All That I Have Read Online Free Page A

keeps bees.
    He hasn’t been well. Fact is, Wingate’s barely making it. After all, he’s eighty-three or -four. I go visit him every so often, but Clemmie don’t come. Wingate don’t want her. He don’t want Clemmie to see him broken down the way he is, it looks like. If you’re Wingate, you don’t show weakness, or anyway you don’t show it to women, or anyway you don’t show it to women of an age to be your daughter. Wingate’s old school.

4
    THE SWEETHEART OF SIGMA CHI
     
    Coming down the long drive from the Russians’ house, I followed Deputy Keen. At the road, he went right and I went left. I wasn’t going back to the department. I was going to look for Sean Duke. His parents lived in Afton. He wouldn’t be at their place, but they might know where he was.
    I had hoped Melrose wouldn’t be home. I had hoped I’d be able to talk to Sean’s mother. But Melrose was in front of their house when I drove up. He was washing his car, playing a garden hose over it to rinse off the soapsuds. He turned off the hose.
    “Hello, Lucian,” said Melrose. “You looking for Superboy?”
    Melrose Tidd couldn’t stand Sean. He wasn’t Sean’s real father. Sean’s father had been dead for, at that time, I’d guess thirteen, fourteen years. Melrose was his stepfather.
    “You know where I can find him?” I asked Melrose.
    “Going to arrest him this time?” asked Melrose. “Going to take him in?”
    “Nothing like that,” I said.
    “No,” said Melrose, “I didn’t think so. Not you, right? More likely you’d pat him on the head, ain’t it? Get him to sit in your lap?”
    “You know where I can find him?”
    “Hell, no, I don’t,” said Melrose. “If you ain’t going to bust him, then you can find him on your own.”
    Ellen came out of the house — Sean’s mom. She’d seen us talking, and she came out drying her hands on a dish towel.
    “Hello, Sheriff,” said Ellen.
    “He’s after Superboy,” said Melrose.
    “Is that right?” Ellen asked me.
    “I did want to talk to him.”
    “See?” said Melrose. “What’d he steal?”
    “Shut up, Mel,” said Ellen.
    I talked to Ellen. “He’s been working for Tim Russell’s crew, hasn’t he?” I asked her.
    “For almost a year,” said Ellen. “He’s doing very well with it.”
    “That means he ain’t in jail,” said Melrose.
    “Shut up, Mel,” said Ellen.
    “Yet,” said Melrose.
    Ellen shook her head at him.
    “What do you want with him?” Melrose asked me.
    “I want to talk to him,” I said.
    “Is he in trouble?” Ellen asked.
    “Maybe,” I said. “I don’t know for sure. That’s why I want to talk to him. You know where he is?”
    “You mean today?” Ellen asked.
    “Today would be good.”
    “Well,” Ellen said. “If he’s not at work, he’ll be at Crystal’s. She lives over in Monterey.”
    “She’s got a trailer,” Melrose said.
    “Sean lives there, too,” said Ellen.
    “At night,” said Melrose. “Some nights. When he ain’t had a better offer.”
    “He and Crystal have been together since Christmastime,” said Ellen.
    “He got her in his stocking,” said Melrose. “Along with the candy.”
    “Shut up, Mel,” said Ellen.

    The trailer where Sean lived with his girlfriend — his girlfriend, now — was one of half a dozen trailers on a lot back of the lumberyard as you come into Monterey. It was an old trailer, a good deal older than either of the people living in it. Its siding was rusty, its windows were dirty, and it had a blue portable toilet set up off one corner.
    I parked in front of the door and got out of the truck. There were no other vehicles at the trailer; there were no flowers or other plants in pots like any proper trailer ought to have. Only the little dirt yard, three cement blocks at the door for steps, and an off smell, faint but there alright, that must have come from the portable. You can drive from the Russians’ house, Disneyland, up on its own mountaintop, with its