November Mourns Read Online Free PDF Page B

himself.
    “I’ll take care of it,” he said.
    “Don’t talk such damn nonsense!”
    “It’ll be okay.”
    The pressure inside Pa suddenly eased. He deflated and slumped back into his chair, weakly started to rock again. The dog began to crawl around in circles. Shad patted his father’s back, rubbing him, like,
Baby, baby, all will be fine, go sleep now
.
    “Have you told Tandy Mae?” he asked. Shad didn’t feel comfortable bringing it up, but had to do so.
    “I got no truck with her anymore, son.”
    “She’s Megan’s mother.”
    “That isn’t much of a truth to tell. Tandy gave birth to her, that’s all. ’Sides, she got enough worries with them other lame and afflicted children. Every one of us got enough burden already, don’t you think?”
    When you got down to it, when somebody put it like that, you couldn’t do anything but agree. Shad nodded. “Yes.”
    “You gonna stay the night?”
    “No.”
    “Didn’t think you would, but you’re welcome to stay, a’course. Your old bedroom’s still fixed up. Megan always cleaned it, put clean sheets on while you were away.”
    His father’s steady motion began to waver. As if he consciously forced himself to keep going but kept forgetting, from second to second, what he was supposed to be doing.
    Shad started to turn. His father was instantly on him, an inch away and hovering. “Son—”
    “I want to see her room.”
    “There isn’t anything left that might help you.”
    “Show me.”
    “It’s gonna do nothing but kill you, if’n you stay.”
    Everyone thinking he didn’t have a chance, that he was already dead.
    “What is?”
    “The hollow.”
    Shad spoke gently now, softly, the way you had to talk to Tandy Mae’s hydrocephalic pumpkin-headed son. “Pa, you wanted me to come home. Now I’m here. I want to check her room.”
    The hound rose slowly and stood at Shad’s knee as he pulled open the screen door and pressed inside.
    Immediately he could feel the oppression of common failure and everyday defeat. You could smell it like the stink of terror. Anybody who had it on him in prison was finished by the end of the first week.
    You didn’t have to be murdered to haunt a house. And the place didn’t have to do anything more than exist to harass you. He wondered why he’d never felt it in his cell, with a century of caged men’s energy imprisoned along with him. No, only here, surrounded by family.
    He entered Mags’s room and stopped short. All her belongings were still in their appropriate spots—the schoolbooks and teen magazines stacked neatly on her desk, closet door open and her clothes draped on hangers and hooks. Shad gritted his teeth and almost glanced away.
    “You didn’t touch anything.”
    “I couldn’t.”
    “That’s not like you. She’s been dead six weeks.” About twenty minutes after Tandy Mae had taken up with her cousin, Pa had cleared every remnant of the woman from the house. Whatever she didn’t take, he burned in a bin out back.
    His father shrugged, appeared almost sheepish. Was it because he’d lost yet another woman in his life? Or had he finally learned that removing the effects didn’t push out any of the memories?
    “Five and a half,” Pa said.
    “Did the police show up here?”
    “Sheriff Wintel never came around at all, not even to offer his commiseration and condolences. Dave Fox searched through her things. Wore a pair of latex gloves the whole time. He inspected different parts a’the house, looked around the yard some. I’m not sure what he might’ve been hunting for. Drugs, I suppose. But she never touched none of that. There was nothing suspicious. So he told me, anyways. But if there was nothing peculiar, why was he lookin’?”
    “Good point.”
    So Dave didn’t consider her death to be from natural causes. Shad checked for something he could use to help him hold his course. “Letters? A diary?” He unmade the bed and, despite himself, tore away the blankets, and pulled