Mockingbird Read Online Free Page A

“Do you think Daddy was happy with her?”
    â€œDoes it matter?” I was beginning to feel lightheaded; my thoughts, like clouds, pulling softly apart in the gulf breeze. It was not an unpleasant sensation; drifty, but not at all drowsy. Tender autumn sunshine dappled the garden. Not the destroying stare of summer, but a more uncertain light, diffusely golden and unsteady, ruffled by tree limbs creaking in the warm south wind, leaves shifting, the wheeling birds—the sweet, elusive light that comes at the end of days, and seasons.
    I blinked, realizing my thoughts had pulled apart again. Empty spaces yawned between them. Something about the emptiness scared me. “Momma wasn’t the sort who made you happy ,” I said. “Daddy was not bored, I guarantee you. And he didn’t kill her.” Another empty space began to open between my thoughts, but I fought it back. “He got what he paid for.”
    Candy sipped from her glass. “Well I’ve about had it with Carlos and La Hag Gonzales. Cut another notch on the barrel. Time for this chica to move on.”
    A concrete-colored Ford Explorer rolled slowly down the street. Birds swirled up like leaves in the wind of its passing, birds doubled by their shadows, swooping and whirling, birds in flight from the cold; passing to some warm, unnamed, blessed country of the South, where winter never comes.
    With a little start of terror I realized I had been caught in one of those empty places between my thoughts. There was a whiteness in my head that seemed to keep me from thinking straight; like when you stare at the sun and afterwards there’s a bright circle that dazzles you wherever you look. Only this whiteness was behind my eyes, back in my head, and it was cold. “Can-Cand—?” I felt a hand close over my hand. “Toni? Are you okay?”
    Candy’s voice sounded tiny and distant, as if coming through a telephone receiver in another room. A cloud must have passed overhead, for the light in the garden got suddenly dimmer. Silence fell over the world. I could see birds with their beaks working, but no songs came. Acorns fell into the pond without splashing.
    â€œUnh!” I stood up clumsily, knocking my chair over backwards. Where was the sound of the iron chair clattering on the stone?
    Then I smelled the Widow smells, of silver polish and scorched cloth, and I knew what was happening.
    I stepped back to keep my balance. My right foot came down and froze. A line of cold whiteness ran up past my knee. I cried out and pulled the leg up, and the whiteness drained down a bit.
    â€œToni! Toni, what’s wrong!” I staggered. As soon as my right foot came down on the stone flags it froze again, and I was pinned to the garden path. The whiteness raced up my leg and flowered in me like fire eating through a piece of paper. I tried to scream but no noise came out. I went mad with fear and ran senselessly around in my head but there was too much whiteness everywhere. From a long way off, I heard Candy whisper, “Oh my God. I can smell her, Toni.” Then the whiteness exploded in my head and the Widow came.

Chapter Two
    He re’s the first story I remember Momma telling about the Widow. Imagine me lying in my nightie, too hot to be under the sheets, the balcony doors open so the humid East Texas night steals into the room. It’s bedtime. Candy is asleep in her crib at the foot of the bed. I can hear her little baby snores coming through the mosquito netting. Momma is sitting beside me, her face pale and indistinct in the gloom. She has the most marvelous voice, husky and slow.
    I don’t know if her stories are true, if the Riders tell them to her or if she just makes them up.
    Imagine her leaning over me, her special smell of cigarettes and bourbon and hair spray, me with my eyes closed, the baby’s snores, and the Little Lost Girl steps into the room on my mother’s voice. . . .
    Now,