Give Us a Kiss: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

we’ll see if that’s so.”
    I picked the bullhead up, finger in the gills, which I guess I shouldn’t have.
    “And that fish is an illegal catch,” Sheriff Lilley said. He came a little closer for a look at the bullhead. There was good eating on that bullhead, and it was still floppin’ fresh. “I could ring you both for that right now, but I’m headed home.” He held a beckoning hand toward me and I let him take the fish. “Now I’m gonna overlook your crimes if you get your asses out of here right now—’cause my, oh, my, that bullhead looks tasty.”

3
    FLAME LICKS
    WHENEVER SMOKE AND me got together, something not too savory seemed to happen. In our teenage years we were like car wrecks that you knew would happen again, almost nightly, at the same old crossroads of Hormones and Liquor. I suppose I figured a little more age might have made us brothers less combustible companions, though I’m not sure it wasn’t those dangerous possibilities that had me on this family errand at all.
    The morning was hot by breakfast. There was a slight, hot breeze carrying the scent of the feedlot, which is a good stink, a stink cattlemen always say smells like money. There was lots of loot in the wind. Now and again, in the gustier moments, you could hear the beef bawling richly down in the pens.
    I set out to find Smoke using Panda’s directions. The drive would not be long, but it would take me into the countryside of our home territory, which is the same as going to church for me.
    I was going slow down a rock road that had split away from Jewel Road, and the trees from both sides had joinedbranches above to make a secular cathedral of limb and leaf. When the rock road went into a low-water spot and I had forded a few inches of creek, I looked for the first dirt lane headed south.
    There was, by happenstance, or nature’s weird foreshadowing, I’ll never know, a road-killed carcass at the first lane headed south. The carcass was hairy and stretched full-length, paws fully extended. It was a coyote, and its yellow fur was busted open in the rib cage area and alive with maggots, so that it seemed to be breathing, busted open or not. One of my past-life voices (the girl on ancient Crete who milked goats and was barren) broke through the veil and said, “Look closely, Imaru!” Imaru is what they all call me, even the more recently past ones. The exposed meat of the coyote showed signs of having been pecked and torn at by all manner of lesser creatures who would have fled before the beast when he lived. I guess I sensed the message but didn’t rightly absorb it.
    I drove slowly past the carcass and down the lane. The lane was only clear enough for one car to pass, and branches and weeds and stems beat against the Volvo, snapping and cracking encouragement to back up, get out of here. No voice guided me though, as they only come in tune enough to make out in a frustrating hit- or-miss style, like trying to dial in the Chicago blues station on the radio driving across Kansas at night. You might catch a few notes but you can’t call the song, let alone the lyrics.
    I bounced down the rut holes and bent back the branches and pushed on. A house busted into view before too long. It was kind of an A-frame, but with double-A peaks, and acedar deck, and an old yellow mobile home snug along the deck as an add-on. The deck was partly covered, and many a wind chime, all varieties, were hung from the roof. There were potted Norfolk pines about head-high growing near the porch rail, and a few peacocks and guinea hens and a couple of cats and a mutt looked at me as I pulled up.
    The peacocks let rip with that wicked screeching they favor.
    I got out, fired a Lucky, and sat on the hood. The mutt came over, wagging his tail low to the ground like a whisk broom, signaling in this manner of dog-lingo body language that he acknowledged my superiority and would enjoy being friends. He was longhaired, basically white, and spotted the color