Mockingbird Read Online Free Page B

want to go out like that.
      "I killed a man today," she hisses through closed teeth.
      This gives the tweaker pause. Her hand closes around something in the grass, not far from the dead marigolds, near the trepanned gnome.
      "You ain't no killer," he says, grinning.
      She lashes out with the golf putter. The weapon cracks him hard across the forearm – he howls and lets go of her – but she's not done. She springs up and swings with the putter, again bringing it down across his forearms. He's not even yelling anymore. Now it's just a whimper, like a blubbering kid paralyzed by a swarm of yellow jackets stirred. The addict's ankle catches on a mound of uneven ground – out here, with the sand and tree roots, it's all uneven ground.
      His turn. He falls.
      "Fuck away from me," he says, still simpering.
      " You ain't no killer ," she repeats, mocking him. "Who knows what I am? You sure don't."
      She raises the putter over her head. Miriam's the hand of fate. She saw his death: heroin overdose. But the power is in her hands to change that. Putt his ass off this mortal coil, that's one less tweaker rapist asshole in the world. She'd be doing everybody a favor.
      He cries out. Blows a big old snot bubble.
      The putter falls from her hands.
      "Get out of here," she mumbles, nudging him with her toe.
      It's like he doesn't recognize a reprieve when he sees one.
      She kicks sand in his ear. "I said get the fuck out of here!"
      The tweaker yelps, crab-walks away until he can manage to stand, then ducks between a pair of double-wide trailers.
      Miriam goes inside. Lights another cigarette. Hears Louis' voice inside her head, chastising her not to smoke in here, but right now, she doesn't care. She can't care no matter how hard she tries.
      She finds herself in the bathroom, or what passes for one. It's so cramped you can barely turn around. The door isn't even a door, just an accordion you pull closed. Beneath her, a carpet the color of diarrhea. If you're going to carpet the bathroom, at least going with a shitcolor has a practical side.
      The blood is sticky on her brow. Like a pawing cat, she spins the toilet paper roll until she's got a bunched-up heap of tissue on the floor. Rip . She uses it to dab at her head, looking at the black and red crease across her hair.
      Hair that once was a different color depending on the day. Blue purple blonde green whatever. Blackbird black. Vampire red.
      Now just chestnut. Her original color.
      Trimmed down the side by a bullet's furrow.
      It's then the walls feel tight. Tighter than usual. She can barely breathe, so she stubs out the cigarette in the sink.
      "Fuck it," she says to nobody but the dead bird. Her voice quavers, rain on a tin sheet. Palms slick. Stomach sick. "I'm done."
      She goes and packs a bag.

SIX
    This Way to the Great Egress
     
    A long stretch of Jersey highway – highway 72, Barnegat Road – where the heat vapors lick the gray macadam, the yellow dotted line melting between them like pats of butter.
      Two-lane road. Cars pass. Going to the shore. Coming from the shore. Families packed in minivans. Frat fucks hooting out of open-air Jeeps, bad music blasting. Someone on a bike dressed in tight lycra emblazoned with endless corporate logos as though he's a sponsored cyclist rather than just another asshat with delusions of significance.
      She sees the first bike and thinks, Ah, right. Bike. Should've ridden my bike . But then she thinks, no, that's not the plan. The plan is, go back to the old way. The normal way. The Miriam Black way.
      All she needs is her hitchhiking thumb and her getaway gams.
      Time to say goodbye. To be rid of the anchor that is Louis and this life and once more become a free radical churning thorough the arterial byways and circulatory highways of the United States of America. A cancerous mote.
      Except, for some reason, she doesn't stick out her thumb.
      She