Dead Town Read Online Free Page B

don’t know why you have to be mean.”
    “I do it well. A man likes to do something if he’s good at it.”
    “You aren’t as mean to me now as you was at first, back when we just met.”
    After a silence, Mr. Lyss said, “Well, Peaches, I have my ups and downs. Nobody can be a hundred percent good at something 24/7.”
    Mr. Lyss sometimes called him Peaches. Nummy wasn’t sure why.
    “A couple times,” Nummy said, “I even sort of thought maybe we was getting to be friends.”
    “I don’t want any friends,” Mr. Lyss said. “You take a Kleenex and blow that thought out of your head right now. Blow it out like the snot it is. I’m a loner and a rambler. Friends just weigh a man down. Friends arenothing but enemies waiting to happen. There’s nothing worse in this world than friendship.”
    “Grandmama she always said friendship and love is what life is all about.”
    “You just reminded me there
is
one thing worse than friendship. Love. Nothing will bring you down faster than love. It’s poison. Love kills.”
    “I don’t see no way that’s true,” Nummy said.
    “Well, it is true.”
    “No, it’s not.”
    “Don’t you call me a liar, boy. I’ve torn the throats out of men who called me a liar. I’ve cut their tongues out and fried them with onions for breakfast. I’m a dangerous sonofabitch when I’m riled.”
    “I didn’t say liar. You’re just wrong about love, just wrong is all. Grandmama loved me, and love never killed me.”
    “
She’s
dead, isn’t she?”
    “Love didn’t kill her, it was the sickness. If I could’ve took her cancer into me and then died for her, I’d be dead now, and she’d be alive here with you.”
    They rode in silence for a minute, and then Mr. Lyss said, “You shouldn’t always listen to me, boy, or take what I say too seriously. Not everything I say is genius.”
    “Probably most of it is, but not what you said just now. You know what? Maybe we could skidoo.”
    “Could what?”
    “You know, like a snowmobile.”
    Mr. Lyss steered the car carefully to the curb andstopped. “We could go overland. But is there enough snow for that? It’s like an inch on the ground.”
    “Deeper than an inch,” Nummy said, “and lots more coming fast.”
    “Where would we get a snowmobile?”
    “People they have them all over town. And then there’s the snowmobile place they sell them over on Beartrack.”
    “Another damn street with
bear
in its name. Whoever named the streets in this godforsaken jerkwater had about as much imagination as a stump.”
    “Like I said, there’s a bunch of bears in the general area. We don’t got no tigers or zebras to name our streets after.”
    The old man sat quietly for maybe two minutes, just watching the snow fall, as if he decided it was pretty, after all. This was a long silence for Mr. Lyss, who always had something to say about everything. Nummy was usually okay with people being silent with each other, but this much quiet from Mr. Lyss was worrisome because it made Nummy wonder what he was scheming.
    Finally, Mr. Lyss said, “Peaches, you actually know anyone who has a snowmobile?”
    “I know a couple.”
    “Like who?”
    “Like the Boze.”
    “Boze?”
    “Officer Barry Bozeman. People call him the Boze.He races off-road all year ’round in one or another thing.”
    “Officer?”
    “He’s a policeman. He laughs a lot. He makes you feel you’re as good as anyone.”
    “He’s dead,” Mr. Lyss said bluntly. “If he’s a cop, they killed him and replaced him with one of their lookalikes.”
    Nummy should have known the Boze was dead, because even the police chief, Rafael Jarmillo, was one of the aliens, so every cop was for sure one of them, too. All the real police were dead and eaten like happened that morning to all the people in the jail cells next to the one from which Nummy and Mr. Lyss escaped.
    Grandmama always said no matter how sad something was, still you needed to keep in mind that you would