Cornered! Read Online Free Page A

don’t like you to swear, Glory. That word in particular.”
    Gloria said it again.
    Sam Dickens sighed, looking sideways at his wife—his third wife, to be exact.
    She was twenty-two years old. When Sam had first seen her in the chorus line at that hotel in Las Vegas his throat had caught just like a kid falling in love for the first time. She’d been beautiful, with those long shapely legs and that tantalizing smile. He’d made up his mind instantly. Four weeks later they’d gotten married.
    Now, well, she certainly didn’t look like she did when she was dancing. But after ten months of marriage he’d gotten used to this other look of hers: like a kid, hair in a pony tail, wearing a blue striped sweater and black matador pants, not even using any makeup except a little lipstick.
    So, Sam Dickens thought, she was just a kid. Still, he knew, she had real potential. She was a lot smarter than she’d like you to think. Once, before they were married, Sam had walked into her hotel room and found her reading Sophocles, for God’s sake. It was her second time through. King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonnus, Antigone. And she knew what the hell it was she’d read, although she had some kind of juvenile notion that she ought not to make anything out of it. She had a really big heart. Out of the money she’d saved from dancing she’d bought Sam the camel’s hair topcoat he was wearing right now, the most expensive coat he’d ever owned, and he’d owned some good ones. And guts. You didn’t get in Gloria’s way when her back was up. She’d become a foster child when she was eight and went through five homes. She’d learned how to handle the hard knocks with the toughest of them. But at times she seemed to revert to being the child that she really was underneath that flip front of hers. That was when Sam realized the difference between their ages. It took something like this trip to do that, but, by God, this trip had really done it.
    “Return to the womb,” Gloria said. She hiked her legs under her and stared out the window at the swirling snow with grim boredom.
    “What?” Sam Dickens asked.
    “I said return to the womb. That’s what this was. My God.”
    “All right. What’s the matter with that?”
    “It’s proof of retarded development.”
    “Glory, you dance real good. You’ve got nice legs and a real sexy smile. Sometimes you show a real good brain. But as an amateur psychologist you stink.”
    Gloria used her word again.
    Sam Dickens compressed his lip. “So it didn’t work out so well. So what? That’s life, isn’t it?”
    “This is life? This crummy country? Look at the snow. It keeps snowing and snowing. So I like snow. But I like something else once in a fat while. It snows out here like a horse—”
    “Watch your tongue, Glory. Don’t be so foul-mouthed.”
    “It’s this stinking country. It’s enough to make anyone foul-mouthed. Even a lady, which I ain’t.”
    “You’re a lady. You just hate to admit it, for some reason. You’ve got some notion that—”
    Gloria uttered her word for the fourth time.
    Sam Dickens didn’t try to argue any more. There wasn’t any use. He couldn’t really blame Gloria anyway. The whole trip had been a mistake. So this state was home. Or rather had been. It certainly wasn’t any more. He’d forgotten altogether what it was like. And he couldn’t blame Gloria, what with the way it had gone. And Gloria had never been east of Las Vegas in her life.
    “You know,” Gloria said, “I keep thinking about your aunt—the one with the nose.”
    “All right, Glory. Lay off.”
    “Now she was something. What a sweet old soul. I’ll bet hers was the original witch’s in a snowdrift. Talk about cold! That old tweet would freeze an Eskimo’s—”
    “Glory, I’m telling you. I’m going to stop at the next service station and wash your mouth out with soap.”
    “You and how many others, I wonder?” Gloria said insinuatingly.
    Sam opened his mouth