No Defense Read Online Free PDF Page A

crooked nose and thick neck souvenirs of long
workouts and spirited high-school games. We had been boyfriend and
girlfriend beginning in the ninth grade and our senior year had
been elected homecoming queen and king. I’d never regretted ending
our relationship when we went our separate ways in college, but I
still had a soft spot in my heart for this gentle giant.
    Much to everyone’s surprise, Junior had
returned home recently as the county prosecutor after nine years
out of the state, seven in college and law school and two at the
Department of Justice. Rumor had it he had national political
aspirations.
    A few of the helium balloons had floated
down from the ceiling, and Junior held one in each of his beefy
hands. He tossed one balloon into the air, then another. Falling,
they cast shadows like fat ghosts across the wall.
    Eddie caught up with me at the door. “You’re
in luck, Queen LuAnn: There’s your king, Junior Fuller.” His tone
was mocking.
    “Please stop being so mean, Eddie,” I said,
pulling him back out into the hall. “I know you don’t want to be
here, that you wish you were still in Atlanta, but could you
possibly pretend you’re not miserable. Please!” Tears welled in my
eyes and I leaned against the wall. “You’re making me crazy.”
    He sighed deeply. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You
know I get deranged whenever we come here. You don’t act like
yourself, and it scares me.”
    “I think you’re the Mr. Hyde here, Eddie,
not me.” I sniffed.
    “Maybe I am. But you’re so drawn to this
place, so absolutely and totally happy here, that I can’t help but
take it as a slap in the face. I feel like an intruder.” He lit a
Salem with one of the Steak House matches. “And it doesn’t help
that people here think of me as a loser-Eddie, the political
cartoonist. Doesn’t he have anything better to do? When’s he going
to get a real job? That’s your father’s opinion, I know.”
    “It is not his opinion, and no one thinks of
you as a loser. They know you’re an artist and a journalist, that
you’ve been published in the New York Times , that you’re
almost syndicated.” I sniffed again. “Could you get me some
Kleenex?”
    He went into the men’s restroom a few yards
away and came out with a wad of tissue.
    “They also know I don’t support you and all
these children you keep having, that your father’s been sending us
money,” he continued.
    I took the tissues and put all but one in my
pocket. “ I keep having? Excuse me! I had a little help in
that department! And who do you think knows about the money?
Nobody! You’re getting paranoid, you know that, about
everything.”
    “You don’t think Buck and Jane know? Junior
too? How much you want to bet?”
    “Junior has no idea where we get our rent,
Eddie.”
    “And Estelle? What about her?”
    “Come on, Eddie. This is stupid. The money
is between me and Daddy, so let’s drop it. This is Daddy’s big day,
and he wants us with him.”
    “Every day is the mayor’s big day around
here as far as I can tell.”
    “I guess we’ll have to talk about this
later. I’m going in now,” I said. “You’re welcome to come if you
stop acting this way. Otherwise, feel free to make your usual
escape: Go hide in the kitchen with Roland and talk to him while he
cooks.”
    “I can’t-Roland’s in there too, by the bar.”
He pointed with his thumb in that direction.
    I heard Roland’s deep heartfelt laugh before
I saw him. He was talking to the waitress serving the drinks.
Roland, recently made the Steak House chef at age thirty, was a
small, thin man and one of the few Tallagumsa-born hippies.
Freckled from head to toe, he wore his long red hair pulled back
into a ponytail. His sense of humor and his respect for Eddie’s
work made him one of Eddie’s favorite people in town.
    “I thought he cooked every weekday
afternoon,” I said.
    “I guess they turned him loose for the big
event. Look, I don’t want to go