Hard Twisted Read Online Free Page B

of this place. I run away, and I come back, and then I run away again. Finally, when I was sixteen, I run away for good. At least I thought I did.
    How come?
    He shrugged. I don’t know. The old man went and got remarried. I guess I felt like I’d lost my place somehow, and that if I got away and looked somewheres else, I might find it again. Almost like you can’t really be home until you know what else is out there, and then you figure out for yourself that whatever it is, it ain’t really home. Does that make any sense?
    What happened?
    Huh?
    Your place. Did you ever find it again?
    He squatted and plucked a grass stem and held it in his mouth.
    I don’t know. I don’t know if you ever know a thing such as that. Maybe I did, but I just didn’t realize it. Or maybe I ain’t got there yet. He removed the stem and studied it. Maybe I’ll get there tomorrow, or the day after that. Or maybe I won’t never get there a’tall.
    Or maybe you’re there right now.
    He looked up at her face, guileless and pink in the low light of sunset.
    By God, you may be right.
    He stood and placed the hat on her head.
    Maybe I am at that.
    Palmer backed the sofa onto the porch, and when he went inside again, he returned with four warm bottles of orange Nehi and the last of the bourbon whiskey. He popped the caps on his belt buckle and lined the bottles along the railing, topping them off each in turn with a measure of whiskey.
    They sat with their boots on the railing and sipped their drinks and watched the land turn from green to blue, the risingtide of darkness swallowing first the driveway and then the fenceline and then, as the night air cooled, the very steps below their feet.
    Now crickets chirped and bullbats swooped and the plow horses shifted and snuffled somewhere in the darkness.
    You see that one there? Lottie closed one eye and pointed her empty bottleneck.
    Where?
    Them three in a row like that?
    Okay.
    That’s Orion. She pointed again. That there’s supposed to be his sword.
    Don’t look like no sword to me. More like his dick maybe.
    She giggled, slapping his hand. You’re bad.
    You know a lot about stars, I guess.
    Did you know that they’s more stars in the sky than specks of dust on the earth?
    Go on.
    That’s a fact.
    Says who?
    Everbody. My uncle Mack.
    He lolled his head to take in her upturned profile and her parted lips and the dusting of starlight in her eyes. The staggering beauty of her innocence.
    What?
    Nothin. I was wonderin what you was thinkin is all.
    She looked again to the heavens, and for a long while did not speak.
    I used to stare at the sky of a night, she finally said, and pretend my mama was up there somewheres, lookin down and watchinover me. All dressed in white, like a angel. But the older I got, the more I come to think that maybe it was always the other way around. Like maybe I was the one was all the time watchin out for her. Watchin and waitin for some sign that ain’t never gonna come, and all the time missin what was under my nose.
    She turned her face to his.
    Only thing is, there ain’t never been nothin under my nose to speak of but hard dirt and hoecake.
    He reached and took her hand in his.
    Until now, he told her.
    They ate corn bread and Karo syrup straight from the pan, her head floating in the amber lamplight and the whiskey and the heat from the open firebox. The walls of the little kitchen closed around them and seemed to her to ripple, like a room viewed through antique paneglass.
    He took her hand and placed her fingers in his mouth and sucked them each in turn as she held her breath and watched him.
    Come over here.
    He shifted his weight and lifted her into his lap and kissed her softly at first and then with greater urgency. She closed her eyes and her head swam and she felt the warmth of his mouth and the wet thrill of his tongue between her lips.
    You ever had a boyfriend before? he whispered, his