The Hour of Bad Decisions Read Online Free Page B

India beer there, three empty, three to go, and it was hot for St. John’s, with a miasma coming off him that was far more than hard work and sweat. The SPCA had taken all the cats at the same time Social Services had taken Brendan, but already there were three more, watching us from his back window. His back door was open, and the back hall looked as wrecked as if the house had been abandoned: wallpaper hanging in long, mildew-speckled strips, tangles of dirty clothes on the floor. There was no reason to believe that anyone, even Mrs. Murphy, would want to go in there. While I watched, one of the cats came out into the hallway, tail flicking, and pounced on something out of sight from where I was standing.
    â€œWatch out for her,” Brendan said, sweaty circles blossoming on his collared shirt, in under his arms and in the middle of his back. “She’s bad trouble.” He was wearing dirty sneakers with the laces pulled loose, the tongues reaching up in the air as if his feet were too swollen to be packed into the sneaker tops. He swung the pick as if he were accustomed to it, hands sliding just far enough along the handle as the pick swept through its descending arc. Then he’d raise it again, loose-elbowed, relaxed, an ease of motion in his movements. Enough to see that it was a motion he was more than familiar with.
    â€œStrange ’uns around here,” he grunted. “You should be careful. Old woman over there” – he waved one hand loosely toward a green house with yellow trim, then grabbed the pick handle again – “she just screams all the time. No reason fer it a’tall.”
    I wanted to ask what he was doing with the wood, with the trench, but it just didn’t seem polite. Then, the next morning, around four a.m., the hammering started, and one by one the other neighbours started to wake up and realize that Brendan was home.
    I WOKE UP THE NEXT NIGHT , convinced that serious, small, half-blind Mrs. Murphy was standing at the foot of the bed, her mouth a thin line, but by the time I could find the light switch and turn the light on, the room was empty. There wasn’t a single sound of her in the house, not a footstep or the distinctive whisper of fabric, only the occasional creak of the house cooling, the flat-top black roof surrendering the day’s heat back to the chill of the night.
    By then, I was starting to be at home in the house the way you become, able to trace my way around the rooms without turning on any lights at night, knowing where everything was, about how many footsteps it was from doorway to doorway, and there was a familiar feel to the place. The shape of the empty living room with its three bow windows – the room behind that, with the addition of a table and chairs, might become a dining room. The sound the refrigerator made, coming on. I couldn’t tell you how many steps there were in the single long flight of hardwood stairs, but my legs suddenly knew when I was at the top or the bottom even if my head didn’t, knew when to take that first flat step.
    And Brendan got to the end of one long trench, and turned at right angles, and started digging again.Every day, six more brown bottles of India would empty, after Brendan picked them up down at the store with his thin roll of real old bills from somewhere inside his clothes, and each day, the trench got longer. Brendan turned again, puffing, sweating, starting back towards the other corner of the foundation. You could tell it was old grass, well-rooted, that the sods only gave up to the shovel after plenty of effort. The roots of the goatweed ran everywhere, naked and white when they were turned up in the sun, tangling and twisting, strangling the other plants from beneath.
    â€œNew back porch. Gonna be like Fort Knox,” Brendan said. “See if she can get in now, evil old cow. More locks on it than even the Devil can make keys for.”
    Once the forms were