Shine Read Free Page B

have
brain damage
, if Eunice’s nurse cousin had access to the truth.
    “Naw, they didn’t stick him with them sick kids,” Tammy said. “He’s got a room all to hisself. Got all kinds of tubes and wires and machines sticking out of him.”
    Machines sticking out of him
? I thought.
Really, Tammy
? Tammy worked at the paper mill until it was bought by some Japanese crook who shut it down and sold it for parts. But before that happened, Tammy got full-out scalped when she leaned over too close to the paper rollers. She didn’t have her hair pinned up like she was supposed to. To everyone’s surprise, her hair had grown back, and now it was just as sparse and stringy as ever, not that she let that stop her from teasing it high and shellacking it till it was as hard as a beetle’s shell. I reckoned she was the one with brain damage,
bless her heart
.
    I moved on from Tammy and her friend. By the choir room, the choir members were taking off their white robes and hanging them up. I caught the words
wickedness
and
ungodly
, and I turned right around, already knowing where that conversation was going.
    I paused in the hallway, my interest piqued by the sight of a timid young woman named Hannah speaking with a plumpwoman everyone called Zippy. Hannah was new to the church, having lived most of her life in a high-up mountain town called Coonesville. That was where she met her husband, who moved there for a job. But her husband’s mama lived in Black Creek, and now she was ailing, so they’d come to be with her.
    Hannah had a cute baby I’d taken care of in the church nursery a couple of times. Hannah herself seemed nice enough, and—a big point in her favor—she wasn’t from these parts.
    I edged closer and fiddled with my shoe, which was, in truth, giving me grief. Dress shoes were expensive, and I’d had these for over a year. They were black with tiny heels, and my toes were wedged in like Vienna sausages.
    “. . . was a nice boy,” Hannah was saying. Her tone was troubled, as if she was looking for reassurance.
    “He was,” Zippy said. “
Is
, I should say. Ain’t dead yet, after all.” She barked out an uncomfortable laugh.
    “But if he’s nice and all, why are folks talking the way they are?” Hannah asked. “It’s as if they think he
asked
for what happened to him. I just don’t understand it, not one bit.”
    Zippy eyed her. “Oh, I think you do. I ain’t sayin’ it’s right, mind you. But I’ve been to Coonesville. I reckon it’s not that different from Black Creek now, is it?”
    “I couldn’t say,” Hannah murmured. I snuck a sideways glance at her and saw that she was frowning. “There was one gal I knew—a single gal—and I can’t stop thinking about her. Can’t stop wondering what
she
would say about this mess.”
    “She go to your church?”
    “No. She didn’t go to church.”
    Zippy tugged at her skirt to adjust it within her rolls of fat. Her expression was disapproving as she waited for Hannah to continue.
    “She had herself a lady revolver, and she made sure everyone knew it,” Hannah said.
    “That so,” Zippy said, less a question than a bland acknowledgment.
    “I asked her once—her name’s Julia, and she’s real pretty, not at all what you’d expect—and one day I asked if she was scared of panthers or bears, if that’s why she kept a gun. She told me she could handle a panther just fine. What scared her was the thought of a truckful of rednecks paying her a visit.”
    Hannah kept her wide, anxious eyes on Zippy, which was lucky for me, as a girl could fool with her shoes for only so long. I straightened up and pretended to admire a quilt hanging on the wall.
    “She have a man in her life?” Zippy asked, meaning Julia-who-had-a-lady-revolver.
    A flush worked its way up Hannah’s face. “She was a single gal, like I said. Only . . . not exactly.”
    “Not exactly a gal?” Zippy said. “Or not exactly single?”
    “She was real nice,” Hannah said