Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (most life changing books txt) 📗

The two half-brothers went up to the house. Wally watched them knock on the door, then step inside. His stomach knotted up like an old tree. Breathing through his mouth, he stared up and down the gravel road and threw the wet comic book into the ditch. Three or four minutes later Leonard came out with something in his hand. He carried it through the yard and came to the car. It was a glass of ice tea.

“She give us some tea and says ta come inside to wait for her husband to come home. They ain’t got no phone.”

Together they went to the house.

TWELVE

July was just getting off work. He rode in the back of the truck with four others, bumping along toward where their cars were parked. Though not actively engaged in any conversation, he listened to Jack and Bonesy and the Bontrager kid talking. “They say you can eat ’em. Pull ’em in the fall. The Indians used burdock roots as a potato substitute.”

“Couldn’t’ve been a substitute, ‘cause they never had potatoes. Potatoes come from Ireland.”

“Don’t be too sure of that.”

“Well, I guess I’m not, but those Indians could make use of about anything. They made paint from bloodroot, I know.”

July felt an uneasiness stir within him, but he couldn’t identify it and tried to push it out of his mind.

“We used to rub that all over us when we was kids,” Jack continued, “and pretend to chop off our fingers.”

“Can’t you find something better to talk about?” said July.

“Boy, but ain’t you touchy today.” Then they went on talking about race-car drivers. “I’d like to have one of those Ferraris. You know, if you buy one of those, take it out and it won’t run two hundred miles an hour, you can take it back and they’ll give you another one.”

“Some of those guys can make nearly a million dollars a year driving in races across the country.”

“They’ve got races all over the world.”

“It’d be the glory I’d want rather than the money,” said Bonesy.

Despite all his power over his emotions, July turned yellow with dread. All his rationality told him that today was like any other. There was no cause to be alarmed about anything. It was a long time ago that he’d played that foolish game. He was much older now.

But his key would hardly fit into the ignition because it shook so much, and he nearly collided with a milk truck because of fish-tailing around a loose corner. The Chrysler was in the driveway, but Holmes wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Oh God, he thought. Something’s happened to Holmes. He sat in the car trying to prepare himself for how he would respond when Mal told him, made a solemn promise to himself that if he’d imagined everything and the dog was all right, then he’d never worry again, ever, got slowly out of the car and went into the house.

Mal was on the sofa, one hand dangling down to the floor. She was dead. Her fingers had begun to stiffen. There was blood everywhere.

As he began to go into shock July imagined that he was having no reaction at all; he seemed to himself to be perfectly adequate, perfectly numb. At one time he noticed he was sitting down holding a piece of the waitress uniform that was ripped away from her collar and was saying out loud, “Nothing could be farther from the truth. No.” He didn’t know how long he’d been there or how much else he’d already said. Or what he was talking about. The sound of the voice was without any emphasis: dream language. Then it was as if his senses would black out at different times, reviving for an instant here and there and he would be completely aware of the sound of the clock—nothing but the regular sound of the clock. The little ceramic pot on the table was all that he saw for a long time. The hours in between were filled, so far as he could tell, with nothing. Later he could remember thinking, I’ve got to . . . I’ve got to . . . but he couldn’t quite grasp what it was. Then he heard the dog bark in the basement, and though it took him nearly ten minutes to walk outside because of the porch swing grabbing his unpredictable attention with its little chains to the ceiling and holding it long after he wanted to get away, he went around to let her out into the yard. Together they wandered aimlessly beyond the fence and onto the gravel road. In the ditch he picked up a comic book. On the cover was stamped Property of Riverview Courts. Hecarried it down the middle of the road, then threw it away. He walked until it was almost dark and someone took hold of his arm and said they’d been honking at him and was he all right and he said, “Call the police,” and kept walking, going off into a large hayfield, not having any idea where he was, who he’d spoken to or what he’d said.

The only presence he was at all aware of was his dog.

Long after dark he’d gotten back onto the road, and that’s where the patrolmen found him and coaxed him into the car and back to the house.

“I know what’s in there,” he told them when they pulled into the driveway. “Don’t think you’ll be showing me anything. You think perhaps that I’m just coming home now for the first time. You think I was walking home from work and now this is the first time. But, see, I already know what’s in there.”

And he climbed out of the car.

As they came in the police photographers were still taking pictures, though Mal’s body had been covered over. As the ambulance men began to pick her up July wondered if he might