All Your Pretty Dreams Read Online Free PDF

dudes, there’s
just two of them. Mostly hot college girls. I got my eye on a
couple.” The two students disappeared into separate rooms. “She’s
made quite an impression around town, let me tell ya.”
    “ With that
hair?”
    “ Hair?”
”The dye job or whatever.”
    “ Maybe she’s bald. The
first day they were here a bunch of the students got drunk at the
Owl. They didn’t get carded, of course. Walter needs the business.
But the Queen Bee marches in, tells Walter he shouldn’t have served
them. That she’ll have his bar shut down if he keeps serving
them.”
    “ Nice.” Walter had been
happily serving minors for decades.
    “ The place was so quiet
you could hear the mice in the walls. She ripped him a new
one.”
    “ She called the cops on me
the first night I was here, practicing in the garage.”
    “ Seriously?”
    “ Mike said she was
complaining about the noise.”
    “ She’s out to make
friends.”
    A shadow flashed by her
window. “What’d you call her?”
    “ Queen Bee. Walter came up
with that. Says she acts all high and mighty.”
    As they walked through the
rose garden the Queen Bee was at her window. Her strange hair lay
lank on her shoulders and her face was sad, almost lonely. Weeks on
end at the Rainy Days Motor Inn could do that. As Jonny stepped
around the picket fence she snapped her blinds closed.
    Lenny snorted. “Stuck-up
college kids. And we’ve got four more weeks of them.”
     

Chapter 4
     

     
     
    Father Teddy’s voice rang
through the church, strong but comforting, like a well-knit mitten.
A large congregation was assembled in the 115-year-old St.
Bernard’s with its soaring gothic ceiling, but half the pews were
empty. Red Vine had been the county seat when the church was built,
and nothing but good times were expected. But the interstate
highway passed them by, the railroad shut down. The county seat
moved twenty miles away to Beinhorn. Sleepy little Red Vine was
left to its apple orchards, its undistinguished lake, a bunch of
Lutherans, handful of Catholics, and an oversized Catholic
church.
    Ozzie had the high position
on the landing with his drum set. Wendy and Jonny balanced on wide
red-carpeted steps to the altar. The accordion straps pulled Jonny
down, into the earth. He took a deep breath and pictured his feet
anchored to the floor. The carpet was covered with plastic runners.
With a few prayers the carpet would last through the apocalypse,
which Jonny’s stomach felt could be any minute.
    Ozzie tapped out the beat
to the ‘Just for Today Polka’ and they were off.
    Jonny kept his eyes up on
the stained glass window in the choir loft. If he saw anybody he
knew— if Lenny came to make faces at him— he didn’t think he could
make it. Why these nerves? These were his people, folks he’d known
all his life. His third-grade teacher, Miss Atkinson, probably
ninety by now. His Little League coach and all his children. He
tried to keep his mind away from Catholics of his acquaintance.
Walter, from the Owl, with his St. Christopher’s medal. Ozzie was
brought up Catholic and Margaret didn’t seem to care that much
either way. Jonny’s church attendance, mostly Lutheran, was spotty.
He liked church music though, the hymns that carried you through
the roof.
    Jonny forced his mind back
to the music. You’ve done this a hundred
times. You could do this in your sleep. He
tried to smile, or at least not grimace.
    Ozzie and Wendy paused for
his solo. Jonny pumped the accordion, in and out, fingers moving
madly. His hair fell across his forehead. Concentrate. He kept his eyes on a
tear in the plastic runner a step down, bent to his task. A murmur
of appreciation as Wendy came back in, only a few beats late, and
Ozzie rat-a-tat-tatted through the last stanza.
    Father Teddy stood up again
for a prayer. A few in the pews followed suit. Others looked
confused. The polka mass was so far from the traditional mass, all
bets were off. No chant and response, no rules at