They Call Me Crazy Read Free

morning, planting flowers and bushes around that dump. She continues to focus on the floor, and her smile is gone. I guess the thought of all those flowers he spends so much time with makes her pull back, as if the roses and begonias are her competition.
    “Well, fine place for him then. What can I do for you?”
    Cassie rummages through a box of lures on the counter then settles on a shad dart. Holding it between her thumb and forefinger, she twists it around, watching the yellow nylon threads as the light reflects off of them. She rubs the lure on her face, keeping the hook pointed outward.
    I resist the urge to reach for it, knowing that fast motions and Cassie don’t mix too well. “Be careful. A hook in your cheek ain’t a lot of fun.”
    She lays it back in the box amongst the other lures. “I need a new shovel.”
    Cassie never uses a shovel. Cassie never does much of anything, and if she needs a shovel, it’s most likely so she can haul crap out of that shack they call home. When they lived in town, she was a decent housekeeper—a little too good, in my opinion. I’ve seen her scrub those linoleum floors so hard that I thought the pattern would wear off, and the entire house reeked of Pine-Sol and lemon Pledge. But since they moved, she doesn’t seem to care. Rolly told me she’s taking a lot more medication these days, so maybe that has something to do with it. Their place isn’t much more than a tarpaper lean-to anyhow, so maybe it doesn’t matter.
    I lead her over to the implements section. “You still read as much as you used to?”
    She slows and stares over my shoulder, not into my eyes. “Sure. Of course I do.” I can tell she’s lying, but I let it go. “You still got that worm farm?” she asks.
    “Getting bigger every day. Shoot, I’ve got wigglers and crawlers running out my ass.”
    She scrunches her nose and gives me a hint of a smile. “That sounds painful.”
    One thing about Cassie, she may have a smart-ass mouth on her, but she never uses it much on me. That’s probably because I’m family, although I do think she likes me more than she does most people. I don’t make fun, and I don’t call her names. I would never do that to her.
    “I don’t see why so many people would buy that much bait.” She picks up a heavy-duty coal shovel and bangs the curved edge on the tile floor. She returns it to its bin and reaches for a deep barn shovel instead.
    “It ain’t the bait. It’s the compost. That’s where the money is.”
    She shrugs. “They don’t bother me. The worms. I think they’re kinda cute.”
    She settles on a medium-sized shovel with a red handle and walks back to the counter with it. She picks up another shad dart, a blue one this time, and lightly grazes the countertop with it as if it is a paintbrush, moving it in a large figure eight.
    I ring up the shovel and put it on Rolly’s tab. “That it for you today, Sis?”
    She nods and starts for the door, then turns back. “You don’t sell cigarettes here, do you?”
    In all the years I’ve known Cassie, I’ve never seen her actually smoke a cigarette. When she and Roland lived in town, I always saw a pack lying around the house, on the coffee table, in the kitchen, but I never once saw an ashtray. For that matter, I don’t think I ever saw a lighter. I asked Rolly about it once, and he shrugged. Maybe it was none of my business. Maybe he didn’t know himself. “At a hardware store? You’ll have to go next door for cigarettes.”
    She stares at the lures again. She hesitates, and I hope it is because she wants to hang around me for a bit longer. Most likely, however, she isn’t used to being in town on her own.
    I can understand that. I take off my work belt and walk from behind the counter. “Come on. It’s my break time. I need a few things from Archie’s myself.”

    Archie’s Discount Liquor opened the day I got back from the Army, which would be sixteen years ago this coming November. The ninth.