Heat of Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

side.
    Bea screamed at them to keep the dogs down, they were scratching the paint. “Can’t you see? Your dogs! You horrible little creatures,” she wailed at them. “Can’t you understand they’re clawing the paint?”
    But Albert was not paying any attention to Bea or the kids. He was watching the silent house, waiting for Juan and Rosa to come out of the door.

4
    I TELL YOU WHY we call you and Bea to come over, Alberto,” Rosa said. She had walked into the house close at his side, glancing at him with little smiles of pride, touching him, as if after thirty years she could not yet believe this beautiful man was her first-born. “We need you, Alberto.”
    “Please,” Bea said. “His name is Albert. Or Al. It is not Alberto. It never was. It isn’t now — ”
    “Oh, stop it, Bea,” Al said.
    Bea looked about the shadowy room with its ancient furniture, scuffed and marked by the children and the dogs and time itself. She hated this room, hated the religious paintings, the religious articles secured to the dark walls. She wanted to get as damned far from this as she could, and drag Al with her because it was best for him whether he knew it or not.
    “I think your people call you Alberto just to annoy me,” Bea said, sitting on the edge of a couch.
    Rosa shook her head, looking at Al as if he were some fine statue she’d never seen before. “Always I call him Alberto,” she said, tilting her head. “This is the name of my grandfather. My grandfather hold me on his lap when he die. I am sitting on his lap and talking with him, the way a little child will, and I think he has fall asleep. But is dead. Sitting there dead. Is fine old man. My grandfather.
    For him I name my first son. I always call him Alberto.”
    “Well, you can stop.”
    “For God’s sake, Bea,” Al said. “It don’t matter. It makes no difference.”
    She listened to the children yelling in the yard. Luis would allow them to bury the sting ray if they were sure it was the most horrible death possible to it. She felt her nerves drawing taut.
    “It does make a difference and you know it.”
    Al exhaled, spread his hands. “Go on, Mama. Tell us about it. Why’d you call us over here?”
    Rosa glanced at Big Juan. He tried to smile but after a moment shrugged and nodded.
    “Is because of Dolores,” Rosa said.
    Al walked to the front screen door and back. He had not known what to expect but it had not been this.
    “What’s she done?” Al was worried. After all, Dolores was just at that age; men wouldn’t let her alone. Hell, the wonder was she’d kept it this long. He’d heard those men calling her name from the mangroves. Not even Big Juan could drive them away.
    “She’s a-fall in love.” Rosa’s mouth pulled down.
    “This is bad?” Bea said. “Everybody falls in love sooner or later — even in this Godforsaken place.”
    “Yeah.” Big Juan paced the room. “But not every girl — nineteen years — like Dolores — must fall in love for a man twice her age.”
    “My God,” Al said. “I thought she was nuts about Ric Suarez.”
    “Shu.” Rosa lifted her arms, let them drop. “This we all believe. But you should hear Dolores talk about this now. This was something that happened many years ago when she is a child — nothing but a child. Then she does not even know what is love. This is what she tells me. Ah, but now. Now she knows what is love. With this old man — over thirty — why, almost as old as me — o? you papa.”
    “Why don’t you have a talk with this man, Papa?” Al said. “A real strong talk.”
    “Is not so simple.” Big Juan spoke in a weary way, a man who has considered all the angles and still has his insoluble problem to face.
    “You want me to talk to him?” Al said.
    “Now, Al, you promised,” Bea said from the couch. “We were not going to stay — ”
    “Shu. Of course you stay. You spend the night. You have Al’s old bed. All to yourself.”
    “Al. You promised.”
    “All