Vernon God Little Read Online Free

pumps away at the dirt next door. The local ladies decorated it. This year's prize went to the Godzilla pumpjack on Calavera Drive, though.
    As Pam throttles back the car, I see media reporters up the street, and a stranger lazing next to a van in the shade of the Lechugas' willow. He moves a branch to watch us pass. He smiles, don't ask me why.
    'That man's been there all morning,' says Pam, squinting into the willow.
    'He a stranger, or media?' I ask.
    Pam shakes her head, pulling up at my house. 'He ain't from around here, I know that much. He has a camcorder, though …'
    Fuck, fuck, fuck goes the mantis, like it does every four seconds of my life. Gas, brake, gas, brake, Pam berths the car like a ferryboat. Fuck, fuck, gas, brake, I'm snagged in the apparatus of Martirio. Across the street, Mrs Lechuga's drapes are tightly pulled. At number twenty, ole Mrs Porter stares from behind her screen-door with Kurt, the medium-size black and white dog. Kurt deserves a place in the fucken Barking Hall of Fame, although he ain't made a sound since Tuesday. Weird how dogs know things.
    Next thing you know, a shadow falls over the car. It's Vaine Gurie. 'Who do we have here?' she asks, opening my door. Her voice plays from deep in her throat, like a parrot's. You want to check her mouth for the little boxing-glove kind of tongue.
    Mom scurries across our porch with a tray of listless ole joy cakes. She's in Spooked Deer mode. She looked this way the last time I saw my daddy alive, although Spooked Deer can mean anything from her frog oven-mitt being misplaced, to actual Armageddon. But her mitt's right there, under the tray. She heads down the steps past our willow, the one with her wishing bench under it. The wishing bench is quite a new feature around here, but already the damned thing's listing into the dirt.
    She pays no mind, and flounces up to Pam's car.
    'Howdy pardner,' she says to me, dripping with that cutesy-shucksy Chattanooga-buddy-boy shit she started when I first showed evidence of having a dick. Feel the bastard shrivel now. I pull away, in vain because she chases me, covers me with spit and lipstick and fuck knows what else.
    Placenta, probably. All the while she smiles a smile you know you've seen before, but just can't put your finger on. Clue: the movie where the mother visits this young family, and by the end they have to grapple fucken scissors from her hands.
    'Gh-rrr.' Vaine steps between us. 'I'm afraid your pardner here absconded from our interview.'
    'Well call me Doris, Vaine! I'm almost a Gurie myself, I'm so cozy with LuDell, and Reyna and all.'

    'Is that right. Mrs Little, let me explain where things stand …'
    'Well these cakes are just singing out to be tasted - Vaine?'
    'I'm afraid I don't make the laws, ma'am.'
    'At least come up to the house - no point getting hot and ornery, we can straighten things out,'
    says Mom. I stiffen. You don't want Gurie poking around my room or anything. My fucken closet or anything.
    'I'm afraid Vernon will have to come with me,' says Gurie. 'Then we need to take a look through his room.'
    'Well, God, Vaine - he hasn't done any wrong, he always does like he's told …'
    'Is that right. So far he's done nothing but lie, and when I trust him alone he absconds. We still can't account for him at the time of the tragedy.'
    'He wasn't even there!'
    'Not what he told us, he told us he was in math.'
    'It was the time of our math period,' I correct. Print me a fucken T-shirt, for chrissakes.
    'Then there's no need to worry,' says Gurie. 'If you have nothing to hide.'
    'Well but Vaine, the news says it's open and shut - everybody knows the cause.'
    Curie's eyelids flutter. 'Everybody might know the effect, Mrs Little. We'll see about the cause.'
    'But the news says …'
    'The news says a lot of things, ma'am. The fact is we've run this county dry of body-bags, and I, for one, hold the opinion that it'd take more than a single, unaided gunman to do that.'
    Mom stumbles to her