Into the Web Read Online Free PDF Page B

Charlotte,” Lonnie said. “Charlotte Bethune. You remember her, don’t you?”
    I did. She’d never raised her hand in class or uttered a single memorable word, but despite all that, Charlotte Bethune had given off the unmistakable scent of ripe sexuality, a red, swollen cherry of a girl.
    “Charlotte Bethune,” Lonnie repeated, like he could taste her name in his mouth. “Married Randy LaFavor. Moved to Oklahoma. Probably got six kids by now. Probably weighs a ton.” He laughed. “The girl a boy dreams of never grows old, never gets fat. She just sits there in your brain, like time couldn’t touch her. Perfect.”
    In my mind I saw us on the old mining road, a young couple, hand in hand, walking slowly in the darkness, thinking only of each other until the first roar of the motorsounded distantly, then the first glimpse of the truck’s yellow lights, heading toward us out of the night.
    “Must have been tough, losing Lila,” Lonnie added after a moment, still the prying teenager I remembered from my youth, still picking for some unseemly detail or hint of injury, the pain of others like honey on his tongue.
    When I didn’t respond, he turned back toward the road, then thrust the gear into second as we mounted the last remaining hill. “There it is,” he said after we’d come over its rounded crest.
    Lila’s place sat at the edge of a wide pasture, an unpainted farmhouse with a high tin roof, discolored by long runnels of rust. A green tractor with worn wheels was parked beside a large wooden shed, the mud-caked blades of its metal tiller drooping heavily to the ground behind it. A dusty black pickup was parked beside it, nearly treadless tires spattered with mud, the front bumper slumped to the right like a shattered shoulder.
    “Looks like things haven’t improved much for Lila.” Lonnie pressed on the brake, brought us to a halt in the driveway. He peered at the pasture that swept out from behind the house, goldenrod weaving softly in the breeze. His gaze shifted to the house, taking in its dilapidated state, the rusty tools gathered in a large tub at the bottom of the wooden stairs, the ancient washing machine that sat near the edge of the porch, an oily rag dangling from its hand-cranked wringer. “Lila’s sure not living at the top of the pile.”
    “She never did,” I said, recalling how raw her poverty had been, the few home-made dresses she’d had, the single pair of shoes.
    Lonnie grabbed the door handle. “You coming?”
    “No. I’ll wait here.”
    “You don’t want to say hello to your old flame?”
    “No.”
    Lonnie grinned. “Still pissed at her, Roy? Or just afraid to see what time can do?”
    From behind the dust-smeared windshield, I watched as Lonnie strode across the nearly barren lawn, moving briskly up the wooden stairs, then rapped harshly at the door, as if he’d brought an arrest warrant for Lila rather than news of Clayton Spivey’s death.
    The door opened, but I couldn’t see who opened it, only the suggestion of a slender figure poised at the entrance of the darkened house.
    “Hey there, Lila,” I heard Lonnie say as he stepped inside the house, leaving the door open behind him.
    Across the pasture, the forest rose in a tangled barricade of green. In the hard white light, an old mule stood, head down, nosing through the high grass. A line of unpainted fence posts stretched the length of the field, strung with drooping strands of rusted wire. At the edge of the yard an orange tabby hunkered down, belly low, eyes fixed on the small sparrow that hopped obliviously a yard away.
    Even now, after having been away from it for so long, I could feel Waylord’s heaviness, dense and blinding, a pull of the earth that grounded everything, turned the most feathery wings into sheets of lead. It didn’t surprise me that even Lila, for all her spirit and determination, had finally been held in place by the iron grip ofthese hills. Escape for a man had been hard enough, but