Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem Read Free

garage. I move with him, and now
I’m inside the dank little building. The fuel smell is still potent. I’m
wearing my mitt, but I slip it off my hand and let it drop to the concrete
floor. The baseball is clenched tight in my right hand, my arm pulled
back a bit. I’ve never been scared of the dark, but for some reason I
want out of this garage.
“/ can’t find the damn switch,” Ed mutters beside me, and then
there’s a click and the little room fills with bright white light. For a second
it’s too bright, and I close my eyes against the shock. They’re closed
when I hear Ed begin to scream.
My eyes snap open and I take a stumbling step backward, trying to
get out of the garage, thinking that there is an attacker in here, some
sort of threat to make Ed scream like that. My back hits the wall,
though, and in the extra second I’m kept in the garage my eyes finally
take in the scene.
Ed’s father’s Chevy Nova is inside the garage. 'The driver’s window
is down and upon the doorframe rests Norm Gradduk’s head. His face
is pointed toward the ceiling, his skin puffy and unnatural. It takes
one look to tell even me, a child, that he is dead.
Ed runs toward the car, shrieking in a pitch higher than I would’ve
thought he could possibly reach. He extends his arms to his father, then
pulls them back immediately. He wants to help him; he’s scared to
touch him.
“We gotta call somebody,” I say, my own voice trembling. I step
closer to the car despite a deep desire to get as far from the scene as possible,
and now I can see inside. 'There’s a bottle of liquor in Norm
Gradduk’s lap. One of his hands is still wrapped around it. On the
stereo. Van Morrison sings of a foghorn blowing, “I want to hear it; I
don’t have to fear it. . .”
Ed turns and runs past me, out the door and into the yard. He’s
still screaming, and after one more look at Norm Gradduk, I begin to
shout, too. Inside the house, Ed’s mother yells for everyone to keep it
down out there.
It takes the paramedics seven minutes to arrive, and about seventy
seconds for them to tell Ed and his mother that there is nothing they
can do.
    CHAPTER 2
    I still knew the house, although I hadn’t been inside in years. Word
of mouth brought me the news that Ed had bought his childhood
home, and while I could no longer remember the source, I remembered
hearing about it. The house had never been a showpiece—
nothing in our neighborhood was—but when Ed’s dad was alive it
had been the best on the block, hands down. He’d spent hours on
it, painting and repairing and weeding. My own father had always
been impressed by it, telling me on many occasions that while
Norm Gradduk had his faults, he took pride in his home, and there
weren’t enough men around who still did that.
It was evident that Ed intended to match his father’s devotion.
The house looked bad, with a sagging porch roof, a broken window
on the second story, and paint that had forgotten whether it
was pale yellow or white and decided to settle on grimy gray. A
ladder was leaning against the west side of the house, though, and
it was clear that someone had been scraping the peeling paint off
that wall with the idea of applying a fresh coat. A stack of discarded
scrap wood near the porch was evidence of new planking
laid on the floor. No doubt the porch roof was next on the list.
No police cars were in the driveway or at the curb when I arrived,
but I saw a black Crown Victoria parked on the street two
blocks down. They would be there all night, watching for a return
that would surely not occur. I parked my truck facing them, and
then I walked through the yard and up the front steps. Maybe
    someone would be home. A girlfriend, or a roommate. Hell, he
could be married by now for all I knew.
My footsteps were loud on the new porch. I stood there and
looked around for a minute, lost in memories, then nearly fell back
off the porch when someone screamed at me from inside the
house.
“Go away,