Long Black Curl Read Online Free PDF

seen her coming down the mountain,” Junior said numbly.
    â€œHow did she get back here?” the old man asked. “How did that murdering bitch get back here?”
    â€œBeats me,” Junior said. He looked around the little room, which had been Rockhouse’s home for longer than most Tufa, let alone most humans, could believe. This was where the Fairy Feller landed, and where he lorded over his exiled people until they split into two groups, leaving him in charge of one, and his archrival Radella ruling the other. Radella’s wisdom passed down through generations of women, but Rockhouse stubbornly refused to move on.
    â€œBut I got a better question,” Junior continued. “What does she want here?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Rockhouse said. He was no longer breathing so heavily, and Junior wondered if the pain was sending him into shock.
    The handle of his knife, in its belt sheath under his coat, dug into his side, and Junior remembered why he had come here. He’d heard of Rockhouse’s fall, and figured the easiest way to step into the old man’s place was to kill him outright. As usual with his plans, he’d impulsively begun to implement it without entirely thinking it through. But now, faced with this pathetic shell of the towering presence he’d expected, he found he couldn’t do it. It would be like killing that cougar who’d mauled his cousin after the animal’s teeth, claws, and eyesight had all gone bad.
    â€œWell,” he said at last, drawing the word out, “you just take care of yourself, Rockhouse. Might want to pack them hands in snow for a while.” He backed to the door, never taking his eyes off the old man.
    Rockhouse’s face was a mask of self-pity. “You ain’t gonna just leave me like this, are you?”
    Junior opened the door. When he did, a crow zoomed into the room. In the confined place it seemed gigantic, and its caw-caw was so loud, it made Junior want to cover his ears. But before he could, the crow flew back out and disappeared into the forest.
    Junior stared after it. A bird flying into your house was an omen of death; everyone knew that.
    He looked back at the old man sitting pitifully at his bare table. “Rockhouse, you remember when I was a senior in high school, my ol’ truck broke down on the way to Rosalia Mullins’s house? You drove right by me in that old station wagon of yours and didn’t stop. In fact, you laughed out the window at me. Yelled back that you’d go tell her I just wasn’t that interested. She ended up going out with Larry Heard that very night. I might’ve married that girl, Rockhouse, instead of that porcupine I’m stuck with now, you know that?”
    Rockhouse said nothing.
    â€œSo I’ll tell you now what I shoulda told you then: Fuck you, old man.” Then he slammed the door behind him.
    *   *   *
    Far down the mountain, Bo-Kate paused to listen. Had she just heard a distant hunter’s gunshot, the echo of a car backfiring, or, as she really thought, the sound of a door slamming high above her on the mountain, where there was only one door to slam?
    It took a fraction of the time to descend that it had for the climb. She stepped around the root ball of an immense toppled tree and reached the head of the logging road, where Nigel and the SUV waited. She heard the engine and smelled the exhaust before she saw the vehicle, its black finish gleaming. She spotted the tracks of the emu that had terrified him; it made her smile to imagine Nigel, so British and urbane, face-to-face with actual wildlife. The man had probably never seen anything bigger than a lapdog anywhere except the zoo.
    She crept up on the vehicle, deliberately staying in the blind spot. When she was close, she slapped the side panel and heard him yelp. She stepped back so he could see her laughing, then waited for him to unlock the passenger