Whom Gods Destroy Read Online Free Page A

no college; there wouldn't even be a diploma from the high school, because you knew you couldn't face her.
    And that's the way it is when you're young and your name is Roy Foley and you live on Burk Street. You try, but you can't win. So you run.
    3
    YOU WOULD THINK THAT fourteen years would be long enough to forget. I thought I had forgotten, but there it was, the same thing all over again. The shame was just as sickening as it had been fourteen years ago, and the hate and anger were just as sharp.
    I went across the street and into the house again, and I guess I went absolutely crazy for a few minutes. I picked up a chair and slammed it against the wall, and I kept slamming it until there was nothing but splinters left. Then I pounded the walls with my fists and cursed. Foley, you're a phony, no-good sonofabitch! Oh, you were going to do great things! You were going to show her that she couldn't get away with treating you like that. A lousy fry cook in a crumby eight-stool hash house. Great God, you make me sick!
    The rage finally burned itself out of its own violence and left me weak and gasping. I lay across the bed and tried not to think about it. Well, what do you do now, Foley? I knew I couldn't stay in Big Prairie. Sooner or later I would run into her, and what would I do then? Now that I had cooled off I knew that I didn't have enough money to take care of the funeral expenses. What would I say to her? Here's three-fifty, Lola. Thanks for burying my old man for me. I'll pay you the rest when I get a job.
    I knew what I was going to do. I was going to run, just the way I had done before.
    I went back to the salvage shop and called a taxi, then went outside to smoke a cigarette and wait for it. I felt like I was just coming —out from under a long, hard drunk. My hands shook. The muscles in my legs had gone to milksop.
    The taxi came finally, and I went back to the bus station and found out that it would be another hour before I could catch anything going west. So I checked the suitcase and started walking the streets to kill time just looking around.
    The red Ford passed me, making about forty-five miles an hour right through the middle of town. I'd just stepped off the curb and he missed me by about six inches, and I thought, The sonofabitch, I hope he gets himself killed! Then, while I was still looking, the Ford screeched under tramped brakes, then made a U turn right in the middle of the street and came back toward me. It was a new convertible, but the top was up because the day was sharp.
    I jumped back on the curb and started to yell, but then I saw the girl sitting next to the driver. Her hair was long and so blonde that it was almost white. Her mouth was as red as an open wound. She wasn't beautiful—she was a long way from that—but there was something witch-like about her, and once you looked at her it was hard to take your eyes away.
    “Roy,” the driver called. “By God, it's Roy Foley!”
    I saw the driver for the first time. He was a heavy-set guy with eyes that were pale and vaguely weak-looking, and mousy hair that was beginning to get thin on top. He had the flushed, slightly puffy face of a heavy drinker. The first thing I thought was, How did a pig like that get a girl like that? The red convertible explained part of it, I guessed. Then it hit me who he was and it almost floored me.
    I gouged in my mind for his name, and then I had it. It was Sid Gardner. He was from Burk Street, just like I was, and he was one of the dumbest guys I had ever known. But he had that new car and that girl.
    By the time I got it all figured out I was over pumping his hand, and he looked tickled to death to see me.
    He turned to the girl and said, “Vida, this here's Roy Foley. He was the sweetest damn running back you ever saw.”
    “Not without you making the holes for me,” I said. I had him pegged now. He had been a guard or a tackle, as well as I could remember. The girl looked at me and smiled as though it