I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive Read Online Free PDF Page B

until, little by little, she began to recover her strength.
    She had no way of knowing that in their youth, both her grandfather and the gringo were every bit as restless as her father, and that what she mistook for stability was merely resignation.

II
    Hank's cold. A sharp, dry kind of cold, deep down where the marrow in his bones used to be, but he doesn't shiver and he doesn't shake. In fact, he hardly notices at all. Hank's been cold for as long as he can remember now, and it's only when some errant echo of human warmth accidentally strays into his colorless domain that he even bothers to give it a name.
    It's the girl.
    Hank hates the girl. He doesn't know why. For some reason that he doesn't understand it really gets his goat when Doc makes over her the way he does. Watching over her. Waiting on her. Spoon-feeding her like a goddamn baby.
    What's so special about this girl anyway? Okay, so she's young and she's not half bad-looking if you like them skinny (and Hank doesn't), but if it's dark meat you hanker after, Hank reckons you might as well go all the way. On top of all that she doesn't understand a single word of American! What's an educated man like Doc want with a woman like that?
    Ask Doc, and he'll tell you it's not about that. This girl's like all the others. In trouble. Nowhere to turn. That's what Doc does. He helps them out if they got the money.
    Well, sometimes even when they don't.
    But something's different this time. Hank's been haunting Doc for a while now, and Doc's never looked at or talked to or touched anybody the way he does this Mexican girl. Oh, he's always gentle enough in his manner, if a little gruff in his words now and then, but with this girl he's downright ... tender ...
yeah, that's the word,
tender.
The way you treat a tiny baby or a brand-new lover.
    If Hank didn't know any better, he'd swear Doc's sweet on the Mexican girl.
    And if anybody else in the world besides Doc could hear or see Hank, they'd swear Hank's jealous.
    But that's crazy! Just because Hank wants to yank the little bitch out of the bed by her hair and slap the beans out of her doesn't make him jealous, because that would make him some kind of a queer, wouldn't it? Besides, it don't matter anyway because he can't touch her, her or anybody else. Otherwise, he'd send the dusky little whore running like a scalded dog back to wherever the hell it was she came from, after he told her a thing or two, that is, but then there it is again, the fly in the ointment. Only Doc can hear Hank. And Doc rarely listens. And he never answers except when he's got him an armful of dope.
    Why is that? Why Doc? Why not somebody else? There are folks he was closer to in life, folks he loved, who loved him back even though loving him wasn't easy sometimes. Surely he has more unfinished business elsewhere in the world, isn't that what a haunting is all about? But for what seems like an eternity now ... perish the thought ... Hank's followed Doc wherever he traveled. Bossier, Mobile, Houston, one shit hole after another. Sometimes days or even weeks pass by in a new town before Hank's aware he and Doc have moved on.
    So, how come they're still hanging around this particular corner of hell? Hank's tried steering Doc by sheer will back east toward Montgomery. That's where Hank's bones are buried; maybe he can rest there. Or what about Nashville, or even Shreveport, someplace Hank has people, old friends and ex-lovers who either love him or hate him, no matter, just as long they don't walk right through him and then shiver like he's nothing but a draft coming up from underneath the door.
    But for whatever reason, Doc's in the driver's seat now. And to be sure, he's a strange one, wandering from pillar to post all these years, and of all places to finally settle down, why here? What's so great about this shit-hole room, in this shit-hole town? Hell, what's so great about his whole shit-hole world?
    Seems to Hank that Doc'd get tired of all this