Carry Me Home Read Online Free PDF

Jimmy?” I ask when Jimmy rolls outta bed and clamps his hands over his head and holds it like there’s a woodpecker hammering inside.
    “Yeah, a little bit,” he says. “Hand me my smokes and my pants there.”
    “Where’d you go last night?” I ask Jimmy, feeling a little bit of a lump in my throat ’cause Jimmy leaved last night while I was in my room looking at comic books and he didn’t even come in first to see if I wanted to go along.
    “Well, Floyd and I were heading to pick up Molly and Mary for the picture show, but we didn’t exactly make it there.”
    Ma calls Jimmy “the birthday boy” when we get downstairs, and Louie and John snicker. Ma pats John on the arm when she’s gotta scoot around him, and she gives him a smile. Ma smiles at John ’cause she says that dent he’s got on his chin looks cute. Floyd says he thinks it looks like a butt crack.
    “You get home in time for supper, Jimmy,” Ma says as we’re going out the door. “Molly will be here by six.”
    Floyd and his dad got 160 acres just outside of town. They don’t got no ma ’cause she died when Floyd was ten years old, but they got a barn and cows, and chickens, and four goats that run up behind you and butt you in the ass with their heads if you ain’t careful. They got a dog named Scout too, one of them yellow Labs, and he goes hunting with us.
    “How come I can’t have a dog, Jimmy?” I ask. I’m scratching Scout behind his ear, and his tongue is flip-flapping out the side of his mouth, and his tail is whacking my leg like crazy. Jimmy don’t answer me. He’s busy loading his shotgun with shells from his pocket, and laughing ’cause Louie is teasing John about hosing Ruby Leigh last night. John’s face is some red, but it might be from the wind. “Shit, who didn’t hose Ruby Leigh last night?” he says.
    “I didn’t, Pissfinger,” Jimmy says.
    John whistles, then says, “Well, Gunderman, that’s your loss.”
    Jimmy laughs. “I’m missing out on a case of the clap too, but you don’t see me crying about that, do you?”
    Jimmy don’t hose nobody no more. Not since him and Molly started talking about getting married soon as Jimmy can get together enough money for a down payment on the Williams place, which he says will be a mighty fine place once it gets fixed up. Jimmy says it’s okay to hose girls like Ruby Leigh when you ain’t promised yourself to another girl and if she ain’t the kind of girl you wanna marry anyway. But he says that it ain’t okay to hose a girl like Molly until after you marry her. He repeats then what Ma always says about men not buying milk when they can get it for free, or something like that. I never did figure what in the hell paying for milk or getting it for free has got to do with girls. Well, unless the girl you’re fixing to hose is a farm girl.
    Jimmy hands me a shotgun—even though Ma says I’m not allowed to carry one—and reminds me how to carry it so I don’t shoot my foot off or blow somebody’s goddamn head off. He makes me walk in front of him a bit where he can keep an eye on me. Floyd, he ain’t walking real good, on accounta he was still guzzling Schlitz when we got to his house.
    We walk along Balsam Creek, laughing and talking ’til we hear a grouse kick up from the alder brush, his wings making that loud thumping noise when he flies. Jimmy lifts his shotgun quicker than you can say “fart,” then, pow! That grouse drops, deader than dead. Scout takes off and comes back with the bird flapping out of his mouth and brings him right to Jimmy, dropping him at his feet. Jimmy takes the bird and pokes its foot through his belt loop, then flops the bird over so it stays. He gives Scout a pat on the head. It’s the damnedest thing how Scout always knows who shot the bird. Scout’s one smart dog.
    We hunt for a few hours, then walk through the old field, heading back toward the house. We is walking along a line, pretty close together, except for Louie,