Nothing Gold Can Stay Read Free Page A

tongue with her tongue.
    “I been thirsting for that all last night and this morning,” Lucy said when she broke off the kiss. “That’s what it’s like—a thirsting. Chet ain’t never been able to stanch it, but you can.”
    She laid her head against his chest and held him tight. Feeling the desperation of her embrace, Sinkler knew that she’d risk her life to help him get away, help them get away. But a girl her age could turn quick as a weather vane. He set his hands on her shoulders and gently but firmly pushed her back enough to meet her eyes.
    “You ain’t just playing some make-believe with me, because if you are it’s time to quit.”
    “I’ll leave this second if you got need to,” Lucy said. “I’ll go get his money right now. I counted it this morning when he left. It’s near seven dollars. That’s enough, ain’t it, at least to get us tickets?”
    “You’ve never rode a train, have you?” Sinkler asked.
    “No.”
    “It costs more than that.”
    “How much more?”
    “Closer to five each,” Sinkler said, “just to get to Knoxville or Raleigh.”
    She touched the locket.
    “This is a pass-me-down from my momma. It’s pure silver and we could sell it.”
    Sinkler slipped a hand under the locket, inspected it with the feigned attentiveness of a jeweler.
    “And all this time I thought you had a heart of gold, Lucy Sorrels,” Sinkler said, and smiled as he let the locket slide off his palm. “No, darling. You keep it around your pretty neck. I got plenty for tickets, and maybe something extra for a shiny bracelet to go with that necklace.”
    “Then I want to go tomorrow,” Lucy said, and moved closer to him. “My bleed time is near over.”
    Sinkler smelled the honeysuckle and desire swamped him. He tried to clear his mind and come up with reasons to delay but none came.
    “We’ll leave in the morning,” Sinkler said.
    “All right,” she said, touching him a moment longer before removing her hand.
    “We’ll have to travel light.”
    “I don’t mind that,” Lucy said. “It ain’t like I got piddling anyway.”
    “Can you get me one of his shirts and some pants?”
    Lucy nodded.
    “Don’t pack any of it until tomorrow morning when he’s in the field,” Sinkler said.
    “Where are we going?” she asked. “I mean, for good?”
    “Where do you want to go?”
    “I was notioning California. They say it’s like paradise out there.”
    “That’ll do me just fine,” Sinkler said, then grinned. “That’s just where an angel like you belongs.”
     
    The next morning, he told Vickery that the Sorrelses’ well was going dry and he’d have to backtrack to the other one. “That’ll be almost a mile jaunt for you,” Vickery said, and shook his head in mock sympathy. Sinkler walked until he was out of sight. He found himself a marker, a big oak with a trunk cracked by lightning, then stepped over the ditch and entered the woods. He set the buckets by a rotting stump, close enough to the oak tree to be easily found if something went wrong. Because Sinkler knew that, when it came time to lay down or fold, Lucy might still think twice about trusting someone she’d hardly known two weeks, and a convict at that. Or the husband might notice a little thing like Lucy not gathering eggs or not putting a kettle on for supper, things Sinkler should have warned her to do.
    Sinkler stayed close to the road, and soon heard the clink of leg chains and the rasp of shovels gathering dirt. Glimpses of black and white caught his eye as he made his way past. The sounds of the chain gang faded, and not long after that the trees thinned, the barn’s gray planking filling the gaps. Sinkler did not enter the yard. Lucy stood just inside the farmhouse door. He studied the shack for any hint that the farmer had found out. But all was as it had been, clothing pinned on the wire between two trees, cracked corn spilled on the ground for the chickens, the axe still on the porch beside the hoe. He