Bone Fire Read Online Free PDF Page B

and the day remained faultless, a dozen swollen white clouds to break up the blue, the wind steady enough to keep the flies down.
    “How we doing?” McEban asked. He took a plastic Pepsi bottle filled with water from a saddlebag, drinking half and then passing it over to Kenneth.
    “The top two wires are down for about a hundred yards just half a mile west of here,” she told him. “And the corner brace is rotted out.”
    “That’s it?”
    “That’s all of it.”
    “Well, shit. I don’t see why you couldn’t have managed this by yourself.”
    “I was lonely.” She winked at Kenneth.
    “Me too,” Kenneth said.
    “You were?” McEban knelt in front of the boy, rewrapping his hand. “Well, then, that’s another matter altogether.”
    They led their horses to a shaded spring set high in a depression grown thick with wildflowers, holding the reins away from the animals’ front feet while they drank, pulling the bridles off so they could fan through the tall grass, trailing their halter ropes as they grazed.
    They ate their lunches spread out around the spring, and whenthey were done McEban lay back with his hat tipped over his eyes, his hands laced behind his head, and Kenneth, lying back against him, pretended to sleep, watching Griff and Paul where they sat together in the sun against the sidehill across from him.
    Paul leaned back on his elbows. “Did you hear about the guy Crane found dead in the trailer house?”
    “My mom said Crane knows who he is but wouldn’t tell her. She said it was a meth lab.”
    “I always thought that could’ve been me,” he said.
    She shaded her eyes. “You’ve never done drugs in your life.” She watched him turn the stem of a weed in his fingers, tying it in a knot.
    “I mean I expect something like that. I don’t know. Something sudden.”
    She hooked a finger in one of his belt loops as though she was afraid he might fade and then vanish entirely, lying back against him, resting her head in the curve of his hip. “From now on I want you to call me Divine Tiger Woman.”
    “You want what?”
    “Divine Tiger Woman.”
    He chuckled, genuinely surprised. “You think that sounds Indian?”
    “I think it sounds more Indian than Lightning Whatever. Anyway, she was
East
Indian.”
    “And here I was thinking you pulled the name out of your butt.”
    She was watching the clouds scud to the east, and their movement made her feel as though she were rolling slowly away from him. She put a hand down to steady herself. “Every man who ever made love to her never had to come back to a lower life.”
    “You mean like a prairie dog? Or a worm?”
    “You’ve got it.”
    He laughed again, enjoying himself, easing out from under her, getting up on his knees.
    She squinted against the sun. “You don’t always have to say thewhole thing. When we’re around other people you could shorten it to DTW. Everybody wouldn’t have to know how lucky you are.”
    He leaned over her, casting her face in shadow. “What do you think, Kenneth? You think I ought to kiss her?”
    When the boy nodded without lifting his head from McEban, Paul kissed her and sat back on his heels.
    “I can’t leave him,” she said. “Not the way he is now.”
    He pulled a notepad and pen from his shirt pocket. “You understand he could live a lot longer.”
    “I hope he does.” She cocked an arm under her head. “You writing me a poem?”
    “I’m writing down what we did today.” He waved a bee away from his face, watching it dip and sputter toward the creek. “Something about where the fence was down. When we got thirsty and how our mouths tasted like wood. How the horses made out.” He looked across at McEban and the boy. “Maybe something about when Kenneth cut his hand.”
    “Like a diary?”
    He held the notebook against his thigh, writing. “For Einar. So I won’t forget to tell him. It’s not like he can get out here with us.”
    She lay back in the warm, sweet grass, after a bit