Tornado Alley Read Free Page B

biting into the skulls.
    "Dia de los Muertos," a boy tells him and smiles, showing white teeth and red gums. Very white. Very red. Whiter and redder than life, and he thought, Why not? I done it in the reform school.
    The boy has a gardenia behind his ear. He wears a white spotless cotton shirt and pants to the ankle with sandals. He smells of vanilla—Ish used to drink it in reform school. The boy understands. He knows un lugar. They stop to watch two pinwheels spinning in opposite directions ... he remembers the queasy, floating feeling he got watching it, like being in a fast elevator.
    The boy is smiling now and pointing to the black space between the pinwheels as they sputter out and the blackness spreads wide as all the world and then he knew that was where he was going...
    Ishmael died when they picked up the stretcher.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    The manuscript was prepared on a Mac in Word and typeset in Benguiat Book from a computer disk by Delmas Typesetting of Ann Arbor, Michigan.