Jack and Mr. Grin Read Online Free PDF Page B

entered Moran’s yard and put his free hand on the old man’s arm. The saggy, paper thin skin was ice cold. The tree kept some of the hail away but he could still hear the pellets beating a strange tattoo on the pillow.
    “Let’s go inside, huh, Mr. Moran? Dick?” he said gently.
    “No,” the old man murmured.
    “We have to. It’s not safe out here.”
    “No.” It seemed a struggle just for Moran to talk. Jack wondered if he’d had a stroke or something.
    “Nowhere,” Moran muttered. “Nowhere with you.”
    “No, it’s okay. It’s just Jack... Jack from next door?”
    Now he tried to lead Moran toward his door.
    “Goddamn you,” Moran muttered.
    “Come on, you’ll thank me later.” Jack thought that last part sounded lame but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
    He walked Mr. Moran up the three concrete steps to his front door and pulled it open. Inside was dark. It smelled like burnt coffee and toast with a faint gaseous hint of that morning’s scrambled eggs.
    “Come on, let’s just get you over to the couch.”
    “Get your fucking hands off me,” Moran sneered this time.
    Jack didn’t know why his attitude had turned to such vehemence but he was now quite certain the man hadn’t had a stroke. He tore himself away from Jack, turning around in his living room (the same size and shape as Jack and Gina’s) to face him.
    “You get the hell out of here.”
    “I was just trying to help.”
    “Call this help!?”
    The old man stuck out his flappy, wrinkled left arm and pointed to a mark there.
    “That ain’t no help at all,” he nearly cried.
    Jack couldn’t get close enough to him to tell what the mark was. It looked like a fresh tattoo, the way it was all puckered and red around the edges. Maybe even a branding. It was a rectangle, the short sides on the wrist and elbow ends, at the direct center of the inside of his forearm. There was another line through the middle of the rectangle so that it was divided into two squares.
    “I don’t understand what you mean,” Jack said.
    “The fuck you don’t!” Moran snorted. “Ain’t no coincidence. Your pussy goes missin and then I get this.”
    Now Jack was really confused.
    “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Do you need me to call an ambulance for you? Do you need me to take you someplace? Are you hurting? Are you okay?” At this point, he was just throwing things out. He didn’t really know what he was saying.
    “I just want you to get the fuck away.”
    “Who did that to you?”
    “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
    “Yes. You’re right. I would like to know. It could be really important to me right now. Did someone hurt you?”
    “God hurt me. God hurt me cuzza you.”
    “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
    “Lettin you two live over there in sin. I didn’t do right by God by lettin that go on. I should uh been over there ev’ry day, lettin you know the wages of that sin. Now I’m the one who pays.”
    Why did everyone’s accent get worse when they were either drunk or talking about God?
    “That’s... crazy , Dick.”
    “Get the fuck outta my house. You ain’t got no right to stand there and call me crazy.”
    “I just want to know who did that to you.”
    Mr. Moran grabbed a heavy plaster candlestick from the top of his floor model television and held it up in his right arm. Jack couldn’t stop staring at the mark on his left.
    “Get the fuck out,” Moran spoke lowly, slowly, murderously.
    “ Who? ” Jack said.
    Moran let loose with the candleholder and it drilled Jack in the right shoulder, despite his attempt to fend it off with the pillow, and then the man lunged at him. Jack didn’t think now was the time to probe him any further. Now was also not the time to beat up an old man, candleholder throwing or not. Moran was not very fast. Jack hurled the pillow at him and jerked to his right, plowing through the screen door and nearly unhinging it.
    Moran stood in the doorway and shouted at