Filed To Story: Sunrise on the Reaping Book PDF Free
I get some teeth into his palm and he jerks his hand back, but I’m only free enough to yell. “Ma! Sid! Maaaaa!”
Blair, kneeling on my right arm, leans in. Tears cut channels through his soot-blackened face. “We’re so sorry, Haymitch. We tried. You know we did. We just couldn’t save them.”
“No! Let me go!” I fight to free myself, but I’m so out-numbered, still so weak from the long days of recovery, that I’m overpowered. “Let me go with them. Please!” But they don’t, they hold on to me tight. I lie there, sobbing, begging, calling for Ma and Sid, until no more sounds come out.
“Can you help him?” I hear Burdock ask.
A cool hand rests on my forehead. The scent of chamomile flowers. Asterid March’s face swims into view, pained but sur-prisingly calm. “Drink this, Haymitch.” She presses a small bottle to my lips. “Drink until I say when.” Despite my desperation, or perhaps because of it, I follow her orders. Sweetness fills my mouth, soothes my gullet. “One, two, three, four, five – okay, when.” She pulls away the bottle. Smooths back my hair. “That’s right. That’s good. Try to rest now.”
My eyelids become leaden. “What . . . ?”
“Just some sleep syrup.”
“Ma . . . Sid . . .”
“I know. I know. We’ll do what can be done. You go to sleep now. Sleep.”
Dead to the world, I am, for over a day. I awake, thick-tongued and groggy, at the McCoys’, where Louella’s ma stands over me with a tin mug of tea. She does not mince words as she recounts the fire, perhaps because she’s so deep in grief herself she knows the last thing I want is sugarcoating. “It was our boy Cayson who spotted it, coming home from his ramblings. The house was already aflame. He shouted to raise the dead. We all started in with the water. But the pump’s slow and your cistern’s dry.”
I’m the reason that cistern’s dry. Running off the morning of reaping day, leaving the chores to Sid. “My fault,” I mumble.
“I expect you’ll think everything’s your fault for a long while. But that’s got to wait. Today we bury them. You know what your ma would want.”
Whether it’s shock or a sleep syrup hangover, I can’t seem to make sense of anything, so I do what I’m told. Louella’s big sister, Ima, has cleaned Great-Uncle Silius’s suit and polished his shoes. I’ve nothing else to wear, my own clothes being ash. It’s sweltering out, but I pull the champagne bubble jacket over the shirt to conceal the drug pump bloodstains, faded with washing, but still visible.
“Lenore Dove,” I tell Ima. “I got to go to her.”
“Cayson knows a Peacekeeper who said she’s got a hearing with the base commander today. You showing up won’t help her any, Hay. Besides, we’re about to head over to the graveyard.”
Outside, a plain pine box awaits. “They had hold of each other,” Mr. McCoy says. “Thought we’d let them stay that way.”
Ma and Sid clinging to each other for eternity.
Burdock, Blair, and a couple of Ma’s customers carry the coffin. The McCoys bring Louella’s from behind the house and the two groups move forward, side by side. I limp along behind them. The mourners grow as we proceed. Everybody should be at work, but they’ll claim they were sick. By the time we reach the graveyard, a couple hundred people have assembled. Seems like a lot compared to Mamaw’s burial, but then I realize we’re not grieving alone.
Five fresh graves await. One for Ma and Sid. Louella. Maysilee. Wyatt.
“Who’s the fifth for?” I hear Burdock ask.
“Jethro Callow,” a woman answers, not bothering to lower her voice. “Hung himself yesterday when his boy returned. Couldn’t bear the shame.”
A Booker Boy’s death.
The mayor’s come to speak over our loved ones. The words make no more sense than the chirping of birds in the surrounding trees. Sweat soaks through my shirt into my jacket. I want to kneel down and press my face against the cool Abernathy headstone, but I try to stand with dignity, as Ma would want.
There’s a bad moment when I look up and see my ally, wearing her District 12 black, and start for her. “Maysilee!” Her face crumples into tears, hides in a handkerchief. Not Maysilee. Merrilee. Like as two peas in a pod. Mr. Donner sobs beside her. I’m led back to my place. Obviously deranged.
Coffins are lowered into the graves. Many shovels work to bury the departed. Dirt’s patted down. Some kind soul lays a wreath of wildflowers on each mound. People weep and wail. It’s so awful, I want to run away.
Then Burdock begins to sing, in that clear, sweet voice of his:
You’re headed for heaven,
The sweet old hereafter,
And I’ve got one foot in the door.
But before I can fly up,
I’ve loose ends to tie up,
Right here in
The old therebefore.
The mockingjays, who nest in the surrounding trees, fall silent as he continues:
I’ll be along
When I’ve finished my song,
When I’ve shut down the band,
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