Crimes in Southern Indiana Read Online Free PDF

baby-faced, now covered by age, the look of tires run on back-road gravel, blanketed by remorse and regret that had left his features thick with the shadows of barbed-wire whisker and uneven locks of hair. His mane, coarse as a horse’s tail, braided down his spine. The person on those posters on the passenger’s seat and the man who collected them were two identities with the same torment.
    Deets sat fighting the tears of memory. He wiped snot on his flannel sleeve with one hand while the other pulled a fresh Pall Mall from his pack, then placed it unlit onto his lips as he thought. He should have seen it, acknowledged its presence. Her love was a cripple fighting frostbite. As her feeling was permanently lost, all he could do was watch, because there was no cure for frostbite.
    He should have noted her appetite disappearing along with the meals she no longer prepared, the garden she no longer kept, beans no longer broken, corn no longer shucked, potatoes no longer dug.
    Everything gone to waste. Spoiled. She said she felt too weak. Said she was too tired or she lost track of time. That daylight was too short.
    That’s what she’d told him after that first discovery of herslip on the kitchen floor and the fever that followed. And as they lay in bed at night while he ran his hands over her warm outline, tracing her beauty, her words exchanged with his, how she’d maybe try tomorrow, she just needed her rest, to lie with him, to lie with this shade of skin. This man. Her husband.
    But then he came home from the factory one evening, found her feeling weak on the couch,as she’d discovered another slip. A jarring of her brain. She’d crawled to the phone and called Brockman, who said it was probably her blood sugar. But after that more stumbles followed as her balance was no better than a square dancer with a crooked limb or a clubfoot. She’d lost her posture, her rhythm, and her balance when moving across the cabin’s hardwood floor, no longer recognizing theupright position.
    Deets trusted Brockman; so did Elizabeth. But then came her confusion and uncontrolled outbursts of emotion. She believed one of her ears was bigger than the other. She asked him to look. To compare. To see what she’d seen in the bathroom mirror every morning. During simple conversations she’d cry inconsolably about the beauty of the day or how the outside air felt against herfeatures, dried the tears that shadowed her cheek line. He’d see nothing, and like her, he understood even less.
    And the visits from Brockman and his vitamin treatments began to add up. They had become similar to visits from the Reaper—your soul was the toll and all you could do was wait.
    Finally Deets had lost his trust in Brockman and his vitamin treatments. He forced Elizabeth into his Scout,made a trip to the county hospital, where he explained her fever, her stumbles and tumbles, along with her confusion over the ear and her emotional outbursts. They admitted her. Took X-rays. Ran blood tests. Discovered an imbalance in her mind that was so far beyond treatable it was incurable. Her mind had fermented into soil that enriched a tiny crop of malignant ginseng spreading and rootingin her brain.
    Aft erward Deets asked himself what he had done, trusting Brockman, waiting too long, putting it off. He blamed himself.
    What she had would deteriorate her to a plot of loose earth in six months or less. And it began tearing her numbers from the calendar, stealing what days she had left, taking with it the bond they once shared. He’d come home from work trying to comfort her,wanting to lie with her in bed, feel the warmth of her outline next to his. Wanting to bathe her and cook and feed her. He hoped for a miracle, but she’d given up on what he couldn’t let go of. She’d mumble pleas, telling him she was like a hound with parvo, she was suffering, she’d lost her quality of life and needed to be put down. It