Burning Bright: Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

open,” he told Ray, “so I can get this thing outside.”
    Parson got the heater down the steps and carried it the rest of the way. Once inside the farmhouse he set it near the hearth, filled the tank, and turned it on. He and Ray gathered logs and kindling off the front porch and got a good flame going in the fireplace. The flue wasn’t drawing as it should. By the time Parson had adjusted it a smoky odor filled the room, but that was a better smell than the meth. The three of them sat on the couch and unwrapped the sandwiches. They did not speak even when they’d finished, just stared at the hearth as flame shadows trembled on the walls. Parson thought what an old human feeling this must be, how ten thousand years ago people would have done the same thing on a cold night, would have eaten, then settled before the fire, looked into it and found peace, knowing they’d survived the day and now could rest.
    Martha began snoring softly and Parson grew sleepy as well. He roused himself, looked over at his brother, whose eyes still watched the fire. Ray didn’t look sleepy, just lost in thought.
    Parson got up and stood before the hearth, let the heat soak into his clothes and skin before going out intothe cold. He took the revolver from his pocket and gave it to Ray.
    “In case any of Danny’s friends give you any trouble,” Parson said. “I’ll get your power turned back on in the morning.”
    Martha awoke with a start. For a few moments she seemed not to know where she was.
    “You ain’t thinking of driving back to Tuckasegee tonight?” Ray asked. “The roads will be dangerous.”
    “I’ll be all right. My jeep can handle them.”
    “I still wish you wouldn’t go,” Ray said. “You ain’t slept under this roof for near forty years. That’s too long.”
    “Not tonight,” Parson said.
    Ray shook his head.
    “I never thought things could ever get like this,” he said. “The world, I just don’t understand it no more.”
    Martha spoke.
    “Did Danny say where he’d be staying?”
    “No,” Parson said, and turned to leave.
    “I’d rather be in that trailer tonight and knowing he was in this house. Knowing where he is, if he’s alive or dead,” she said as Parson reached for the doorknob. “You had no right.”
    Parson walked out to the jeep. It took a few tries but the engine turned over and he made his way down the drive. Only flurries glanced the windshield now. Parson drove slowly and several times had to stop and get outto find the road among the white blankness. Once out of Chestnut Cove, he made better time, but it was after midnight when he got back to Tuckasegee. His alarm clock was set for seven thirty. Parson reset it for eight thirty. If he was late opening, a few minutes or even an hour, it wouldn’t matter. Whatever time he showed up, they’d still be there.

DEAD CONFEDERATES
    I never cared for Wesley Davidson when he was alive and seeing him beside me laid out dead didn’t much change that. Knowing a man for years and feeling hardly anything in his passing might make you think poorly of me, but the hard truth is had you known Wesley you’d probably feel the same. You might do what I done—shovel dirt on him with not so much as a mumble of a prayer. Bury him under a tombstone with another man’s name on it, another man’s birth and dying day chipped in the marble, me and an old man all of the living ever to know that was where Wesley Davidson laid in the ground.
    “I’ve a notion you’re needing some extra money,” Wesley says two weeks earlier at work, which isn’t a big secret since the whole road crew’s in the DOT parking lot that afternoon when the bank man comes by to chat about my overdrawn account, saying he’s sorry my momma’s in the hospital with no insurance but if I don’t get him some money soon he’ll be taking my truck. Soon as the bank man leaves Wesley saunters up to me.
    I act like I haven’t heard him, because like I said I never cared much for