March in Country Read Free Page B

the stumps down and mix in a little linseed oil and use it as furniture polish. Not cheap wicks, either, they’re braided.”
    She was a little pushy. Macon warmed at the thought that he could snap his fingers and have her lifted out of existence. Just stick something under my nose, babe, and you’ll never see another cinnamonscented moonrise .
    The washroom door opened, and a youth with calf muscles like horse hooves exited. Still spotty, maybe seventeen or so. His distinctive black-and-white striped shirt had a name patch—Kurt, it read—and vertical lettering in one of the white stripes read ENCOMPASS in red letters.
    Encompass was one of the New Universal Church’s principal periodicals for the masses, a monthly with a beautiful glossy cover and smeared pages between. Families who wanted to stay in the good graces of their local clergy would be able to discuss the month’s lead article and lead editorial. The rest of it, printed on thin, soft, not very absorbent paper that almost begged to be used for sanitary purposes, made a decent sedative. Sinecured editorialists droned on and on about obscure reclarifications of a previous perceived error in Church doctrine, which, if you thought about it correctly, wasn’t really so much of a mistake as it was an example of poor word choice. At the back you usually had a useful how-to or two on how to get the most vitamin value out of sixteen hundred calories or the quickest method to check your kids for lice before and after school.
    Volunteers like this kid, now turning bright red for some reason as he checked his fly, sold subscriptions and delivered it. Each issue also contained a bonus offer for some household item of dubious quality the kids had to attempt to upsell and then deliver, assuming the stock ever arrived.
    Tough job. Lots of miles, no pay, and plenty of headaches thanks to the summer heat.
    A woman exited the washroom after the kid, fixing the two remaining buttons on her blouse. She looked like a cowboy biker, all overcoat, chain belt, and tight jeans. Smeared lipstick and short red hair, possibly dyed. Haunted, hunted eyes. No wonder the kid turned red, she was so skinny he suspected she might be a tranny. Well, no Adam’s apple. Whatever her gender, the whore looked like she’d been on short commons for a while. Probably gave the kid a five-buck handjob while he felt her tits.
    She clutched a rolled up copy of Encompass in her strong-looking hands.
    Good job, kid . Never miss a chance to sell a loose copy .
    Well, this whore had turned her last trick. He was half tempted to add the counterman to the bag. What kind of establishment was he running? Macon wondered what his cut was.
    “Don’t leave just yet,” Macon told the kid, hurrying for the door and his bike.
    “Th-th-th-that’s t-t-t-three for you t-t-t-today, Red,” a greasy-haired Indian at the counter managed.
    The scarred-up Indian smelled like woodsmoke and swamp water. All the weathering made his age hard to guess, but there were a few flecks of gray in the otherwise shiny black hair.
    The stuttering Indian must have had it in for the whore. Maybe he couldn’t scrape together even the chump change to afford a throw. He’d all but painted a sign reading SHE’S A WHORE! TAKE HER, NOT ME.
    Not quite as lean as the whore, well-muscled about the shoulders, he wore a tattered mix of legworm leather—rare down in Georgia but more common up here—and polyester felt insulated vest. He’d picked up some utility worker’s canvas trousers, probably at a resale store. One of those hammer picks hung from a short chain at his belt. The legworm riders used them to peg down their mounts for the night with the hammer end, and the spike end had a slight hook to it, like a mountaineer’s climbing pick. They buried that end in the skin of their mounts to pull themselves up. Macon felt a momentary doubt—the stutterer might be a deserter from one of the armies lately rampaging across Kentucky. He put