Fine Just the Way It Is Read Online Free PDF

over to another person. And that other person has a kid with her and that kid has your name. I was—all I could think was that they had to be the Dixon Forkenbrocks and that they was related to us after all. Mother didn’t say a word, but I could feel her arm jerk,” he said. He illustrated this by jerking his own elbow.
    “At the cemetery I went over to the kid with my name and asked him if they lived in Dixon and if they had a ranch and was they related to my father who we was burying. He gives me a look and says they don’t have a ranch, they don’t live in Dixon but in LaBarge, and that it is his father we are burying. I was so mixed up at this point that I just said ‘You’re crazy!’ and went back to Mother’s side. She never mentioned the incident and finally we went home and got along like usual although with damn little money. Mother got work cooking at the Sump ranch. It was only when she died in 1975 that I put the pieces together,” he said. “All the pieces.”
     
    On Sunday Berenice and Chad went for their weekly ride. Berenice brought her new digital camera. For some reason Chad insisted on going back to the tangle of energy roads, and it was almost the same as before—a spiderweb of wrong-turn gravel roads without signs. Far ahead of them they could see trucks at the side of the road. There was a deep ditch with black pipe in it big enough for a dog to stroll through. They came around a corner and men were feeding a section of pipe into a massive machine that welded the sections together. Berenice thought the machine was interesting and put her camera up. Behind the machine a truck idled, a grubby kid in dark glasses behind the wheel. Thirty feet away another man was filling in the ditch with a backhoe. Chad put his window down, grinned and, in an easy voice, asked the kid how the machine worked.
    The kid looked at Berenice’s camera. “What the fuck do you care?” he said. “What are you doin out here anyway?”
    “County road,” said Chad, flaring up, “and I live in this county. I was born here. I got more rights to be on this road than you do.”
    The kid gave a nasty laugh. “Hey, I don’t care if you was born on top of a flagpole, you got no rights interferin with this work and takin pictures.”
    “Interfering?” But before he could say any more the man inside the pipe machine got out and the two who had been handling the pipe walked over. The backhoe driver jumped down. They all looked salty and in good shape. “Hell,” said Chad, “we’re just out for a Sunday ride. Didn’t expect to see anybody working on Sunday. Thought it was just us ranch types got to do that. Have a good day,” and he trod on the accelerator, peeling out in a burst of dust. Gravel pinged the undercarriage.
    Berenice started to say “What was that all about?” but Chad snapped “Shut up” and drove too fast until they got to the blacktop and then he floored it, looking in the rearview all the way. They didn’t speak until they were back at Berenice’s. Chad got out and walked around the truck, looking it over.
    “Chad, how come you to let them throw off on you like that?” said Berenice.
    “Berenice,” he said carefully, “I guess that you didn’t see one a them guys had a .44 on him and he was taking it out of the holster. It is not a good idea to have a fight on the edge of a ditch with five roustabouts in a remote area. Loser goes in the ditch and the backhoe guy puts in five more minutes of work. Take a look at this,” he said, and he pulled her around to the back of the truck. There was a hole in the tailgate.
    “That’s Buddy’s .44 done that,” he said. “Good thing the road was rough. I could be dead and you could still be out there entertaining them.” Berenice shuddered. “Probably,” said Chad, “they thought we were some kind of environmentalists. That camera of yours. Leave it home next time.”
    Right then Berenice began to cool toward Chad. He seemed less manly.