Homesick Creek Read Free Page A

playing out meaner, and even though Hack still wouldn’t talk about them, she knew it was because he was trying to figure out what to do. And whatever he chose, he meant to do alone. One day, Bunny knew, he’d just take her and Vinny and Vernon Ford and everything else about their lives and pitch them over the side and rise up like a big hot-air balloon and be gone. You couldn’t keep a man like Hack. The best you could hope for, if you were lucky and you played your cards right, was to get the use of him for a while.
    Hack finally walked in the Anchor’s back door at six, half an hour late. Joelle Burden, Dooley’s sister, was with him. Joelle worked the six a.m. shift. She was wide-mouthed, small-eyed, and tough as all hell. She’d been tough even when she was fifteen and used to baby-sit for Bunny and her sister, Fanny. She used to tape their mouths shut with duct tape if they gave her any flak. Sometimes Fanny went around with tape marks on her face for days. Now Joelle was fifty-seven, but she was walking real close to Hack anyway, the way women always did. Even Beth Ann, who had plenty of boyfriends her own age, liked to come over and flirt when Hack was around. Hack would tell her jokes and talk in that sweet dirty way of his, and Beth Ann would blush and giggle and make a fool out of herself.
    Bunny was setting up some tables in the back for when the tourists began to come in. Paper napkins, paper place mats, forks, knives, spoons. Sugar, Sugar Twin, Equal. Upside-down coffee mugs, upside-down water glasses, fake carnation, fake greens, fake crystal bud vase, real water. Joelle gave Hack a little see-you-later punch on the arm and signaled Bunny to meet her over at the waitress station.
    “That man sure can tell a story,” she said when Bunny got there. She poured herself a mug of caffeinated and turned her back so Bunny could tie her apron. Joelle had bursitis so bad in both shoulders she couldn’t do up half her clothes anymore.
    “Do you think Hack’s going to buy that Leonard kid’s dirt bike?” she said while Bunny worked the bow. “He just asked me what I thought, but shoot, I don’t know anything about it. What did you tell him?”
    “First thing I heard of it was from Dooley fifteen minutes ago,” Bunny said grimly, giving Joelle’s bow a final yank.
    “Shit. Oh, honey—”
    “I’ll tell you what, if he gets that thing, he better buy me a new washing machine first,” Bunny said. “Mine walks all over the house on the spin cycle. Look at that. See that guy at table seven? Every two seconds he’s putting his damn hand up for something like this is the goddamn Ritz.”
    “You go ahead and talk to Hack, and I’ll take care of His Majesty,” Joelle said.
    “I don’t want to talk to him,” Bunny said, but Joelle had already hustled out of range.
    Hack had been out the front door at the newspaper machine. He passed Joelle on the way back, with the paper tucked under his arm so he didn’t get any of the print on his hands. While Bunny filled a mug of coffee for him from the dregs of the oldest pot, he stood real close and slipped his hand over her backside. In a minute, she thought, he’d be talking dirty to her. Last night, after he’d hung up from that phone call, he’d been real nice too, bringing her beers with the tops already cracked open, watching TV in the living room with her instead of working on his pickup out in the garage like she knew he’d planned to. He probably knew she’d overheard something last night. He was being good until he could figure out how much trouble he was in. He didn’t even know yet that she knew about the dirt bike.
    “You should’ve stayed in bed another minute or two,” he whispered in her ear. “I was warming up something nice for you, but you were too quick.”
    “Something nice for you, you mean.”
    “That too.” He grinned.
    “Go talk to Dooley,” she said. “He was asking about whether you’re going to buy that boy’s dirt bike