Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem Read Free Page A

go away, go away,” a woman’s voice screeched. “I told
you filthy bastards to go away!”
I started to heed the command, but then the voice jarred something
loose in my memory, and I stopped and turned to the closed
front door.
“Mrs. Gradduk, it’s Lincoln Perry,” I said, speaking loudly.
Cars passed on the street, and a few blocks down some kids were
yelling and laughing, bass music thumping in the background, a
party building. The streetlight flickered and hummed, and I stood
with my hands in my pockets and waited. I waited until I was sure she was not coming to the door, and then I reached out and
knocked. I’d hardly laid my knuckles to the wood when the door
swung open and a thin woman with hollow eye sockets and deep
wrinkles stood before me.
“You son of a bitch,” she said. Her voice was as thin as she was;
you could hear it fine but it always seemed on the verge of breaking,
maybe disappearing altogether. If you didn’t know the
woman, you’d associate those vocal qualities with old age or a lifetime
of cigarettes. But I knew that the voice had always been the
same and that she’d never smoked. Her hand rested on the doorknob,
and her forearm and wrist were the sort of severely thin that
made me think of starving children in Africa and black-and-white
footage of Holocaust concentration camps. Her skin hung draped
from sharp, angular bones in the same fashion as her sleeveless
dress, creased and puckered and wrinkled. Her blond hair was gray
now, filled with split ends and tangles. Looking at her, it was hard
to believe that she had once been a beautiful woman. Not that
many years had passed, but it seemed she’d aged ten with every one
that had gone by on the calendar.
“Evening, Mrs. Gradduk,” I said. Evening. As if I’d dropped by
for a glass of lemonade and a chance to discuss the weather and
the kids.
She tightened her hand on the knob, and I couldn’t help but
stare at it, waiting for the bones to splinter.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
A fine question. I licked dry lips and ran a hand through my
hair, my eyes on the fresh planks beneath my feet.
“Well?” she said.
“I didn’t know you were living here, too,” I said, just to fill the silence
with something.
“I asked what you want.”
I straightened up and looked her in the eye again. “I guess I’d
like to find Ed. Maybe I can . . . maybe I can help him.”
“Help him? Help him?” She took a half step out onto the landing,
peering up at me, her mouth twisted with distaste. “You’re the
one to blame for this, you know? He made one mistake and then
you ruined him. He was never the same.”
“That was a long time ago,” I said. “I can’t fix that. But I hear
Ed’s in a lot of trouble now. I’d like to find him.”
She leaned back and glared at me. “You even spoken to him in
the last ten years?”
It hadn’t been ten years, but I also hadn’t spoken to him. I didn’t
answer, just stood there awkwardly before a woman who’d once
baked me cookies and was now looking at me as if she’d like to
sink her teeth into me, pour venom into my veins.
“What the hell do you think you can do, you asshole?” she said,
and I was struck by her language, the stream of profanity. In all the
years I’d known Alberta Gradduk, I couldn’t think of one time I’d
heard her swear. “The police have it all on tape. He did it, you
know. He set that fire and burned that girl up. And you want to
know why he did it?”
I didn’t answer.
“Because it’s what he turned into after you turned your back on
him. He made a mistake. People make mistakes. And you were
supposed to be his friend. His best friend.”
“I did what I was required to do, Mrs. Gradduk. I’d taken an
oath, and it didn’t stop with friends.”
“What do you think you can do now?” she said, and while there
was still hostility in her voice, there was also a hint, however vague,
of hope.
“I don’t know.” Down the street, the shouts and