Ironweed Read Free

at the idea that death was about to change for her. With a furtive burst of energy she wove another cross from the shallow-rooted weeds above her and quickly swallowed it, but was disappointed by the taste. Weeds appealed to Kathryn Phelan in direct ratio to the length of their roots. The longer the weed, the more revulsive the cross.
              Francis and Rudy kept walking north on Broadway, Francis’s right shoe flapping, its counter rubbing wickedly against his heel. He favored the foot until he found a length of twine on the sidewalk in front of Frankie Leikheim’s plumbing shop. Frankie Leikheim. A little kid when Francis was a big kid and now he’s got his own plumbing shop and what have you got, Francis? You got a piece of twine for a shoelace. You don’t need shoelaces for walking short distances, but on the bum without them you could ruin your feet for weeks. You figured you had all the calluses anybody’d ever need for the road, but then you come across a different pair of shoes and they start you out with a brand-new set of blisters. Then they make the blisters bleed and you have to stop walking almost till they scab over so’s you can get to work on another callus.
              The twine didn’t fit into the eyelets of the shoe. Francis untwined it from itself and threaded half its thickness through enough of the eyelets to make it lace. He pulled up his sock, barely a sock anymore, holes in the heel, the toe, the sole, gotta get new ones. He cushioned his raw spot as best he could with the sock, then tightened the new lace, gently, so the shoe wouldn’t flop. And he walked on toward the cemetery.
              “There’s seven deadly sins,” Rudy said.
              “Deadly? What do you mean deadly?” Francis said.
              “I mean daily,” Rudy said. “Every day.”
              “There’s only one sin as far as I’m concerned,” Francis said.
              “There’s prejudice.”
              “Oh yeah. Prejudice. Yes.”
              “There’s envy.”
              “Envy. Yeah, yup. That’s one.”
              “There’s lust.”
              “Lust, right. Always liked that one.”
              “Cowardice.”
              “Who’s a coward?”
              “Cowardice.”
              “I don’t know what you mean. That word I don’t know.”
              “Cowardice,” Rudy said.
              “I don’t like the coward word. What’re you sayin’ about coward?”
              “A coward. He’ll cower up. You know what a coward is? He’ll run.”
              “No, that word I don’t know. Francis is no coward. He’ll fight anybody. Listen, you know what I like?”
              “What do you like?”
              “Honesty,” Francis said.
              “That’s another one,” Rudy said.
              At Shaker Road they walked up to North Pearl Street and headed north on Pearl. Where they live now. They’d painted Sacred Heart Church since he last saw it, and across the street School 20 had new tennis courts. Whole lot of houses here he never saw, new since ‘16. This is the block they live in. What Billy said. When Francis last walked this street it wasn’t much more than a cow pasture. Old man Rooney’s cows would break the fence and roam loose, dirtyin’ the streets and sidewalks. You got to put a stop to this, Judge Ronan told Rooney. What is it you want me to do, Rooney asked the judge, put diapers on ‘em?
              They walked on to the end of North Pearl Street, where it entered Menands, and turned down to where it linked with Broadway. They walked past the place where the old Bull’s Head Tavern used to be. Francis was a kid when he saw Gus Ruhlan come out of the corner in bare knuckles. The bum he was fighting stuck out a hand to shake, Gus give him a