The Valley of Dry Bones Read Online Free Page B

never have.”
    Zeke stood and switched places with Mahir at the window.
    Mahir whispered, “The dust died down.”
    And so it had. Zeke didn’t like it. If Mongers were in the area, the dust told him they were about a mile away. But no dust didn’t necessarily mean they were gone. It could mean they were closer. Or coming from another direction.
    Raoul continued, “I figured the best way to keep Katashi from doin’ somethin’ stupid was to make him tell me the whole thing again from the beginning. I told him I was sorry about calling in sick without really being sick. It wasn’t like we both hadn’t done that before, but we always told each other. Anyway, I ordered some food because I knew he needed to eat and I wanted to keep him away from the booze. Then I called Benita and told her I was going to sleep at his place.”
    â€œIt’s a good thing he did,” Katashi said.
    â€œI think so too,” Raoul said, “because I was there the next day when Mrs. Meeks called and said the Thorppes wanted Katashi to come to the funeral a few days later. No way he woulda done that if I hadn’t talked him into it.”
    â€œFor sure,” Katashi said. “And no way I would have gone if you hadn’t gone with me.”
    â€œI had to drag you there, dude.”
    â€œIt meant so much to us,” Alexis said.
    â€œIt was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Katashi said. “Everybody knew who I was. There’s nothing worse than a funeral with a tiny casket, but to know you’re the reason and that everyone else knows too . . . Oh, it was awful. I wanted to crawl in a hole.”
    It was hard for Zeke and Alexis too, of course, though Pastor Bob had preached a message on salvation, as they asked, including Junior’s last words that though he was scared he knew he would soon be in heaven with God, “because of Jesus.”
    â€œThat was the first time Benita and I had ever heard anything like that,” Raoul said. “And we went to church a lot, you know? All our lives. In Mexico and when we moved to Angelino Heights. We believed something like that, but not that. It wasn’t
because
of Jesus, but because of us—what we were trying to do for Him. We talked about it all the way home and all week, about what we would have said if we were the ones dying. We woulda said we
hoped
we were going to heaven, God, because we tried really hard.”
    â€œI was listening too,” Katashi said, “because Elaine had explained it all to me, and Pastor Bob was making it clearer. But the whole time I was dreading going to the cemetery. I wanted out of that, because I would be standing shoulder to shoulder with all these people again, and I didn’t know if I could take another minute of it.”
    Elaine said, “You asked me if I thought the Thorppes would mind if you slipped away after the service. I told you they’d forgiven you for something much more serious than that, but that they
had
asked you to be there, and didn’t you think you owed them at least that much?”
    â€œWell, that put a new spin on things. I owed them whatever they asked. I said I would stay if Raoul and Benita went with me, but that didn’t stop people from just pushing past them and talking directly to me. It wouldn’t have surprised me to be glared at, cussed out, even spit at. Who knows, maybe someone would take a swing at me.”
    â€œYou had
no
church experience,” Pastor Bob said.
    â€œNone at all. And everybody who said anything just told me how nice it was that I came, and they told me they were praying for me. For
me
! It was almost too much.”
    Raoul told how the company put Katashi on desk duty during his suspension while they waited to see if they would be sued. “When they let him back in the truck, he didn’t never want to drive again. We used totrade off every day, but now I drove all the