Getting Mother's Body Read Online Free

ain’t yet seen one in my color. Me and Roosevelt don’t got no kids. Billy’s soap smells like roses.
    â€œThe apple don’t fall that far from the tree,” I says, just to bring her down a notch.
    â€œI ain’t no goddamned apple,” Billy says.
    ROOSEVELT BEEDE
    â€œI used to be a preacher but I lost my church. God is funny,” I says.
    â€œSounds like you preaching now,” Dill says.
    â€œYou gonna give Billy her letter?”
    â€œShe’s in the back washing,” Dill says. Just then Billy comes running outside. Dill waves the envelope at her.
    â€œA letter for you,” Dill says.
    â€œLet’s read it when I come back,” Billy says, jumping over the two porch steps and going down the road.
    Me and Dill watch her go. She left a smell of soapy roses. June is out back. I hear the bucket splash. She’s watering her flower garden with Billy’s wash water.
    Dill holds the letter up to the sun, trying to get the news through the envelope.
    â€œYou know that letter ain’t to you,” I says.
    â€œThe letter’s from Candy and Candy’s my ma,” Dill says.
    â€œIt still ain’t to you,” I says.
    Dill’s voice gets sharp. “It’s addressed to Billy c/o me but in all these years these letters been coming I ain’t never opened one yet,” Dill says. Dill’s long-legged and coffee-colored with Seminole features and soft hair cut close. Straw hat pulled down low and always wearing mud-speckled overalls and a blue work shirt and brown heavy boots. Dill’s a good head taller than me and a bulldagger. I wouldn’t want to fight her.
    â€œCandy’s probably just asking for payment like she always do,” I says.
    â€œProbably,” Dill says.
    I dip some snuff, holding out the tin to Dill after I’ve had mines. Dill don’t dip but I offer it anyway. Dill don’t never ever dip and Dill don’t hardly ever drink. Willa Mae’s buried in Candy’s backyard so Candy writes asking for money to keep up the grave. She sends the letter to us by way of Dill. Candy’s Dill’s mother but she don’t never write Dill nothing.
    â€œMa could be saying something new this time,” Dill says.
    â€œI doubt it,” I says.
    â€œYou never know,” Dill says.
    â€œSounds like you do know,” I says.
    â€œYr saying that I opened it,” Dill says. Her left arm goes stiff, with her hand making a fist. She knocked down someone with that fist once. They didn’t get up for two days. My sister. But for what I can’t remember.
    â€œI’m just running my mouth, Dill, I don’t mean to mean nothing,” I says.
    She shakes her fist free of whatever made her want to hit me.
    â€œI coulda opened it and read it seeing as how it’s partly addressed to me and I can read. But I ain’t,” Dill says.
    â€œCourse you ain’t.”
    â€œI’ll bet you on what it says in here,” Dill says.
    â€œI don’t got shit to bet with,” I says. It’s funny but neither of us laugh.
    â€œLet’s bet you’ll take up preaching again,” Dill says.
    I don’t say nothing to that.
    We sit there watching Billy turn into a speck as she hurries down the road to Jackson’s Formal. Mrs. Jackson sells dresses and together with her husband Israel they run the Funeral Home too. Laz helps out. When people start they lives they ain’t nothing more than specks. And when Billy came into our life, coming up the road in Dill’s old truck, coming back from LaJunta and the tragedy, she weren’t nothing more than a speck on the road, and then a truck, and then Dill in a truck and then Dill in a truck with little Billy. We thought Billy was gonna live with Dill like her and Willa Mae did when Willa Mae was living, but Dill didn’t want Billy around no more so Billy’s been living with us since she was ten.
    â€œLaJunta,