Greenmantle Read Online Free Page A

so friendly earlier is I get kids joyriding up this road all the time. I mean, who needs it? And sometimes they want to mess around in my yard and I don’t like it. I just want some quiet. But you’re a neighbor and you seem okay. Bring your momma up sometime and I’ll cook you up some pasta. I make a mean spaghetti. What do you say?”
    “I’ll ask her.”
    “Good. I’ll walk you to the road.”
    “You don’t have to,” Ali said, thinking about his limp.
    He caught the glance she gave it. “No, it’s okay. I gotta give it a lot of exercise. I don’t move so quick like I used to, but I can still get around.”
    Ali wanted to ask him how he’d hurt it, but she decided to wait for another time. She’d already been pushing her luck as it was. He seemed friendly enough now, but she was sure he’d be happier without some gawky teenager like her hanging around.
    “You come back for another visit now,” he said as though reading her mind again. “And if you or your momma need anything, you just give me a call, okay?”
    “Okay. Thanks…Tony.”
    “ Ciao ,” he replied.
    “What’s that mean?”
    “It’s like ‘so long’ or ‘take care.’ But it means ‘hello,’ too.”
    Ali smiled. “ Ciao ,” she said and headed off down the road.
    She looked back as she neared the curve to see him still standing at the end of his lane, so she gave him a wave. When he waved back, she continued on her way.
     
    * * *
     
    “And he’s got a limp,” Ali said over a supper of hamburgers, “and he talks a little funny, like…oh, I don’t know. As if he doesn’t know his grammar all that well.”
    “Ali, that’s not nice.”
    “Well, it’s true. But I’m not saying it to make fun of him. I like him.”
    “Make sure you don’t bother him too much.”
    “He wants us to come for dinner sometime. He’s going to make spaghetti.”
    “What else?” Frankie asked with a laugh. Then she put her half-eaten burger on her plate and leaned closer to her daughter. “Ali,” she began. “He didn’t seem the kind to…you know…make trouble for you?”
    “Well, you never can tell, can you?”
    “Ali!”
    “Okay, okay. No, he seems all right. And besides, I had my trusty stick with me.”
    “Yes, but—”
    “And besides that , I could outrun him any day of the week!”
    Frankie shook her head. “You’re incorrigible.”
    They cleaned up the dishes together, then spent the evening arranging and rearranging the furniture in the living and dining rooms. By the time it was ten-thirty, they were both so tired they could hardly keep their eyes open.
    “G’night,” Ali mumbled as she shuffled off to her bedroom.
    Frankie tousled her hair and kissed her on the brow. “See you in the morning, kiddo.”
    It’s going to be okay, Frankie thought as she undressed in her own room and got into bed. Thank God, it was going to be okay. She had the feeling that everything was finally going to work out for them. She looked around at the unfamiliar shadows in her new bedroom, then rolled over and fell asleep with a smile on her face.
     
    * * *
     
    As the last light went out, a figure stirred in the woods behind the house. It lifted its head as though to test the wind for scents and slowly crept forward. When it reached the house, it ran its fingers along the paneling of the porch door, its nails making a slight rasping sound, then it backed away.
    Starlight glinted on what might have been tiny horns pushing up from amidst its hair, or it might just have been reflecting from bone ornaments that the figure wore in its dark curls. An observer, had there been one present, would have been hard put to tell in that poor light.
    Nodding to itself, the figure pulled a hat from its belt and pushed it down over its hair. It returned to the forest where it put the house behind it and bounded away through the trees, as graceful and quick as a deer.

2
     
     
    After Ali left, Valenti went back to raking his lawn. He worked slowly,