying plume of fire into the grass. They were white, and seemed to float. When she emerged at last, the car was waiting for her, and she took off. It was the size of a pickup truck and inscribed all over with tiny dancing stick men. They would know to keep their own children on the safe side of the road. Wonder when the wise men will show up! 0000078804 00000 n “IT’S TIME TO EAT!” As if Becky were the one who was lost. It even smelled a little like a sardine. She shoved herself off him, began to scramble on all fours into the grass. She shouted in the yard. There were thrashing sounds—maybe panic, maybe the sounds of a struggle. And no matter which direction he walked in, he seemed to move farther from the road. “Just shut up and wait!” he screamed again. He couldn’t know that. There was blood splashed on the grass beyond the swatches he was holding open and Becky wanted to stop but her feet carried her forward and he even stepped aside a little like in one of those other old movies where the suave guy says After you doll and they enter the swanky nightclub where the jazz combo’s playing only this was no swanky nightclub this was a beaten-down swatch of grass where the woman Natalie Humbolt if that was her name was lying all twisted with her eyes bulging and her dress pushed up to show great big red divots in her thighs and Becky guessed she knew now why Ross Humbolt of Poughkeepsie had such red lips and one of Natalie’s arms was torn off at the shoulder and lying ten feet beyond her in crushed grass already springing back up and there were more great big red divots in the arm and the red was still wet because ... because... Because she hasn’t been dead that long, Becky thought. His foot caught on something, and he went down knee-first into an inch of swampy water. Cal thought: A new player. endobj He stripped the snarls of tough greenery from his ankles and shins, barely feeling the little cuts the grass had inflicted.

He would stay ahead of it. This young woman is going to have a critter!”. “Forgot to introduce myself. He had bent over, clutching his knees and panting, his throat achy with thirst, and had turned his attention to the silence. “That’s me.” The boy raised the crow to his mouth and buried his face in its belly. Each e-book can be purchased in hard copy from several online stores or download in ebook format for introductory reading. Not close enough to reach in and grab, but surely no more than ten or twelve yards from the road. •My books: IN THE TALL, TALL GRASS, WHERE ONCE THERE WAS A WOOD, and PUMPKIN EYE all have night scenes. The back gate was open to the driveway. I have to sit down. I’m scared!”, “YES!

You’ll be redeemed. Links to the on-line stores you'll find on this page. “Becky?” he had called again, in a hoarsened voice.

“I was just as lost in the grass as you two,” he said. He tore the crow out of the boy’s muddy hands, barely registering the guts unraveling from its open belly.

Now the kid was on Cal’s right, and he sounded quite a lot deeper in the grass than before. Overhead, a jet traced a white contrail across the sky at thirty-five thousand feet. “WHAT DID WE EAT?” She began to pound him, but her fists were weak, weak. Don’t want to do it in front of the kid.” His breath stank. “THERE WAS AN OLD FARMER FROM LEEDS!” the girl shouted. She pushed as hard as she could, her belly like a board, her ass screwed down into the mucky ground. A battered red Datsun, zipping along the highway, looked no bigger than a Matchbox car. Even in her shock and terror, Becky knew who the madman had to be when he brushed aside the grass and stood before her. Her arm felt weak, and the way she punched at him was lazy, almost friendly—but the key caught him under the left eye, and raked down his cheek, sketching a jaggedy line in blood. Category: History. “Are you thirsty?

“There was an old farmer from Leeds,” the boy sang, and put his hands to his mouth to stifle his giggles.

Cal would have said he was too tired to spring after his latest jump, but horror has its own imperatives, and he sprang anyway. If she had been anywhere near in her right mind she might’ve gagged. In the center was a huge black rock. “Look close, and you can see her.”. Not that she was his main concern just then. Somewhere a radio was playing. In the end, all of them trooped across Route 400 and entered into the tall grass. He couldn’t know that. No, no, no. I’m so thirsty. And worship it. There is no morning or night here, Cal thought, only eternal afternoon. The tall grass bordered both sides of the road, stretching ahead of her as far as she could see. The idea was in him that he had to hurt the grass, show it he wasn’t taking any more shit, and then it would let him—let them both—go. He had crossed a few dozen feet of the dirt parking lot and then hesitated by what looked like a first-generation Prius. “Mom heard him yelling and went after him,” Pa Cool said. It was hard to think past the pain in her abdomen, which came in waves. Terrific. endobj A line from some old folksong. The next time she punched him, she put her shoulder behind it, and sank the key into his eye. 0000005083 00000 n All those little dancing fellas. But something close to that. Come on, Cal. There was a car alarm for a bit, then it stopped. “Far out,” MaryKat said. Want to meet her?”. He couldn’t even make out his own car, tucked in with the other distance-shrunken cars in the lot. Soon he would melt away, just as her brother had, and Becky felt a stab of panic. 1 0 obj What caused him to rise at last was the faraway sound of a car alarm going off. “I think most birds steer clear of the grass. Yup, his voice was now coming from ahead. His cheeks were stubbly, his lips red. He grimaced, showing teeth stained pink and green. “Becky? It wasn’t the woman, either. His throat felt dry and tight and swallowing took an effort. They danced together, the pregnant woman and the one-eyed madman.

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