Blackbirds Read Free

of the truck, scratching his gut through his wife-beater. What she gets instead is a pair of frat boys.
      They're grinning.
      One's got that fireman's build and a pair of clear, mean eyes beneath a mop of blond. The other's shorter – squat, really. Fat, freckled cheeks. Tarheels cap overlooking a pair of puckered butthole eyes. Clean suburban white-boy clothes.
      Miriam nods. "Nice truck. The Tetanus Express."
      "It's my dad's," Blondie says, coming right up on her as cars continue to pass. Squats – that's how she thinks of the other one – trundles up behind her.
      "It's a real nice ride," she says.
      "You need a ride?" Squats asks from behind her. His tone isn't friendly.
      "Nah," she says. "I'm just out here flippin' the bird to pass the time."
      "You're a Yankee," Blondie says. Ironic, because he doesn't have much of the Southern pluck to his voice. Those icy eyes roam all over her. "A cute Yankee."
      Miriam massages her temples. She thinks for a moment about indulging these two frat-tards in some clever roadside banter, but the truth is, she's damp, she's tired, and the blacked eye is really starting to pound.
      "Listen. I know how this goes. You two boys think you're going to 'get some.' Maybe tag me at both ends, maybe just push me around, maybe see if I have any money. I get it. Like any good scavenger, I know predators when I see them. You know what, though? I just don't have the time. I'm fucking tired, for real. So. Get back in your lockjaw jalopy, and head back to the highway from whence you came."
      Blondie steps up on her. He doesn't touch her, but he's noseto-nose.
      "I like the way you use your mouth," he leers.
      "Last warning," she says. "You see the black eye, and you think I'm good to go, but sometimes a girl lets herself get hit for all kinds of complicated reasons. I won't let that happen again tonight. You picking up what I'm putting down?"
      Apparently not, because Squats puts his sausage fingers on her hips.
      Miriam reacts.
      Her head snaps back, pops Squats's nose –
      Squats is in his fifties now, fatter than ever, his nose one big gin blossom, and he's yelling at some woman in a yellow dress, and sweat is beading on his brow, and flecks of spit are flying out of his mouth, and suddenly he plants his fat hand on the kitchen counter as the heart attack tightens the left half of his body and turns his every nerve ending into a roadmap of pain.
      – and he howls, and Miriam thinks to turn up the volume by reaching back and gripping his crotch in a crushing claw. Blondie's taken aback, but she knows she doesn't have long. She spits in his eye, which buys her another second, so she uses her free hand to punch him once, then twice in the throat –
      The cancer is eating him up, juicing his bowels into a tumor-squeezed mess, but he's old, at least in his late seventies, and he lies there surrounded by the boops and beeps and blips of hospital equipment, and he's got his family there. A young boy grips his hand. An old woman bends down to kiss his forehead. A woman in her forties with her blonde hair pulled tight and a peaceful look on her face pats him on the chest once, then twice, and that's it – the old man cries out, shits blood, and dies.
      Squats tries to slap at her, a clumsy grizzly bear move, but she steps out of the way and his meaty palm swishes through air. Miriam's elbow catches him hard in his already-busted, alreadybleeding nose, and Squats goes down.
      Blondie, face red, still choking, rushes at her with all the finesse of a tumbling boulder. She pulls her upper torso back to dodge him, but lets her knee hang out there and catch him right in the bread basket. Blondie grunts, a hard oof of air, and slips on some gravel. He goes down.
      "You think I come out here and I don't know how to protect myself?" she screams at them. She picks up a handful of gravel and pitches it at Blondie, who moans and protects his head.