A Tree Born Crooked Read Online Free

scraping the underside as always. After a sharp right turn around a scraggly stand of pines, James pulled into the sandy driveway.  
    It was dark when James flicked the headlights off. He got out of the truck and closed the door gently behind him. Birdie Mae’s Oldsmobile was parked in front of him and the porch light was on, illuminating the wooden steps built up to the door of the doublewide. James stood with his hands jammed down into his pockets and listened to a hound baying off in the distance. Through the front windows, James could see the kitchen light on and the television flashing in the living room. Aside from the hound, it was quiet. The trailer door opened and the screen door pushed out with a snap.
    “Huh, I was wondering when you was gonna darken my door. Certainly took your sweet time getting here, that’s for sure.”
    “Hi, Mama.”
    James pulled his fists out of his jeans and went inside.

TWO
    A sitcom family was laughing hysterically at something funny in sitcom-land. James hunted for the remote while Birdie Mae banged around in the kitchen, opening and closing cabinet doors with unnecessary force. James finally found the remote, stuffed between the corduroy La-Z-Boy cushions, and turned the sound down on the television. Birdie Mae yelled over the running sink water as she rinsed out a dirty glass.  
    “I was watching that, you know.”
    “Sorry. It was kinda loud.”
    She came out, handed James a glass of something bright yellow poured from a warm two-liter, and sat down on the sagging couch across from him.  
    “Well, I gotta hear it, don’t I? It’s a good show. You ever watch it? This guy on there, he does the stupidest things. Just cracks me up. You should watch it.”
    “Maybe. I don’t watch much TV.”
    “Well, it’s good. The show on after is alright. Ain’t as funny, but it’s on, so I usually watch it, too.”
    James didn’t know what to say. Even though the sound was off, Birdie’s eyes kept drifting over to the small television balanced on the edge of the dining room table. He glanced at the screen, figuring he should probably wait for a commercial. He sipped the flat, neon soda, one ice cube shrinking rapidly on the surface, and set the glass down. He stared at Birdie. He thought that she would look different somehow, older, and saddened by grief. Instead, she looked exactly as she had for the last twenty years.
    Birdie Mae was a fat woman. She wasn’t big enough to be called “obese” or any other such ridiculous medical term. But she wasn’t small enough to be just “large” or “big-boned” either. “I’m fat, dammit. What the hell’s wrong with that?” she would yell at the doctors who tried to use polite euphemisms. She had big hands, with small fingernails that made them look bigger. Her eyes were a pretty blue, but always framed with gunky mascara, and when she worked at the store she wore peach eye shadow up to her eyebrows. Her thin lips usually carried the outline of sticky, pink lipstick. She had to constantly reapply it, as it always ended up smeared on her Virginia Slims. Her hair was long and dishwater blond, but James couldn’t remember ever seeing it down. Birdie wore her hair twisted and piled up on top of her head, sprayed into a motionless nest that didn’t even look good back when she first started doing it in the seventies. Birdie Mae had some delusion that she resembled Farrah Fawcett and running out of Aqua Net was cause for a family crisis. On more than one occasion, Birdie had refused to leave the bathroom until someone went out to the drugstore and brought back a can. She wore the clothes from the Citrus Shop that had defects and couldn’t be sold, so she usually stuffed herself into gaudy T-shirts and culottes. The shirt she was wearing today was hot pink with a silhouette of three palm trees. Above all, Birdie Mae thought she looked good and that’s how she carried herself.  
    A commercial for life insurance came on and Birdie