Summer of the Dead Read Online Free Page A

and surly, knocking things over and bellowing about it. He’d probably heard the mail truck earlier and was riled by the sound. He didn’t like anybody coming by the house. But there wasn’t a bookstore within a hundred miles of here. What she wanted, she had to buy online and have shipped. She’d ordered enough books to take her all the way through next fall. The white-haired, scraggly browed postman, Perry Crum, his sixty-two-year-old body scrunched up like a lumpy quarter-moon after so many decades of lugging heavy mail sacks back into the hollows of rural Raythune County, often teased her about it; if he had the time, Perry would drag the heavy carton of books inside for her, even though he wasn’t required to, and as he lifted it onto the kitchen table, he’d say, “Heavier’n a box of rocks! Sure wish you were collecting crocheted pot holders instead of books.”
    He was teasing. He didn’t really mind. In fact, Perry Crum talked to her about the books she read because he, too, was interested in science; he’d planned to be a biology major in college, but in the end he couldn’t go, because he had to take care of his sister Ellie, who had Down syndrome. Their parents were long dead, and there was no one else to do it. He mentioned his family situation to Lindy just once, and only in passing. It was not the kind of thing that people in these parts talked about. Your burdens were your burdens. Everyone had them. It was a given.
    Last month, Lindy’s father had been in the kitchen on the day when Perry came in with a carton of books. Perry smiled and waved. Her father glared darkly, his lip raised in a snarl.
    â€œDaddy, you know Perry Crum,” Lindy said. She patted the top of the square cardboard box, which Perry had dropped on the kitchen table. “He brought my books. You remember Perry.”
    Her father growled something indecipherable. Putting a twisted-up hand on the kitchen wall to steady himself, he groped and lurched to the basement door. He didn’t look back at the postman or his daughter. His journey down was a heavy and solemn one, each step a separate chunk of thunder that made the staircase shimmy.
    A wince of concern had redistributed the wrinkles on Perry’s face. “You okay here, Lindy?” he said.
    â€œFine. Really.”
    And she was. She could take care of herself. She’d been doing it for a long time. Even before her father got to be the way he was, he had worked long hours at the mine. Came home practically comatose with exhaustion.
    Lindy looked around for a bookmark. There was a stack of mail at her elbow, mail from the past week or so because she always put off going through it, envelopes thick and thin, mostly white but in a variety of sizes, plus slick flyers from the discount stores up on the interstate.
    She grabbed the envelope on the top of the heap. Her father still received mail from time to time. Nothing of a personal nature. Junk mail mainly, along with Social Security and Medicare bulletins, although Lindy had long ago arranged to have his meager retirement income direct-deposited, and she used that to pay the mortgage. Otherwise, she never touched his money. She bought her books with her own salary.
    The letter—she stuck it in the book to designate her place between pages 376 and 377, giving the envelope a glance as she did so—looked like another blind solicitation from some company wanting him to buy something he didn’t need. New York City postmark. In the center, in the space for the recipient’s information, was her father’s name and address in typed black letters:
    ODELL CRABTREE
    COUNTY ROAD 76
    ACKER’S GAP, WV

 
    Chapter Three

    Long after this night was over, Bell would remember how thin her sister’s arm felt in her grip. She had first grabbed Shirley’s wrist, but Shirley jerked it out of Bell’s hand. Somebody else in the bar—Bell didn’t know