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Show Acting Alone Page 314 hands squeezed tight the whole time because Shanny was so scared. She was scarcely bigger and smarter than a diaper-baby in those days. Now, like he said, Spikey was born and bred and reared a Protestant, just like his mama reminded him before Polly picked him up to go to the parade. "You can go to the cat-lickers' parties, if'n they don't scare you like they do me, sweetie. But just remember you're a little Lutheran boy, Missouri Synod, and always will be till the day you die and go to heaven, even if your cousins aint." Spikey was no cat-licker, and he was a boy and no flowery gal. But, even so, that little saint-card the assistant nun-girl give him made him feel all delightsome inside like a girl that is a Catholic by religion, because everybody, grownups and all, was outside singing and caterwauling and worrying their little strings of beads, all dressed up funny, and it was early summer, half planting season, half growing season, and down the mountainslope him and Shanny could see their natural home, the farmlands, flattened out like a granny quilt, just like they was in a airplane. And Spikey never had no sisters of his own no matter how hard he asked his mama to get him one, so he liked knowing a bunch of grownup ladies he could call sister - even though the dreamy, deep part of him was really scared of their big black robes and crazy hoods that reminded him of dying in a dark place far away from home, underneath the ground. But, anyway, he was a grownup driving his Ramcharger up into the foothills with a secret police escort now, sneaking up underneath the black |