Malus Domestica Read Online Free PDF Page B

out.
    “What’s it about?” he asked, studying the cherry at the end of the cigarette. “Your YouTube channel.” She couldn’t tell if she were being interrogated, flirted with, or patronized, but she had a distinct suspicion that there was nothing behind Door #2.
    “It’s sort of like…a travel journal, I guess.”
    “Whatcha travelin around doin?”
    “Just, ah…trying to appreciate America.” Robin fumbled for the words, wishing Joel would take a hike. “Roadside attractions, restaurants, that kind of thing.”
    “Kind of like a homeless Guy Fieri.”
    Robin chuckled. “Well, I live in my van—but, heh. …Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
    “You is so full of shit.” He shook his head, the do-rag’s ties rustling behind his head like a ponytail. “Look at this thrift-store Lizbeth Salander over here, talkin about highways-and-byways. You ain’t Jack Kerouac.” He leaned in conspiratorially again. “Whatchu really up to?”
    Robin hesitated, glancing down at the camera. It was still rolling. “Well…I hunt witches.”
    “Really.” Joel ashed his cigarette. “That is fascinatin.” He reached over and turned off the camera, surprising her.
    “Hey!”
    “You needs to stop playin. I assume huntin witches means killin witches, and there ain’t no way you’re videotapin that shit. And I want to talk to you without this camera here. Backstage, so to speak. Off the record. Cause I can tell you just puttin on a show for the people at home. But I want real talk.” He smiled darkly. “I know what you doin. You lookin for them, ain’t you?”
    Her breathing had become labored without her realizing it. She felt cornered. “Them who?”
    “The ones that killed your mama.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    Joel squinted in the murk of smoke hovering over the table. “When it happened, my mama lost her shit. I remember this vividly… because she scared the hell outta me.
    “This was about… sophomore year? Junior year, of high school? She was out of her mind freaked out about it. Shakin, wide-eyed, lockin-all-the-windows freaked. Like she thought the sky was fallin, like she was afraid the Devil himself was gonna get in the house. She asked me all kinds of weird-ass questions about this and that—wanted to know what kind of person Annie was, what kinds of things she did. Did she hurt animals, did she do anything to me when me and Fish was little….”
    “She never would have.” Robin felt her brow knitting together in defensive anger. “Mom wasn’t like that—”
    “Oh, I know.” Joel traced imaginary hearts on the table with a fingertip. “She was a good woman. A good-hearted woman. I told my mama that. I still remember the way she cooked her bacon when me and Fish came over in the mornings. I cook mine the same way—” He illuminated each point with his hands, forming invisible shapes in the air, snapping and wagging invisible bacon, “—crispy, damn near burnt, but still floppy, fatty but not gristly.”
    Trying to visualize this, eating bacon for breakfast with her mother in their little kitchen, Robin saw two other little faces sitting at the table. Two quiet brown-faced children, wide-eyed
    (my name is fisher and his name is johl but mama calls him jo-elle)
    and spooked like baby owls. The knot inside her loosened, and her jaw tipped open in surprise. “I do remember you. It was the bacon that made me remember.”
    Joel smiled and made a Halleluah! raise-the-roof motion with his hands. “Ain’t nothin in this world that good bacon can’t make better.”
    “I’m sorry. They made me forget a lot. …The shrinks the state made me talk to.”
    Joel glanced toward the kitchen—or perhaps it was the clock—and back at her, giving the pierced, scruff-headed woman an assessing look. Finally, he said in a tentative way, “That’s why I believed it when the rumor was goin around you said witches had something to do with it.”
    Robin winced at that, but