The Other Shoe Read Online Free Page A

don’t date anybody else, at least I haven’t . . . but . . . and we have a lot in common, you know, we’re both going back to good jobs in Courville—she’ll be teaching kindergarten—and she’s a very admirable person, and sort of attractive, I think. Really, I’d always thought this whole ‘love’ idea was something people get too worked up about. I was wrong.”
    â€œYou must be awful tired. You’ve had quite a day.”
    â€œNo. I could go on quite a while longer. I like talking to you. A lot.”
    â€œI’m kinda bushed. Usually by this time of year the woods are closed. Fire danger. But it’s been a rainy summer. Means a hard winter’s on the way, probably. And, greedy me, I’m gettin’ in all the wood I can. Hauled two loads today all by myself. Small ones, but still, ’bout wears you out.”
    He heard for the first time a sorrow or reluctance in her voice, something not to do with what she was presently saying. She leaned down to take up his plate and her face hovered near him a beat longer than necessary, within reach, he thought. His heart bumped, a menace, and as the girl went into the trailer with their dishes, he thought to offer her his help but found that he was mute again, just as he’d been in the moment they’d met. She worked at the sink briefly and then moved off to the back of the trailer, back to where she’d been angry before.
    She hadn’t put out the lamp in the trailer. She hadn’t said good night. The moon had risen and slanted in at him through the green screen. There was a breeze in the trees, waxing and waning, and saying Fooohl. Fooohoohl . He strained to hear anything else, anything of her, but from where she’d gone there was only that silence, and it persisted so long and was so complete that it seemed to him it must be intentional. He’d have heard the water running if she’d brushed her teeth or washed her face, he’d have heard the bedsprings if she lay down—he was that close and that attentive—but instead he heard nothing at all. Nightfall had brought a penetrating cold, so Teague curled in onhimself, thinking God must have sent him a miserable night so that he might remember himself, his entire sense of himself, and quit wanting what was not his to want. He threw his arm over his eyes and could only too easily imagine how silly, how pathetic he must look.
    â€œYou asleep?”
    The girl had floated to the door. Her whisper brought him well up off the lawn chair.
    â€œSorry,” she said. She stood in the doorway, blankets draped over one arm, towels over the other. “Didn’t mean to scare you or wake you up or anything.”
    â€œI was just lying here, thinking, I . . . Kind of thinking over the day.”
    The girl didn’t move. She didn’t speak, though she seemed to want to.
    â€œI was thinking about you, mostly.”
    She wore a long T-shirt for her nightgown. It bore the ghostly imprint of a frolicking unicorn and was so threadbare he could see through it; there was a remarkably detailed shadow between her legs.
    â€œI’m just filthy,” she said. “How ’bout you?”
    Teague yawned, or faked a yawn to keep from panting.
    â€œYou one of those morning shower people? I like to take my shower at night. Hate to go to bed dirty. All sticky and . . . ” She laid the blankets at his feet. “Come on.”
    He followed her out of the sleeping porch and over a short wooden walk to a shed; she cast a flashlight on the shed, and a fifty-gallon drum was mounted on its roof; a garden hose fed into that. “If you fill this thing in the morning, by night the water’s nice and warm. Specially on a day like this one was. Some people’ll go to quite a lotta trouble for a warm shower.”
    â€œThat’s very clever,” he said in a voice he’d never heard before.
    â€œOh, yeah. One of his . .