November Mourns Read Online Free PDF

loose. Shad flipped the beer can across the porch and stood, moved in on his father. “Tell me about it. That afternoon.”
    “You can’t change nothin’, son.”
    “I realize that.” His fingers flexed, like he was ushering the words out. “But I need to know. Do it for me. As much as it pains you.”
    Pa pulled himself together, sluggishly. He shut his eyes and his chin began to lower to his chest. It stayed there for a while. Shad rapped the chessboard with his knuckles, careful not to jostle the pieces. His father opened his eyes.
    “I tried not to get nervous that afternoon,” Pa said. “I thought maybe she went off with that Luvell girl. Malt shop, the junior rodeo over there in Springfield. However they keep busy. You know your sister was a good girl, she doesn’t do what them others all do. When it came evening I made some phone calls but nobody’s seen her. Come ten o’clock I called the sheriff’s office. She’d never been out past that without telling me before. That damn Increase Wintel didn’t pay me no heed, but Dave Fox went off looking right then. He found her the next morning.”
    Leaning closer, Shad remained poised, but his father had hit the wall again.
    “And what happened to her?”
    “Nobody’s sure. She just . . . went to sleep there on Gospel Trail Road.”
    “That’s not what you told me.”
    “Yes it is, boy.”
    “You said—”
    “I know what I said. I told you the truth is what I did.”
    His father’s voice had cracked painfully when he’d phoned the prison over a month ago. It was the only call Shad ever received on the inside. He knew it was going to be awful the instant he touched the receiver. Pa had said exactly thirteen words and hung up before Shad could respond.
    Your sister’s been killed. Come home ’fore you get on with your life.
    Pa couldn’t see the disparity of what he’d said on the phone and what he was saying now. Shad had to let it go.
    He chewed his tongue, kept staring into darkness. “There’s nothing up that way at all. Gospel Trail leads to the trestle, doesn’t it? Why was she near the gorge?”
    “I ain’t got no answers.”
    “But what did she die from?”
    “I don’t know that either. They never found out. Doc Bollar ain’t a big-city medical examiner. All he told me was her heart stopped. How’s that for putting a father’s mind at rest? That bastard!”
    Mags had just turned seventeen. He searched Pa’s face to see if the old man was hiding anything, but there was only the usual frustration in his features, the endless disappointment.
    “It’s a bad road, son.”
    The words, spoken as if they held a terrible meaning. “What’s that?”
    “I told you kids to keep off it, didn’t I?”
    “The road? When did you ever tell me to stay clear of it?”
    “Since you were both children!” The veins on his father’s wiry forearms stood out, the thick muscles in his neck corded and going red. “Not to go up there on Gospel Trail! It’s a bad road! Didn’t I say that?”
    “Did you?”
    “Stay away from Jonah Ridge! There’s nothing there but murder in wait. Don’t neither of you ever listen to me?”
    Now that Shad thought about it some, he realized that he’d never been up there to the top of the gorge in his life. His father had told him, many times, but Shad didn’t stay away because of that. He simply never had a reason to go into those hills. And neither had Megan, so far as he knew.
    “Tell me what you mean by that.”
    “Don’t you know yet, boy?”
    “No. Why would there be murder waiting?”
    “I can’t explain it no better.”
    His father stood, with that coiled explosive force inside him about to propel him forward. Shad reached out and took his father by the shoulders, held the old man where he was. They both began to tremble, fighting one another like that, will against will. Shad understood that his father was no longer going to be of any help. Whatever had to be done, he had to do