Neal Barrett Jr. Read Online Free Page A

backed off in alarm. Howie couldn’t breathe. The room was veiled in red, and he could feel the rage and sorrow welling up inside, hear the curses in his path as he staggered blindly for the door. Something rose up in his path; Howie’s fist struck out and found a startled bearded face and he could feel the dark sky, feel the welcome sultry night, feel the cry in his throat and the tears that began to scald his eyes….

CHAPTER THREE
    H owie felt as if the night had surrounded him with peace, healed him of his sorrows and his fears. There was no more hatred in his heart, no shadow of the raw and terrible anger that had nearly consumed him in the tavern, the fury that had threatened to explode like broken glass in his head. All that was gone, washed and purified in the silence arid the dark. Now he didn’t feel the rage or the sadness or regret. He didn’t feel anything at all…
    The spring he was fifteen, he found brand-new thoughts to think about. Things that had seemed important once didn’t matter anymore. Sometimes he woke up from dreams he couldn’t name, and there were nights when he couldn’t sleep at all. The days were as restless as the nights, and sometimes he’d simply have to run, fall to the soft high grass and lie there letting blue sky whirl around him overhead until the storm within him passed.
    He drew in a breath and smelled the dust of the earth, smelled the hot salt air from far away. The town was nearly quiet. Men drifted into the streets, talked for a while before the tavern, then went their own ways. A man laughed. A bottle shattered against a wall. Four men came out together, framed for a moment in yellow light. Three stumbled off on their own. The fourth walked away by himself. Howie stayed in shadow across the street. The man headed toward the east end of town. Storefronts soon gave way to a row of small houses set back among the trees. The man turned up a gravel path, humming to himself.
    Howie moved swiftly across the street, keeping to the shadow as best he could. When the man reached his door, Howie’s arm went tight across his throat. The man jerked violently and tried to cry out, clawing at Howie’s hand. Howie let the man see his knife.
    “You do that again,” Howie whispered, “and you’re dead right here. You got that straight?”
    The man nodded eagerly, gasping for breath. Howie slid his free hand past the man’s waist and pushed the door aside. The house smelled of whiskey and sweat.
    “Anyone else live here beside you?”
    “No, just me,” the man said hoarsely. “God, don’t kill me, just don’t do that. All right? I—I got money. It’s in my coat. Take it, take anything you want!”
    Howie loosed his grip slightly, turned the man around and hit him squarely in the jaw. The man’s face went slack. Howie lowered him roughly to the floor. He moved quickly through the house, There were only three rooms—a parlor, a small bedroom, and a kitchen. Howie pulled the shades and dragged the man into the bedroom. He pulled a shirt off a chair and made a gag, stuffing the cloth into the man’s mouth. In the kitchen, he found a coil of wire, brought it back, and wound it tightly about the man’s wrists and his ankles. The man wasn’t lying; he had quite a few coins in his coat, more silvers than coppers, and Howie hadn’t seen a lot of those. He searched the house and found a rifle in a closet. He couldn’t find shells anywhere and left the rifle where it was.
    Howie lit a lamp and turned the wick down low and placed the lamp on the floor. Then he sat down, and waited for the man to come around.
    Howie decided that he’d dozed. He knew he’d been gone a long time, and that Papa would wonder where he was. He heard the voices then, and worked his way down past the big oak tree through the grass. There were three men, not many yards away, stock tenders who worked for his father. Three men, and a girl was with them, too, a girl with a— Oh, Lord God, it wasn’t a girl