Ordinary Grace Read Online Free PDF Page B

at the police station. Doyle. It was Doyle who was talking.
    I mean the kid was slow sure. But he wasn’t deaf. He’d have heard that train coming.
Maybe he fell asleep, Halderson said.
On the railroad tracks? Be like lying down on a bed of nails like one of them sheiks.
Fakirs, Gus said.
What?
They’re not sheiks. They’re fakirs.
Whatever.
Doyle drank long and noisily.
All I’m saying is that there’s more to that kid’s death than anybody knows. I’ve picked up plenty of bums on those tracks. I mean guys no mother would claim. Got sickness in their heads you wouldn’t believe.
Surely they’re not all like that, Halderson said.
All it takes is the wrong one at the wrong place at the wrong time. That boy he was so simple he would have been easy pickings.
Gus said, You really believe that?
The things I’ve seen during my years in uniform would make your stomachs turn, Doyle said. He tipped his bottle to his lips but caught sight of me and Jake at the counter, both of us clearly eavesdropping. He lowered his beer and waved us to him. Come on over here, you two.
Jake looked at me. Joining these men was the last thing he wanted to do. I didn’t mind the possibility of getting in on that backroom conversation. I slid off my stool. Jake followed but he followed slowly.
You’re the preacher’s kids right?
Yes, sir.
You ever play down on them railroad tracks?
It was the same question he’d asked a few nights before in the police station. I didn’t know if it was the two empty beer bottles sitting beside his crate that made him ask or if he’d forgotten that he’d asked or if he’d forgotten the answer I gave when he asked or if this was just what a cop did asking the same question over and over to see if he could confuse you. I wasn’t confused.
No, I lied. Just as I had before.
He had a wide jut of flat cliff for a forehead and in its shadow his eyes shifted to Jake. You?
Jake didn’t answer.
Well, boy?
Jake’s mouth twisted and he tried to reply.
Come on, spit it out.
He stutters, Gus said.
I can see that. Doyle spoke sharp. Tell me the truth, boy.
Doyle must have scared the piss out of Jake. In a way that was painful to bear my brother tried to comply. He contorted his face and looked at Doyle out of deep creases filled with the dark anger that came from his frustration. He finally gave up and fiercely shook his head.
Yeah, right.
I hated the man for that. For putting Jake through torture and then dismissing the result.
Gus said, Their father doesn’t let them play on the tracks.
You think they don’t go there anyway? Doyle shot me a look that seemed to contain a whisper of conspiracy, as if he knew me and didn’t entirely condemn me for what he knew. As if in a way we were brothers.
I took a step back, hating the man more every minute. Can we go?
Yes. Doyle dismissed us as he might have a couple of suspects he’d decided not to collar.
I put my arm around Jake who was staring angrily at the floor and I turned him. We left the men. Left Doyle laughing quietly and meanly at our backs.
Outside the day sweltered. The sun threw heat from above and the sidewalks gathered it and roasted the soles of our sneakers. The tar that filled the cracks on the pavement had turned to black goo and we were careful to watch our step. We passed Bon Ton’s barbershop where the easy voices of men and the scent of hair oil drifted through the open door. We passed the bank which had been robbed by Pretty Boy Floyd and Ma Barker’s boys in the thirties and which had long been the source of a good deal of my own daydreaming. We passed store after store deserted in the drowse of that hot day in late June. We kept to the shade of the awnings and didn’t talk and Jake stared at the sidewalk and fumed.
We left the shops behind and walked Main Street toward Tyler. The houses on the hills were old and many of them Victorian and, though the heavy curtains were drawn against the heat, every once in a while we caught the sound of a