Hair of the Dog by Gordon Carroll (reading strategies book TXT) 📗

Ziggy a couple of twenties, I drove back home and let Max out. He instantly disappeared into the darkness, and I felt a shiver of fear for any trespassing animals on my property.

Pilgrim waddled out the pet door, his tail wagging, making my heart warm. I scrunched his fur and his ears and kissed him on the head. He licked my hands and nuzzled me. I found his ball with the rope and played tug-of-war, gently, letting him win after a few seconds and then starting all over again, telling him he was the strongest dog in the world in that high, girly voice that dogs love so much and respond to so well.

I reheated some mac and cheese from the night before, grabbed a Cherry Dr Pepper from the fridge, and collapsed on the recliner. I held the cold soda to my cheek. It stung, but the cold felt good against the swelling. I needed a shower bad, but weariness crept through me like a thief and I didn’t think I would make it much past the food and drink. So I ate and drank and dragged myself to my bed where I stripped off my clothes and lay out flat on the covers. I was asleep so fast I didn’t even know it.

But then came the dreams.

14

It was after nine in the evening when Jerome finally unstrapped Clair from her car seat and carried her into the Magic Dust Motel off of Colfax and Chambers. She fell asleep about two hours earlier while Jerome drove the streets looking for a new car to steal. He settled on a 2009, green, Ford Tahoe sitting in a residential neighborhood alongside a six-foot privacy fence. He rummaged the glovebox and visors looking for keys, but the owners were more cautious than that. He jacked the ignition with a flat-tip screw driver, a process that took his practiced fingers about forty seconds and then drove a few blocks to where he had left Clair slumbering in her seat. He simply unhooked the car seat, fixed it into the Tahoe and loaded on his bags and her toys and drove away. She never even woke up.

Jerome lay Clair on the bed of the motel room and brushed her curly hair from her brow. She sucked her thumb, a habit from as long as he had known her, with her index finger curled around her nose.

The walls in the bathroom were peeling and the grout in the shower was moldy and missing in chunks here and there. But the water ran hot and he let it pour over his torn and battered body for nearly an hour, easing the soreness from his muscles and cleaning the blood from his skin. He felt a world better when he toweled dry, although exhausted and loose. Several of his newly acquired holes seeped blood that ran thinly down his chest and thigh, pattering in pink drops on the tiled floor.

He’d stopped at a Walgreens earlier and picked up a new First-Aid Kit, as well as several sewing needles and heavy gauge thread.

Wrapping a towel around his waist, he sat on the end of the bed and started carefully threading a needle, which proved far more difficult than in times past due to his knuckles being torn up and his fingers swollen and tight.

“Daddy?” Clair climbed against him from behind, her chin propped on his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“Sewing,” he said. “Want to help?”

She nodded and slipped off the bed and came around in front of him. She took the needle in her small hands and closed one eye as she sighted in the eye of the needle and deftly slid the thread through. She pulled it around and looped it then handed it back to Jerome to tie it off. She hadn’t yet mastered her knots. Jerome had shown her several times, but it hadn’t quite caught.

Jerome tied off the thread and, after spraying a liberal portion of Bactine across his chest, made quick work of the stab wounds by applying three stitches to each. Clair inspected his handiwork and nodded her head sagely, signifying it would do. The two of them went to the bathroom where he sat her on the counter while he stitched the cut over his eyebrow, keeping the loops tighter and closer together than he had on his chest. His fingers trembled from controlling the pain. By the time he finished, his forehead streamed sweat. He laid down on the bed, spread eagle, and Clair knelt next to him and kissed his cheek.

“Poor, Daddy.”

He hugged her to him. “I’m okay.”

“Those men are bad,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, “yeah they’re bad. But I took care of them. You don’t need to be scared.”

“Your nose looks fat,” she said. “Lips too.”

Jerome ran his tongue across his teeth. The gums were sore, but the teeth felt secure.

“Am I still pretty?” he asked.

She grinned and touched his nose with one finger. “Does it hurt?”

“A little,” he said.

She curled up next to him and stuck her thumb back in her mouth.

“Hungry?” he asked.

She shook her head to the negative and closed her eyes.

“Just sleepy,” she mumbled around her thumb.

“That’s okay,” he said. “You sleep. Daddy is fine.” He gave her a squeeze and let her alone till her breathing ran deep and even.

Jerome slipped off the bed, did a couple of shrugs to loosen his shoulders, and flexed his fingers like the white man he had fought earlier had done. It helped…a little.

After he dressed, he locked the door behind him. Clair knew that if she woke up and he was gone, she was to stay in the room and not open the door for anyone.

Jerome drove to the nearest strip joint, which wasn’t a far drive. The streets were alive at this time of night, with players and druggies and college kids out looking to score drugs, booze and girls. He circled TTs twice before spotting what he was looking for. He parked a