Black Locust Letters Read Online Free

working the night shift will be taking a drag, eating
a snack, or munching on your granna's sticky caramel walnut buns.
Oh you nutters, you only wish you had my lunch. Pity that our sink
no longer drips, actually, it means I'll have to get the handles
dirty. They fixed my leaky faucet earlier today, and I have to say,
I'm almost missing the silly thing.”
    Betty stared into the darkness, waiting for her eyes to
adjust. There had not been a leaky faucet at the station. There was
only one sink, and the thing scarcely put out enough water to get
the hands wet on full blast. She jabbed the radio off so roughly
that the button didn't press, and she heard Welch go prattling off
on a commentary about his granna's secret caramel recipe, which he
wouldn't share, just wanted to make everyone else
jealous.
    Betty felt her way into bed, arranging the covers to fit
against her body. It's just fictional commentary to make people
laugh. Richard is like that. Then she sighed, blinking into the
darkness. She tugged a curtain open a bit to let the light in, but
outside, there was not even a sliver of the moon. Just the empty,
star-prickled night sky, cold and dark and clear.

Chapter 3
    Four
and a half hours later, she was blinking in the station's harsh
lighting, reading over the bulletin for the morning. Several things
she saw were a repeat of Welch's show, like the actual weather
forecast, a reminder of key events like the building of a new dog
park on the corner of Whissemton Road and Venice Drive, and the
upcoming School Board meeting. To Betty's surprise when she went to
fill her cup, the sink had been fixed and it flowed in one perfect
and steady stream with aeration, the way a sink should
flow.
    Betty would have consciously made an effort to keep her
hosting rather dry this morning, except that a night of tossing and
turning, a night of remembering code phrases from Alpha, had
completely ruined whatever creative spark she might have resisted
imbuing into the show. Her head ached something terrible, and her
mouth was dry, so she made heavy use of the coffee in the station,
coffee which very well might have been mud from the garden. But
this morning, she didn't care. She just needed something to put a
spring in her step and to stem off the impending pounding behind
her eyes.
    What
actually happened was her heart raced and she felt even more
strung-out than ever before. She said her bulletin, she made some
polite comments about the weather and a brief mention of wanting to
go for a nice walk through the leaves, and bit by bit, she made it
from one commercial break to the next, then to songs, then to a
repeat of the key points, and news on the hour. First one hour,
then the next, and the next, and the next. She relaxed as the
coffee wore off and she fell into a routine so by the time she
signed off, she could almost imagine that everything was the way
that it was every other day of her life since she had come into her
position.
    Still nervous of taking to the streets, Betty took her time
eating a sandwich and salad while the day hosts entered. She didn't
know if they were lucky or not, to have someone to co-host with
them. Betty and Richard did their shows alone, and at times she
wished that she had someone who could correct her when she
misspoke, or someone who she could banter with. Having everyone
listening solely to her was an intimate experience. She learned to
pretend that she was speaking to one listener, and one listener
only. She pretended he was a man, the one she could look at over a
coffee cup and comment about the banal trivialities of life with,
the one that she could share her triumphs with and someone she
could trust and confide in.
    She
pretended that she had this person as a listener because there was
no one in real life that she dared to trust like that. Even if she
did have someone, she would worry after their safety constantly.
Betty knew her father watched her. She knew Slim watched her. For
that matter, the Sheriff