Stone Shadow Read Free Page A

don't seem to give a shit anymore,” Lee said. You change so much with the years. With the job. His achievements had been talked about so much they'd become little more than blurry postcards, sent back from weird pit stops on his trip through the heart of darkness. Lee was dead wrong. He thought to himself, Shit is all I give, pal.
    And it was dragging him down into the depths just like his drowning dream.
    “Come on,” he would hear the two boys shout. Even recalling their names from childhood. The Demented Dentist he couldn't recall, but Whortley Williams and Cabrey Brown he remembered forty years later. Go figure it
    “Come on, ya sissy."
    “I ain't no sissy."
    “Jack's a sissy. A mama's boy!"
    “Yeah, he's too chicken shit to swim out this far. Sissy boy!"
    And in his frightening dream Jack would swim out past the pier pilings where his folks had told him never to swim, out there in the water so deep no one had ever touched bottom, out over the black hole that was measured in measureless fathoms, out where little boys had no business.
    “What a sissy. Can't even swim underwater,” Cabrey Brown taunted him.
    “Can so."
    “Prove it."
    “Huh?"
    “Let's see ya swim underwater. Swim over here to us. It's only about fifteen or twenty feet. I'll bet you're chicken shit."
    “Yeah,” Whortley Williams, the other bully, dared him. “Too chicken shit to swim underwater. Chicken shit mama's boy."
    “Hell I am,” Jack said as he took a huge breath, filling his lungs with lake air and diving down into the inky black, strong arms pulling, legs scissoring as he swam toward the boys, hard breaststrokes underwater, eyes squinted tight in the cold, muddy lake water, and oh God suddenly something has him caught like a vise the boys are holding him as he tries to thrash out with his arms and legs twisting pulling, no good can't pull free they are bigger and stronger and the two of them have got him and they're holding him under the water and he's fighting to break free and he can't and in the thrashing, heart-pounding panic he tries to scream and swallows about three gallons of foul lake water choking drowning all his air gone screaming without a voice, crying fainting blacking out into death and suddenly waking up bathed in cold sleep sweat and sheet-soaked terror knowing the hangover isn't as bad as it could be. Just grateful now to be awake on the edge of the dream and not dead at the bottom of Sugar Lake. Grateful he can swing his legs out of bed in a minute and that it isn't one of those real ass-kicker headaches that start way behind the eyes somewhere, drilling through the brain, making waking up such a challenge that you keep your eyes closed and the covers over your head, the alky's wake-up call.
    But the dream and the fuzzy head combined make it a bad beginning and even then in that jarring self-realization, in those few seconds when you're still honest with yourself, you know you won't be able to get through the day without some medicine. And you wake up anticipating the astringent mouthwash gargle, the taste of the toothpaste, and that first eye-opener. And you light up like the glowing tubes inside an old-time console radio at the thought of that first taste and you know it's starting to take you back down again.
    Jack's regimen would be to aim for that kitchen. Get his big coffeecup and fill it full of ice cubes. Splash in four or five ounces of Daniel's. Run a tablespoon or two of tap water across the top and suck some of the medicine right down. Ummmmm. Shudder. Damn. Yes oh Cheerist yes. Ummm. All gone. Jackie drank his medicine down like a good boy. Let's do it again. Shit. This day looks a lot better already. And he'd fill that big cup again and never mind the tap water this time. The ice is starting to melt. The glow permeates. That's how it starts.
    He could feel it dragging him down just the way it had before. It had started for him so many years ago. It started way back when he knew there weren't going