A Piece of My Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

just mowed him like a weed. He never even knew what hit him. He just went down
boom
.” She flopped her hand upside down on his thigh. “Just like that. I didn’t even have time to honk. I stopped and went back and seen he wasn’t moving, and felt of his heart, and it wasn’t even fluttering, and I figured it didn’t take a nurse to know he was dead. But there wasn’t a drop of blood on him nowhere. He was clean as when he’d put that suit on. So I walked off down the road to the Amoco to get one of them boys to call the police. And thank God I had thrown my Ezra in the ditch, cause when I was walking up the road some drunk slowed down and tried to pull up behind me, and instead of getting beside me, the bastard hit me, and knocked me in the ditch and broke my leg. Son-of-a-bitch just kept going, with me all broke to pieces. It wasn’t until the police came along and found
my
car and the guy I hit that they saw me in the ditch up the road bawling my head off.”
    She looked up at him hopefully.
    â€œSo how’d you end up married?” he said.
    She drummed her fingers on his leg. “Cause they cramped us up in St. Dominic’s Hospital on account of a flash flood in the mountains.” She puckered her lips and didn’t say anything for a time. “Put all them people in the hospital, and I had to share a room with a man. And that turned out to be Larry. He had his hernia operated on from carrying bricks. And quick as he got out, he started bringing flowers, and we started going one place and another when I got out, and we just sorta caught on. Ain’t that romantic?” She smiled.
    â€œHow long did all that take?” he said.
    â€œTwo months, give a week,” she said, “portal to portal.”
    â€œThat ain’t too long,” he said.
    â€œLife rushes,” she said, and eased her hand up and unzipped his pants. “I’m tired of talking,” she said, watching her hand tour around in his trousers as if it were after something that wouldn’t keep still.

5
    Curvo was off the highway ten miles on a gravel track that made a giant curve east and then north again and marooned the town, which was only a red clapboard building, two glass-bulb pumps, and a file of butchered outbuildings, with the desert open all around to every direction. He could see that all the outbuildings were cages of various sorts, patched in with coiled chicken wire to permit inspection from the outside. The largest coop, a square weathered shed built of sawed two-by-fours with the door removed and fresh chicken wire basted over the opening, had a newly stenciled sign that said zoo.
    He stopped between the pumps and the building and looked out the woman’s window waiting for someone to come out. The building appeared to be a store, and the plate window was flocked with red fishing bobbers and plaquettes of leader line, and a pair of split cane fishing poles crossed corner to corner. A rooster crowed from down among the cages, and he heard it flap its wings as though it was trying to get away from something.
    â€œWhere is everybody?” the woman said, lifting her hair off the back of her neck. “Some kid works here—I seen his old flat-bed last week. Beep the horn.” She grabbed at the wheel, but he caught her.
    â€œI’ll get out,” he said, taking a look back at the cages. “What’s your name?” he said.
    â€œJimmye,” she said.
    â€œJimmye what?”
    â€œWhat’s yours?” she said, aiming her chin at him.
    â€œRobard.”
    â€œWhat is it?” she said.
    â€œRobard.”
    â€œThat’s a damn poor name.”
    â€œYou’re real sweet,” he said, shoving the door to.
    He walked down the row of cages, looking in each one to see if someone was squatting inside tending to whatever was locked up. In the zoo pen there was nothing but a few scraps of wrinkled cellophane and a gamy smell