Dead Boys Read Free Page B

memory. Now I’m going to ask you one more time. Leave us be.”
    Ridiculous as it seemed, Jacob had never contemplated the possibility of failure. “I will not,” he said. “If it’s quiet you so desire, I’ll stay for months. I’ll tell you stories. I’ll—I’ll play that recorder. I’ll sing! Off-key! I’ll do anything it takes, Clarissa, to find my way to—”
    The shotgun was leveled at his head before he’d even seen her move. “I told you,” she snarled, a quilt sliding from her arm, “to call me Ma .”
    That must have been the weapon that ended Remington’s life, Jacob thought. Though he was beyond pain, Jacob had no desire to learn what the obliteration of his head would mean.
    “Now I hate to turn away a paying customer. But this is not a topic I will discuss with anyone, for any reason. So you take your picture-book, Patches, and you get your rotten bones out that door before I count to five, or God help me—”
    But the shotgun’s barrels drifted to the floor. Ma Kicks was staring down at her belly, where the baby’s feet were thrashing in a definite, syncopated rhythm, too forceful to ignore.
    “Oh, no, baby,” she whispered, buckling her arms around her gut. “Don’t do that.”
    Jacob peered at the tantrum. What strength those tiny feet had! They’d have punctured her belly had it not already been broken.
    “You just calm down, now,” she begged, jouncing. “You just give your poor Momma a break, would you? Just one time, baby, just let me be .” But the feet flew up to find her ribs, making a drum of her abdomen. “I said that’s enough , damn it! Hell you want me to do, go back in time?”
    For a moment the child fell still. When it resumed, it was kicking harder.
    “Aw, Momma’s sorry, now,” she moaned. “Momma shouldn’t have yelled. We’ll read the man’s fortune. Just you quiet down!”
    She glared at Jacob. “Looks like the little one’s taken a shine to you, which is more than I can say. Guess you’ll get a reading out of this after all. So we can have some peace around here.” Cursing under her breath, she scooped up a leather cup and rattled its contents over her open womb. “Two shakes for baby. One for me.” She dumped it out on the floor between them, and five tiny dice, carved out of bone, clattered oddly across the curved metal, rolling on when they ought, by rights, to have stopped. When they did, Ma Kicks huffed, scooped them up and rolled again.
    She and Jacob could only stare. The dice had fallen just the same the second time, with every pip in precisely the same place.
    “Oh, come on now. Be fair.”
    But the child inside her started thrashing again, and Ma Kicks turned away from Jacob, falling silent for a long while. “All right, Patches. You want to find the Living Man?” she said at last, her voice cracking. “I’m supposed to tell you where to find him. The bones are clear on that. But I’ve got two conditions.”
    Back turned, she wrenched with all her strength. There was a snap, and her whole body shuddered.
    “First, you take this,” she muttered, “and you keep it close. Hear me? Never let it out of your sight. It’ll—it’ll keep you on the path.”
    She held her fist over his open hand. Jacob gaped as she let the object fall: there, plopping into the mottled leather of his palm, was the index finger of her left hand.
    Shocked at her sacrifice, horrified by the contact, Jacob whispered, “But why? What—what is it for ?”
    “The dice don’t lie. But you ask too many questions, and they’ll make you pay. I learned that the hard way. Now, they said it plain, two times in a row. You’re taking that with you, and you’re gonna take the boy, too.”
    “The boy ?” cried Jacob, hearing a crack as he squeezed the finger tighter than he’d meant to. “What, you mean—Remington? Come with me? Impossible! It will be terribly dangerous, and he’s a fool, a simpleton, a whirlwind, a—”
    “Hey, check it out!” cried