Carolina Moon Read Online Free Page B

watered like clockwork by the underground sprinklers at every house on the street, skipping, of course, Tom Lowe’s yard and camper.
    People want to say something to him. They try to, in what they think are subtle ways. They say things like, “You must be planning some house, Tom,” and he just stares back and smiles. The truth is that he was here first. He was here when there were no streetlights and pavement. He was here when the pine trees were so thick that his camper and the narrow dirt road leading to it were completely hidden. His drive is still dirt, which turns to slick red mud in a hard rain.
    His trees are still thick and overgrown, wild blackberries rambling out front where he has recently (in response to the inquisitive neighbors) placed a giant thermometer sign. The sign says: “A home will be built on this site when the necessary money is raised.” He didn’t paint in any figures; he’s not building a house, at least not on this piece of land. His house will be on the beach with cross circulation of sea breeze, a view from every angle. In the meantime he has collected up to two thousand dollars in anonymous “love gifts” (as charity donations are called locally), some of which he uses over at Buddy Dog to adopt the biggest and oldest (and thus oftentimes most undesirable) canines to be had and the rest to care for them. He now has quite a collection: two labs and three beagles, several mixed breeds, a greyhound recently retired from a track down in South Carolina, aspringer spaniel (Calico Jack), and a feisty, sometimes ferocious Pomeranian (Anne Bonny)—all named for pirates. All are fixed and all wear Invisible Fence collars, so that when unsuspecting neighbors come up close to peer through his pine trees, they are met by what looks like a band of wild dogs. The biggest dog, Blackbeard, is the same mutt he had when he moved into the camper, the same one who rides around in his truck all day, a collie with bad arthritis who has slept in Tom’s bed without any other invited guests for quite a few years. People act like his lack of a love life is far stranger than that he spends his time walking the boundaries of his underwater property and adopting behavior problem dogs. And that’s how he knows that people have about as much hindsight and insight as those big fake-brick pillars that mark the entrance to his neighborhood. If they did, they would not have to look back far in his life to understand his solitude and his desire to opt for nobody over just anybody. If they did, they might jump on his father’s suicide as an explanation, but they would only have grazed the surface. That’s why he likes doing work for Ms. Purdy, Quee; she knows another part of his life. She knew him when he stood waiting to either win or lose. She knew him when he was a senior in high school and known all over town as TomCat. TomCat Lowe, a name that has stuck and followed him all these years later.

Testing . . . testing. . . . It is early in the morning on June, oh, what the hell, June something, and I am tooling right down Interstate 95 to my new life. I just bought this cheap little recorder at an all-night diner where they had a lot of crap at the checkout. I also bought a rape whistle and a mood ring like I once had when I was in the ninth grade. I could’ve bought some fruit-flavored condoms (if that tells you what kind of place I was in), but I passed. I have taken a vow of celibacy, so relieved as hell to be out of the life that is now four hours behind me in the D.C. area. I plan to tell all on these tapes, my life, my secrets. I mean why not? I’m driving along thinking that that big old meteor or whatever it was that hit Jupiter could just as easily slam into Earth and wipe us all out and wouldn’t I be so sorry if I’d stayed in a miserable life? Wouldn’t I be sorry if I’d spent my days fretting over this calorie or that. Just prior to entering the marriage I’m now leaving, I was driving down this