Iona Moon Read Online Free

lost a patch of hair over both temples.
    â€œShe’s done half the senior class,” said Rafe.
    â€œYou hush,” Hannah said.
    â€œIt’s no secret.” Dale’s mouth was full of pie.
    â€œShe’s blaming it on a dead man ’cause she forgot to keep a list of the possibilities,” Leon said. “Poor Everett can’t even deny it, and he’s probably one of the few guys in town who didn’t pop Sharla.”
    Iona stared at Leon, trying to decide if his nastiness came from being one of the few or one of many.
    â€œYou hear me?” said Hannah. “I won’t have you talking that way.”
    â€œI heard you, Mama. I just don’t see the point.”
    Iona’s father said, “You sit at this table, you mind your mother. That’s the point.”
    Leon stood, let his napkin fall. “I’m done anyway,” he said.
    Iona lay in bed wondering how Everett looked when he came to Sharla in her dream. His picture in the paper after he died showed a proud young man in uniform. The flag waved behind him, out of focus. Everett’s mouth was firm. I do what I’m told to do .
    The picture didn’t look a bit like the Everett Fry Iona knew. That Everett Fry parked on Main for half a day at a time, staring at women, making them jittery for weeks afterward. That Everett Fry wore a red and black plaid hunting cap with the ear flaps pulled down and the visor shading his eyes. His hunter’s vest bulged; he had something hidden in every pocket: knives and grenades, leather straps and dried beans, a half-dozen boxes of shells. He smoked filterless cigarettes down to a nub so small he could barely pinch the hot butt between his yellow fingers.
    Then there was the third Everett Fry, the clean-shaven one wearing his uniform again. His eyes were startled, opened wide. His mouth was open too, revealing jagged chips of bone: his teeth shattered by the blast. If Sharla put her hands on his head she’d discover the back of his skull was gone. Iona wondered if men bled in dreams or if the wound would be nothing worse than a hole, surprising and strange but not too terrible to touch.
    Iona rode her bike along the dirt road to Jeweldeen’s. She stopped pedaling near the Zimmerman place, coasting to look at Al’s bulls. Muscles rippled over their buttocks. They had thick necks, twitching tails. She knew the scent of a cow wafting across the field could turn them mean. Sometimes even her smell made them paw the ground under the fence. But this day was still, and the bulls chewed their cud, gazes blank as her father’s when he looked at her without seeing. He had more important things on his mind: potatoes and corn, beets and beans. He worried: Too much rain or too little? Even in June he had to figure what he’d do if they got frost in September.
    Iona wondered if Sharla had given up and told her daddy the truth, or at least something halfway believable. The afternoon was hot; dust flumed under her tires. Iona’s father would fret about the heat, remembering the year the topsoil dried up and blew away. He was sixteen years old. The potatoes shriveled in the sun. Like horrible little heads , he said.
    Like her own head when she got lice last fall and Mama had to shave off all her hair. Hannah grabbed soap and scissors and hauled Iona out to the back steps. She yanked a clump and cut, then another and another, wasting no time on tenderness. Soon Iona’s long hair lay around her in limp, dark swirls. Her head felt light and sore. Hannah rubbed Iona’s scalp with kerosene. The oil burned, and the pain spread to her neck, a fire radiating through her shoulders to her arms to the tingling tips of her fingers. The heat shot down her spine and her legs prickled—just as they had when she fell in the briars and her daddy had to twist the spiky thorns out one by one with his pointed pliers.
    But her parents hadn’t done these things to hurt