Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work Read Online Free

lips caught the moonlight.
    Everywhere Andy and I went was in search of her, just as Mr. Dawson drove up and down Litchfield Road and all the way across town to the quarry and back saying to himself he was on an errand when he was really hoping, just for a moment, to catch a glimpse of her. Her father was out looking for her now, too, in the truck, rifle at his side. Two of her uncles were on opposite sides of the town, covering all the roads leading in and out. Her mother told herself she had known the time would come; but not like this, she said to herself. Not with him. She had thought of Ron and the wedding, the white dress she would sew (had already spent hours, days, years, shaping it in her mind). Even if they found her, she would not be the same now.
    The members of the basketball team, sure now that they would lose the final game of the season and miss the playoffs, were home with their parents watching television or eating potato chips or talking on the phone or listening to their parents talking in the next room or lying on their backs thinking of Dion out there with her; they listened to the sound of crickets and cars passing and shouts from up the street and dogs barking and pots clinking in the sink and footsteps of sisters on stairways while they thought of himout there touching her neck with the tips of his fingers before looking away to drive the car or order another beer or wave to his brother, as if the practicalities of living could distract him, even for a second, from where he would touch her next.
    â€œHe took her, he took her,” Natalie’s mother moaned over and over to her husband and his brothers.
    â€œHe dragged her off. He threw her in his car and took her away.” Natalie’s father was on the phone, calling Sheriff Chuck Sheldon and everyone he knew, which was everyone, the fathers of all the basketball players, fathers of daughters who were Natalie’s friends, younger brothers of fathers of Natalie’s friends and basketball players, fathers of girls not yet old enough to be in junior high, though when they were another Dion would be waiting for them.
    All over town parents of girls who would be like or wanted to be like her and boys who might think of doing what he had done lay in bed staring at the ceiling, saying a few words to each other: What do you think? We’ll find them tomorrow. What will you do? Don’t know. Do you think she’s all right? I really don’t know. They didn’t mention what they were thinking to their children, listening to them talk from the next room, giving voice to their thoughts of what might be happening out there, what he might be doing to her. No image, no story, once started, would complete itself in their minds: she was tied in the backseat, the purple,no the pink silk shirt, ripped down the front and her pale breasts shivering in the moonlight with her nipples like cherries on cream pie—where was he? Hovering above her. Just a hand comes into view; he was gentle now that he had what he wanted. Or she was running down the road in front of his headlights. They had pulled off the road, and she had gotten away, though just for a moment. Her blouse had been stripped off and was lying torn somewhere out of view, probably in the backseat or on the side of the road, and she ran just in her white panties with the cloth riding up between her cheeks above the tan line of her bikini, the point where everyone’s eyes had previously been turned back briefly exposed now. Her head turned, her face flushed and mouth open, her eyes wide and wild, like a cat in high beams: he was catching up. And when he did catch up she would be in the backseat or on the side of the road, her back pressed against the ground, her breath taken away by the weight of his body, all her mother’s clothing, so carefully sewn together, made well enough for her daughter’s children to wear as costumes of a previous era, lying in shreds, and her