A Choir of Ill Children Read Online Free PDF

drop his squeaky voice by an octave. Sometimes he’s too excited and forgets to talk from his diaphragm, and this reedy piping escapes him. He waves his arms around like a drowning child, the fury filling his face. “That’s true, Velma, and we’ve been through the local footwear shops already in order to obtain shoe-size records. While we’ve questioned several men and women, at this time we have no single chief suspect.”
    Velma Coots glares at Burke’s pinkies with so much animosity that he’s nearly brushed over by her vitriol. He makes tiny fists.
    “So what are people to do?” asks Drabs’s father, Reverend Clem Bibbler. No matter how badly it breaks a hundred degrees I’ve never seen him sweat. He’s taking this situation extremely seriously, but as quietly and calmly as possible. Members of his congregation have stopped attending services because they’re afraid to leave their dogs and hive-riddled children home alone. And also because they’re frightened that Drabs might start taking his clothes off at the altar.
    “Everyone’s being asked to take certain precautions,” Burke tells the reverend. “Don’t leave your loved ones out at night. Bring them inside. Keep as good a watch over them as you do your own children. Don’t let them alone over long periods. Make sure your gates are locked. Undo the chains. Keep your guns loaded and close to you at all times. Keep a round in the chamber. If you must leave your home for an extended amount of time, hire a sitter. I’ve also been authorized to employ three new part-time deputies who are currently assisting me on this case.”
    Prayers aren’t helping. Perhaps Reverend Bibbler has put too much pressure on God lately, diverting His divine attention and diluting the Lord’s power.
    For twenty years he’s been begging the Almighty to bring his boy Drabs back to his senses, and now all of a sudden he expects miracles over a few booted poodles. Even he cannot fathom the full extent of his folly, and he’s obviously ashamed just in the asking. The more I think about it the more I realize how incongruous Reverend Bibbler has become in Potts County. I’d pity the man if I wasn’t so sure that, like my father, he’s brought this on himself.
    “We want justice!” someone cries.
    “Blood!”
    “We don’t want our kids playing with legless frogs anymore!”
    “Or crippled bats!”
    “We’re going to catch this clever kicker,” the sheriff tells them. He finds me in the audience and scowls in my direction. When it all comes down to it, he harbors a grudge against my family for having settled the county. All troubles track back to us.
    Burke is as small as a white lie and looks as if he might be carried off under the arm of a hefty woman at any second. He feels it too, and smiles cruelly.
     
    T HE H OLY O RDER OF F LYING W ALENDAS.
    They like the metaphor of walking the high wire through life, putting your faith in God and in your own responsible preparation. I still think there must be some kind of legal infringement here, but every year it seems that there are more monks and fewer Walendas.
    Abbot Earl drove one of the bulldozers my father hired to drain the swamp. He was good at his job, as were all the workers, but they still couldn’t accomplish the task set before them. When my father died, he took something from those loyal men who had vainly fought alongside him. Abbot Earl lost his way for a time and continued to stay in town, living at the bottom of a tequila bottle and bedding a one-eyed woman named Lucretia Murteen.
    He found his faith again when he awoke covered in vomit and blood lying on the icy floor of the vacant hospital. The front windows had been shattered long ago but he’d still somehow sliced open his forearm climbing inside. Perhaps he’d been attempting to kill himself. There were three deep vertical gashes from his wrist to halfway up his arm. If he’d meant to do it then he’d been earnest about dying at the