All That I Have Read Online Free Page B

security gate, its tennis court, its pool, its golf range, its five-acre lawn — you can drive from there to this place in the same car, get there on the same day, in the same hour. It don’t seem like you should be able to, but you can.
    I knocked on the door. Right away a dog with a voice like a foghorn began barking inside. I stepped back from the door. The dog was roaring and banging against the door, making the door shake in its frame. Then a woman’s voice started in yelling, “Jackson!” The dog shut up.
    In a minute the trailer’s door opened, and a young woman stood in the doorway. No sign of the dog, no sound.
    “What is it?” the girl asked.
    “I’m Sheriff Wing,” I said.
    “I know who you are. What do you want?”
    The girl looked like she’d just woke up. She was about twenty; she had a lot of curly red hair. Her legs and feet were bare. Her toenails were painted blue. She had a tattoo going around the upper part of her right arm, a snake, like a purple snake winding around her bare arm there. Nasty looking thing. She wore a Tshirt that came down just far enough to make her decent. Decent — speaking legally.
    “Sean here?” I asked her.
    “No.”
    “Do you know where he is?”
    “Working.”
    “Are you Crystal?”
    “I don’t have to tell you that,” said the girl. “I don’t have to tell you who I am. I don’t have to tell you nothing.”
    The girl’s T-shirt had SHIT HAPPENS printed over its front; the letters were pushed out in front of her chest. She was a well-puttogether girl, no question. Now she raised the shirt and took a cigarette from a pack she had tucked in the elastic of her black underpants. She lit the cigarette and leaned in the door frame, looking at me in the yard.
    “What’s your last name?” I asked her.
    “I don’t have to tell you that, either,” said the girl. “Here’s the thing. Why don’t you fuck off?” She blew cigarette smoke into the yard, then bent at the waist to scratch her ankle. We had Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair, here, it looked like. We had the Sweetheart of Sigma Chi.
    “Sean is working at a big fancy place in Grenada,” I said. “I need to see him about that place. Will he be here later?”
    Right then, for some reason, her dog started in barking again. By its bark, it was a good, big dog. The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi turned in her doorway.
    “Jackson!” she shouted. “Shut the fuck up!”
    The dog stopped barking.
    “Is Sean coming by here later?” I asked again.
    “Ask him. I don’t have to tell you that. I don’t have to talk to you at all. Leave us alone.”
    I got out one of my sheriff cards and handed it to the girl. She took it and held it, but she didn’t look at it.
    “Tell Sean to give me a call when he gets in,” I said. “Will you do that?”
    “If I say yes, will you fuck off?” the girl asked me.
    “Sure.”
    “Okay, then,” said the girl. “I’ll tell him.” She stepped back into the trailer and slammed the door, and I climbed into the truck and started for home.
    The girl was a Cumberland girl. I knew her, but I couldn’t remember her last name right off. She waitressed at a hamburger place on the way to Brattleboro. She’d gone to school down there, too, not to Cumberland Union, where by rights she should have gone. It seemed like she didn’t get on with her father, or her mother, or something along those lines. Hard to believe.
    Finn, her name was, the Sweetheart of Sigma Chi. Crystal Finn. Now she was going with Sean. They all did, sooner or later, it looked like, all the girls. This was her turn. Sean got around. He was good looking, I guess: he was big and strong, and he had that kind of bold grin that makes some women think, Well, this fellow’s pretty sure of himself. He’s pretty confident. He must have something. He obviously don’t have it in his brains. Maybe he’s got it in his shorts. Let’s find out.
    Yes, Sean was quite the stud horse. He’d had the pants off half the