Love Medicine Read Online Free PDF Page A

reminds him of his girl.
    You know Eli raised June like his own daughter when her mother passed away and nobody else would take her.”
    “King got that damn old money,” Grandma said loud and sudden, “not because he was oldest. June named him for the money because he took after her the most.”
    So the insurance explained the car. More than that it explained why everyone treated the car with special care. Because it was new, I had thought. Still, I had noticed all along that nobody seemed proud of it except for King and Lynette. Nobody leaned against the shiny blue fenders, ‘rested elbows on the hood, or set paper plates there while they ate. Aurelia didn’t even want to hear King’s tapes. It was as if the car was wired up to something. As if it might give off a shock when touched. Later, when Gordie came, he brushed the glazed chrome and gently tapped the tires with his toes. He would not go riding in it, either, even though King urged his father to experience how smooth it ran.
    We heard the car move off, wheels crackling in the gravel and cinders.
    Then it was quiet for a long time again.
    Grandma was dozing in the next room, and I had taken the last pie from the oven. Aurelia’s new green Sears dryer was still huffing away in the tacked-on addition that held toilet, laundry, kitchen sink. The plumbing, only two years old, was hooked up to one side of the house.
    The top of the washer and dryer were covered with clean towels, and all the pies had been set there to cool.
    “Well, where are they?” wondered Zelda now. “Joyriding?”
    “That white girl,” Mama went on, “she’s built like a truck driver.
    She won’t keep King long. Lucky you’re slim, Albertine.
    “Jeez, Zelda!” Aurelia came in from the next room. “Why can’t you ‘just leave it be? So she’s white. What about the Swede?
    can I How do you think Albertine feels hearing you talk like this when her Dad was white?”
    “I feel fine,” I said. “I never knew him.”
    I understood what Aurefia meant thought was light, clearly a breed.
    “My girl’s an Indian,” Zelda emphasized. “I raised her an Indian, and that’s what she is.”
    “Never said no different. ” Aurelia grinned, not the least put out, hitting me with her elbow. “She’s lots better looking than most Kashpaws.
    By the time King and Lynette finally came home it was near dusk and we had already moved Grandpa into the house and laid his supper out.
    Lynette sat down next to Grandpa, with King Junior in her lap.
    She began to feed her son ground liver from a little jar. The baby tried to slap his hands together on the spoon each time it was lowered to his mouth. Every time he managed to grasp the jerked out of his hands and came down with more liver.
    spoon, I I I Lynette was weary, eyes watery and red. Her tan hair, caught in a stiff club, looked as though it had been used to drag her here.
    “You don’t got any children, do you Albertine,” she said, holding the spoon away, licking it herself, making a disgusted face.
    “So you wouldn’t know how they just can’t leave anything alone!”
    “She’s not married yet,” said Zelda, dangling a bright plastic bundle of keys down to the baby. “She thinks she’ll wait for her baby until after she’s married. Oochy koo,” she crooned when King junior focused and, in an effort of intense delight, pulled the keys down to himself.
    Lynette bolted up, shook the keys roughly from his grasp, and snatched him into the next room. He gave a short outraged wail, ANN A then fell silent, and after a while Lynette emerged, pulling down her blouse. The cloth was a dark violet bruised color.
    “Thought you wanted to see the gravestone,” Aurelia quickly remembered, addressing Zelda. “You better get going before it’s dark out. Tell King you want him to take you up there.”
    “I suppose,” said Mama, turning to me,
    “Aurelia didn’t see those two cases of stinking beer in their backseat. I’m not driving