Homesick Creek Read Free Page B

or not.”
    Hack didn’t miss a beat. He just nodded like he assumed she’d known all along, like maybe he’d even mentioned something about it to her himself once or twice. Joelle must have given him a heads-up when they passed. People were always saving Hack like that. They never did it for Bunny.
    “It’s a hell of a good price,” he said. “I don’t know, though. I guess I’ll probably let it go. We could use the money for some things around the house.”
    “Just go talk to Dooley. He had some things he wanted to tell you.” Ten years ago she might have been fooled, but not anymore. She knew Hack would buy the bike. There wasn’t even any point in talking about it. He’d probably already bought it and just slipped the kid a little extra to keep quiet about it until he could break Bunny into the idea. His agreeing with you about something didn’t mean he wouldn’t turn right around and go off in the opposite direction, with nothing more between him and your conversation than the hope that you wouldn’t find out until he’d had a chance to work on you.
    “Listen,” Bunny said. “Don’t you work me, Hack. I bet you just paid the boy not to tell anyone for a while.”
    Hack’s face closed up, and his eyes froze over. “Now, I come over here to be nice to you,” he said, quiet and deadly. “I came over to keep you company. I didn’t come over here to take crap. You talk to me when you’re sweeter.” He turned around and walked away from the waitress station and out of the Anchor. In another minute she heard his pickup roar out of the back parking lot.
    Just pretend this is about work. Oh, Lord, Hack, do I feel stupid; I didn’t
think she’d be home. You can’t talk with her there, can you? So I’ll hang up
now. I guess I’ll just hang up. Here I go.
    Bunny didn’t know for sure if Hack had ever cheated on her. He flirted with everyone, but he was always home when he was supposed to be, and he never went anywhere alone on weekends, not even when Bunny had to work a shift at the Anchor to cover for someone. Of course he was always home now too, and there was that phone call. And a few years ago Bunny had suspected a little cotton-haired girl who tended bar at the Wayside Tavern for a couple months and was always having car trouble and catching a ride with Hack to get it fixed over in Sawyer.
    It was hard to know what to think. Hack still laid hands on Bunny whenever she’d let him. Bunny wasn’t much for sex herself anymore. Somewhere along the line, in tiny bits and pieces, she’d lost her appetite. Every time Hack tried to con her, every time he promised not to do something and then went and did it anyway, every time he dished up some little bones and gristle of truth and tried to sweet-talk her into thinking it was a meal, she’d lost the taste for another little part of him. His sex parts went first, of course, but they were followed by other parts that she missed a lot more. The backs of his thighs. His neck, between his ear and his shoulder. The meaty part of his chest below his collarbone, where the hair made a hurricane shape. The pale insides of his wrists and elbows. Finally, one morning four or five years ago, she woke up and found she could look at him all over and not get the urge for a single bite. Except for times like now, when he might be leaving her; when he might have already left. Watching him walk out of the Anchor Inn, Bunny thought his whole body looked just like a picnic.
    When she got off work at ten, Bunny drove by Anita’s house. Anita had an edge on her like a razor lately, but Bunny didn’t feel like going home. If Hack called to sweet-talk her, she didn’t want him to find her that easily, and if he didn’t bother to call, she didn’t want to know. At least it had stopped raining.
    Anita was standing in the lee of her carport, hanging out laundry. She’d been real pretty when she was younger, but you couldn’t tell now. Bunny used to cut out diet tips from