Bent Road Read Online Free PDF Page A

walks over to the hole that the boys were digging when Daniel first walked up.
    “You got to watch this,” one of the brothers says, ignoring Daniel’s question.
    The boy who was sitting near the barn has almost reached them. Up close, his head seems too large for his body, as if his neck can’t quite hold it up, and both legs bow to the right. He has the same dark hair but his is cut high off his forehead.
    “Come on,” the crippled boy says. “These guys are stupid.”
    The youngest boy is still fussing with the hole and the kitten, patting down the dirt like he is planting a tomato. An older brother walks toward the hole with a weed whip.
    Following the boy across the drive, Daniel tucks Evie under one arm and presses her face into his side, holding tight so she can’t squirm away. The boy walks with an awkward rhythm—step, step, pause, step, step, pause—as if he has to think about each set of steps before he takes them. Reaching Dad’s truck, the crippled boy throws open the passenger side door and Daniel shoves Evie inside.
    Up on the porch, Dad walks out of the house, followed by a large man who must be Mr. Bucher, although he seems too big to have a son as small and broken as this boy. The two men shake hands and Dad walks down the steps, his hat tucked under his arm.
    “Thanks,” Daniel says to the boy and climbs in after Evie. “See you around?”
    The boy nods and limps toward the house. “Lock your windows,” he says. “Doors, too. Just in case.”
    From over near the barn, someone calls out, “Fore.”
     
    R ay must feel it, too, Ruth thinks as they pull away from Arthur’s new house. Jonathon has taken Mother home and Arthur and his family are settled in their new house. They have full stomachs, freshly made beds, and fans are perched in every bedroom window. She worried that when Arthur came home, he would look at her like all of the others in town. She worried that he, like everyone else, had always wondered if Ruth married the man who killed her own sister. Ruth swallows, blinks away the feeling that she’s betraying Eve, thinking ill of the dead. But Arthur didn’t look at her like the rest of them. He looked at her like they were young again, before anything bad happened. Before Eve died. He looked at her like he still loved her.
    Rolling down her window, Ruth inhales the smell of cut feed and freshly plowed sod. Nearing the top of the hill that separates her and Ray’s house from Arthur’s new home, the landscape even seems prettier. The gently rolling hills, the dark fields, the brome-lined ditches. Ray must see it, too. He seemed happier today. He stopped with one glass of whiskey at Mother’s. His eyes never drooped. His speech never slurred. At Arthur’s new house, just half a mile from Ruth and Ray’s home, Ray had worked hard, unpacking and piecing together the bed frames, hauling boxes in from the truck, unwrapping dishes and silverware. And as they began the short ride home, he drove with his hat pushed high on his head and one arm draped around Ruth’s shoulders. He had seemed content with Ruth, as happy as he had been in their earliest days together. Never as happy as he had been with Eve. But almost happy.
    Once they are over the top of the hill, Ruth sees their house down below. As new and different as the landscape looks and the air smells, their house is the same. By the time they reach the bottom of the hill, the happiness is gone. It’s a subtle change, like a shifting shadow. Arthur is home again and he still loves Ruth, but no one else is coming with him. He is a reminder of happier times but also of all that has been lost. And Evie, too. Ruth had wondered if Ray would notice the resemblance. When Evie first walked out of Mother’s house, skipping across the gravel drive, cheeks flushed with heat, braids swinging behind, bangs brushing her forehead, Ray had blinked and cleared his throat into a closed fist as he looked down on her. Then the memory was gone,