November Mourns Read Free Page B

they both must’ve felt some relief that it was done with.
    Now he wondered if enough time would ever pass for him to bring up the kid. If he could tell her what he needed to say. It grieved him to have this secret burden. He always felt it did an injustice to the child as well, without so much as a whisper about it.
    “Are you planning to get a job?” she asked.
    “No.”
    “I suppose you’ll just run moon like the rest of them.”
    “You know me better than that.”
    “It’s what everyone does. A few years ago, they still had the option of farming, fishing, working the fields or the cane. But it’s different now.”
    “Is it?”
    “It’s all make liquor or run liquor. All your old friends are working moon, except for Dave Fox. Jake, Luppy Joe, even Tub sometimes moves whiskey when he’s not doing the road shows or the stock car derby.”
    She mentioned more names. The ones he hadn’t thought about since he’d left, coming back to him one after the other. It went to show how elated he’d been to get out of the hollow, even if it was only into the slam. Maybe he’d have time enough to do what needed to be done.
    “It’s not their fault,” he said. “It’s just the way things are.”
    “Don’t you want to do more?”
    “I haven’t thought about it much lately.”
    “I assumed you would’ve thought of nothing else.”
    “You shouldn’t have,” he told her, and there was more indignation in his voice than he’d meant.
    “I see that now.”
    Naive, a touch too judgmental, but resolute in her convictions. It saddened him some, how much he’d learned behind bars, how forgiving it made him.
    “Why’d you come back?” she asked. “You were one of the few people who actually got out of this town.”
    “I wasn’t exactly out,” Shad said. “I was in prison.”
    “For being a man of admirable qualities. You stood up to that Zeke Hester when nobody else would.”
    “My intentions weren’t exactly noble. I just wanted to kill the son of a bitch.”
    “That’s noble enough around here.”
    Maybe anywhere. She could always crack through the bone of any conversation, reach right in and get to your deepest place. Even if she was wrong, she never let you pull any shit with her. He probably still needed that in his life, even though he’d been waiting two years to find someone he could be soft with once more.
    “Shad? You didn’t answer me.”
    He looked at her with the blue awareness that whatever had once held them together had already departed. He could hunt for his passion for the rest of his life and never find it again.
    “Why’d you come back?”
    “To find out what happened to Megan,” he said.
    The sound of his sister’s name had an unearthly quality to it, ephemeral as an echo. He suddenly felt thirsty and glanced around hoping to see one of Luppy Joe Anson’s jugs nearby. The need for moon was suddenly on him.
    “I was awfully sorry to hear about her.”
    Shad wanted to ask a dozen questions, but he couldn’t go about it that way. The proper place to start was with his father. All the rest would be rumor, hearsay, and gossip.
    “You’re a very stupid man, Shad Jenkins.”
    He shrugged and gave her the grin that used to make her tilt forward to nuzzle his chest. Now she just stared at him, wary and nettled. “You’re not the first to tell me that, Elf.”
    “It’s no surprise. You’re going to get yourself into very bad trouble in the hollow. You ought to leave. You have to go.”
    “I will,” he said, feeling the rage fragment until slivers prodded his neck, his wrists, “as soon as I find out what happened to Mags.”
    The ebbing bonfire suddenly burst apart with rekindled life. Swirling flames heaved and bucked. Somebody shouted and the others laughed, still spurting streams of moon.
    Shad saw arms whirling and waving, covered in red, and thought somebody was bleeding before he realized it was a guy on fire, trying to put his blazing jacket cuffs out. It was Jake