My Father Like a River

My Father Like a River Read Free Page B

Book: My Father Like a River Read Free
Author: Ron Rash
Tags: Fiction, Literary
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wisps of hair behind her ear.
    â€œMaybe the same reason as you,” Sinkler said. “It’s
not like you can get whisked away from here. I haven’t seen more than a couple
of cars and trucks on this road, and those driving them know there’s prisoners
about. They wouldn’t be fool enough to pick up a stranger. Haven’t seen a lot of
train tracks either.”
    â€œAnybody ever try?” Lucy asked.
    â€œYeah, two weeks ago. Fellow ran that morning and
the bloodhounds had him grabbing sky by dark. All he got for his trouble was a
bunch of tick bites and briar scratches. That and another year added to his
sentence.”
    For the first time since she’d gone to fetch her
husband, Lucy stepped off the porch and put some distance between her and the
door. The rifle and axe too, which meant that she was starting to trust him at
least a little. She stood in the yard and looked up at an eave, where black
insects hovered around clots of dried mud.
    â€œThem dirt daubers is a nuisance,” Lucy said. “I
knock their nests down and they build them back the next day.”
    â€œI’d guess them to be about the only thing that
wants to stay around here, don’t you think?”
    â€œYou’ve got a saucy way of talking,” she said.
    â€œYou don’t seem to mind it too much,” Sinkler
answered, and nodded toward the field. “An older fellow like that usually keeps
a close eye on a pretty young wife, but he must be the trusting sort, or is it
he just figures he’s got you corralled in?”
    He lifted the full buckets and stepped close enough
to the barn not to be seen from the field. “You don’t have to stand so far from
me, Lucy Sorrels. I don’t bite.”
    She didn’t move toward him but she didn’t go back
to the porch, either.
    â€œIf you was to escape, where would you go?”
    â€œMight depend on who was going with me,” Sinkler
answered. “What kind of place would you like to visit?”
    â€œLike you’d just up and take me along. I’d likely
that about as much as them daubers flying me out of here.”
    â€œNo, I’d need to get to know my traveling partner
better,” Sinkler said. “Make sure she really cared about me. That way she
wouldn’t take a notion to turn me in.”
    â€œYou mean for the reward money?”
    Sinkler laughed.
    â€œYou’ve got to be a high cloud to have a reward put
on you, darling. They’d not even bother to put my mug in a post office, which is
fine by me. Buy my train ticket and I’d be across the Mississippi in two days.
Matter of fact, I’ve got money enough saved to buy two tickets.”
    â€œEnough for two tickets?” she asked.
    â€œI do indeed.”
    Lucy looked at her bare feet, placed one atop the
other as a shy child might. She set both feet back on the ground and looked
up.
    â€œWhy come you to think a person would turn you in
if there ain’t no reward?”
    â€œBad conscience—which is why I’ve got to be sure my
companion doesn’t have one.” Sinkler smiled. “Like I said, you don’t have to
stand so far away. We could even step into the barn for a few minutes.”
    Lucy looked toward the field and let her gaze
linger long enough that he thought she just might do it.
    â€œI have chores to get done,” she said and went into
the shack.
    Sinkler headed back down the road, thinking things
out. By the time he set the sloshing buckets beside the prison truck, he’d
figured a way to get Lucy Sorrels’s dress raised with more than just sweet talk.
He’d tell her there was an extra set of truck keys in a guard’s front desk he
could steal. Once the guards were distracted, he’d jump in the truck, pick her
up, head straight to Asheville, and catch the first train out. It was a damn
good story, one Sinkler himself might have believed if he didn’t know that all
the

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