A Piece of My Heart Read Online Free Page A

“That ain’t the goddamned point. Point is, how old do I
look
? Old? You think I look old?” She watched him carefully to see if he was thinking over telling a lie.
    â€œNo,” he said.
    She raised her head slightly and widened her eyes. “I’m thirty-one. Do I look like it?”
    â€œNo,” he said, thinking that if he had one guess out of a hundred possible ages, thirty-one would’ve been second after forty-one. “That means the old man’s twenty-three.”
    She gave him a surprised look. “I ain’t worried about that,” she said.
    â€œNobody said so.”
    She took another drink of her beer. “I take him to work in the morning and come get him in the evening. Them little town bitches come wherever he’s at and switch their asses in his face, but they know I’ll be pulling up there in my white Buick at six o’clock holding a sack of beer in one hand and something better in the other, so he don’t have to go nowhere to have fun but with me. I’m the goddamn fun,” she said.
    â€œWhere is it you live?” he said, snuffing his cigarette.
    â€œRag-land.” She pointed off into the desert, where he could see the gauzy pancake hills in the south.
    â€œHow far you drive every day?”
    â€œSeventy there, sixty back,” she said. “I mix it up.”
    He started figuring miles and looked at her and added it up again, and looked forlornly down the highway. She took a last long gulp of beer and let the can drop between her legs, pinching her mouth in a hard little pucker, as if she had just decided something.
    â€œThat’s a hell of a ways,” he said. “I’d let them switch their ass if it was me.”
    â€œYou worry about you,” she said. “I own the Buick. If I want to drive it to the moon, I will.”
    She turned away and stared at the desert. He figured he’d just get out of it while he had the chance and make a supreme effort to keep his mouth shut.
    â€œI just don’t want to lose him,” she said slowly, speaking so softly he had to look at her to see if she was talking to him. “I’ve had about as much trouble as I can stand,” she said. “I’d just like to have things easier, you know?”
    â€œYeah,” he said.
    She pulled another beer out of the package and peeled off the top. “We ain’t been married but four months,” she said, taking a tiny sip and rotating the rim against her lip. “I had a husband to
die
on me seven months ago. TB of the brain.” She looked at him appraisingly. “We knew he had it, but didn’t figure it would kill him quick as it did.” She smacked her lips, looked at him again, and wrinkled her nose. “Flesh started falling, and I had him in the ground in a month.”
    She gradually seemed to be taking on appeals she hadn’t had, and he decided just to let it go.
    â€œIn Salt Lake, see?” She was getting engrossed and tapping her beer against the window post. “We was in the LDS, you know?”
    He nodded.
    â€œI was the picture, you know, the whole time we was married.” Her face got stony. “And after he died they all came around andbrought me food and cakes and fruit and first one thing, you know. But when I tried to get a little loan to buy me a car so I could go to work, they all started acting like somebody was callin them to supper. And I had been the picture of what you’re supposed to be. I let ’em have their meetings right in my house.” She drew her mouth up tight. “Raymond was born one—see? But I was raised on a horse farm outside of Logan.”
    She took another sip of beer and held it in front of her teeth and stared at the desert. It was past midday. The sun had turned the desert pasty all the way to where the mountains stuck up. He watched her while she looked away, watched her breasts rise and fall, and maneuvered so as