Burning Bright: Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

worthless ass off to jail.”
    Danny stared at the fire. The girl reached out her hand, let it settle on Danny’s forearm. The room was utterly quiet except for a few crackles and pops from the fire. No time ticked on the fireboard. Parson had bought the Franklin clock from Danny two months ago. He’d thought briefly of keeping it himself but had resold it to the antiques dealer in Asheville.
    “If I get arrested then it’s an embarrassment to you. Is that the reason?” Danny asked.
    “The reason for what?” Parson replied.
    “That you’re acting like you give a damn about me.”
    Parson didn’t answer, and for almost a full minute no one spoke. It was the girl who finally broke the silence.
    “What about me?”
    “I’ll buy you a ticket or let you out in Asheville,” Parson said. “But you’re not staying here.”
    “We can’t go nowhere without our drugs,” the girl said.
    “Get them then.”
    She went into the kitchen and came back with a brown paper bag, its top half folded over and crumpled.
    “Hey,” she said when Parson took it from her.
    “I’ll give it back when you’re boarding the bus,” he said.
    Danny looked to be contemplating something and Parson wondered if he might have a knife on him, possibly a revolver of his own, but when Danny stood up, hands empty, no handle jutted from his pocket.
    “Get your coats on,” Parson said. “You’ll be riding in the back.”
    “It’s too cold,” the girl said.
    “No colder than that trailer,” Parson said.
    Danny paused as he put on a denim jacket.
    “So you went out there first.”
    “Yes,” Parson said.
    A few moments passed before Danny spoke.
    “I didn’t make them go out there. They got scared by some guys that were here last week.” Danny sneered then, something Parson suspected the boy had probably practiced in front of mirror. “I check on them more than you do,” he said.
    “Let’s go,” Parson said. He dangled the paper bag in front of Danny and the girl, then took the revolver out of his pocket. “I’ve got both of these, just in case you think you might try something.”
    They went outside. The snow still fell hard, the way back down to the county road now only a white absence of trees. Danny and the girl stood by the truck’s tailgate, but they didn’t get in. Danny nodded at the paper bag in Parson’s left hand.
    “At least give us some so we can stand the cold.”
    Parson opened the bag, took out one of the baggies. He had no idea if one was enough for the both of them or not. He threw the packet into the truck bed and watched Danny and the girl climb in after it. No different than you’d do for two hounds with a dog biscuit , Parson thought, shoving the kerosene can farther inside and hitching the tailgate.
    He got in the truck and cranked the engine, drove slowly down the drive. Once on the county road he turned left and began the fifteen-mile trip to Sylva. Danny and the girl huddled against the back window, their heads and Parson’s separated by a quarter inch of glass. Their proximity made the cab feel claustrophobic, especially when he heard the girl’s muffled crying. Parson turned on the radio, the one station he could pick up promising a foot of snow by nightfall. Then a song he hadn’t heard in thirty years, Ernest Tubb’s “Walking the Floor Over You.” Halfway down Brushy Mountain the road made a quick veer and plunge. Danny and the girl slid across the bed and banged against the tailgate. A few moments later, when the road leveled out, Danny pounded the window with his fist, but Parson didn’t look back. He just turned up the radio.
    At the bus station, Danny and the girl sat on a bench while Parson bought the tickets. The Atlanta bus wasn’t due for an hour so Parson waited across the room from them. The girl had a busted lip, probably from slidinginto the tailgate. She dabbed her mouth with a Kleenex, then stared a long time at the blood on the tissue. Danny was agitated, hands