Beginning Read Online Free Page B

west, in the direction of the crossroads a half mile away. He knew the storm was on them but he wouldn’t let whoever was out there show up at his front door. His last memory of this place would not be of someone else having it.
    He stomped over to the porch and grabbed the shotgun. Stomped back to the Jeep and unhitched the trailer. Then he got in and cranked up and drove down the muddy driveway to see what the hell was going on.

7
    AFTER A MOMENT of watching the blood from Bub stretch across the asphalt, Aggie had reached down and picked up the jumper cables. He strutted to the truck bed and tossed them in. The rain fell diagonally, snapping against the earth.
    He slammed the hood of the truck and got in. He lit a cigarette, cranked up.
    Ava had risen to her feet, took a long look at Bub. Turned her face to the wind and felt its strength and a raindrop struck the middle of her forehead and pushed across her skin and into her wild hair.
    He set the hammer on the dashboard and waited. Knew she was coming. She had walked to the passenger window and he hadn’t looked at her, only touched the cut on his head and then rubbed the blood between his fingertips as if it were something alien and precious. She turned and walked back to the side door of the van and reached in and then returned to the passenger door of the truck, opened it, and climbed in.
    She set a pistol and a fifth of vodka on the seat between them. He winked and nodded and they drove away as the sky opened and the rain came on.
    SHE TOLD HIM which way to go. They skirted through downtown Gulfport, plywood covering storefronts and windows. Busted roads and the rain beating at the already standing water that covered sidewalks and seeped under doors.
    Away from downtown they drove past a trio of casinos, their fourth incarnation since the stream of hurricanes began. Each time they went back up they were smaller and a little of the shine, a little of the luster was left behind. These were functional, made of stucco and brick, as if the third little pig had assisted with the blueprints. The Grand Casino was the last in line and its orange stucco facade and red-lettered sign gave it more of the look of a giant candy store than of a fortified house of drink, smoke, and loss. Cars sat in the parking lot. Somehow cars were always in the parking lot.
    They drove out of Gulfport, west along Highway 90. Random lights in surviving stores and houses, hard rain and constant wind. Ava sipped from the bottle of vodka and leaned close to the windshield as if wary of some giant sinkhole. Aggie smoked and followed her directions. Several miles out of town she said turn here and Aggie made a right.
    The truck wound through a tattered, marshy countryside. The last faint light of day had nearly disappeared in the storm. Aggie didn’t ask where they were going, only took her word for it when she said we’ve got a place out here.
    â€œWho’s we?” he asked.
    She shrugged. Drank. “I guess it ain’t we no more. Just me,” she said. “Unless me and you are a we.”
    â€œWe are right now.”
    In a couple of miles she pointed and said, “This is it.”
    Aggie stopped the truck. The road she pointed to seemed to have an incline and a wooden sign held strong in the storm, attached to fence posts. Crawfield Plantation.
    â€œUp there about a mile,” she said.
    â€œWhat is? That old house?”
    â€œNo such thing. Just a slab and a chimney. But this is where me and Bub been staying. You’ll see.”
    Aggie turned up the road and it climbed and at the top of the hill they arrived at a driveway. Two brick columns stood on each side of the entrance and only one side of the wrought-iron gate hung on and it pushed back and forth in the storm. The driveway was paved and the truck moved between the columns. Overgrown fields on each side. Snapped oaks and maples that had once proudly lined the driveway.
    Aggie stopped the truck at the