Read The Reading Lessons for Free Online

put a nail in this jar, the most important thing you can do is learn from your mistake.” 
    At the time, Hadley was so busy playing with his new jar that she had to smack his hand to make him listen up. 
    “A lot of folks talk about puttin’ another nail in their coffin. Well, here’s a little secret: sometimes, if you’re very very lucky, you might find out that what you thought was a mistake wasn’t no mistake at all. That’s what happened when I had you. For nine months I walked around cursing myself and frowning at you as you grew inside my belly. Wasn’t ‘til I saw your sweet little face that I knew the truth of it. You weren’t no mistake, Hadley Crump. You were the best thing I ever did.” She rattled her dented can. “Funny thing is, after I took out that nail I put in on account of you, I had to take out at least one of them nails I put in on account of your daddy. See what I mean?”
    In truth, Hadley didn’t see what she meant. He dropped in nails left and right because he thought it was such fun. 
    “No,” Mama said, dumping the whole big batch out in his lap. “It’s about avoiding the nails, Hadley. Understand?”
    Over the years, he’d tried to put a frog in his jar, a Beech-Nut cigar band, and a handful of crab apples. Mama always dumped them out. This was the reason he got the Whoops Jar speech every year on his birthday. 
    Yes sir, Hadley was certain his mama would say that Lucinda Browning was a nail, but he couldn’t think what he could do. Lucinda was more exciting than the mini`e ball slug he’d found in Rabbit Creek . She was more exciting than Loomis’ deck of French playing cards, too. Shoot. Lucinda was right up with the Bloody Lime. If she cost him a nail, so be it. Truth be told, Hadley liked Lucinda even better than he liked his empty jar.
    ###
    In those early days, Browning House was tended by twenty coloreds, one mule auto, and a Cajun called LeJeune, whom only the long-deceased Mrs. Browning could understand. It was tended, also, somewhat haphazardly, by one Loomis Sackett.
    Loomis Sackett was a special case, and he never let you forget it. His mother had the good fortune to land on her deathbed several months before Mrs. Browning landed on hers, and that was the reason he was so special. 
    Adelandi Sackett started doing the wash for the Brownings when she was fifteen and plump with child. She had the voice of a songbird, everyone said, and Mrs. Browning liked to open all the windows when the girl was hanging clothes so as to fill the house with her soft sweet music. She also had a beautiful hand-carved backscratcher that was painted orange and had a bright green grasshopper on the handle. Adelandi called it The Grasshopper, and when Mrs. Browning was carrying Lucinda, Adelandi would work miracles on her employer’s back with that pretty orange stick, humming mysterious lullabies and scratching at scratches long after her workday was done. Loomis showed Hadley The Grasshopper once. It was chipped now, and two of the wooden fingers on the end were broken halfway down, but that didn’t matter anyway because Loomis said it was bad luck to scratch your back with it. When Loomis was four, his mama caught a blood fluke and passed away after a long drawn-out ordeal, probably because she itched herself with The Grasshopper . Loomis went to live with his Aunty Fafa in Blackeytown. Fortunately, Loomis had never needed any back-scratching, and as a result, when his mama was on her deathbed, Mrs. Browning made her a solemn promise that, as long as he might want it, Loomis Beauregard Sackett would have a job at Browning House. 
    Lucky Loomis , Loomis called himself.
    “What if you get an itch someday that’s so big, you forget yourself and scratch it anyhow?” Hadley had asked, for that orange stick was a desperate worry to him.
    “The day I scratch is the day you’re doomed,” Loomis told him. “I resist temptation better than you.”
    Loomis then proceeded to chase