Rage Read Online Free PDF Page A

and
licking it off. “I tell you, sometimes I could eat five a those.”
    “What
do you want to tell me about Rand?”
    “Other
than him being a dummy?”
    “Must’ve
been hard raising him.”
    “Everything’s
hard,” she said. “Raising his mama was hard.”
    “Your
daughter had problems.”
    “Tricia
was a dummy, just like him. So was that fool she went and married. It was his fault they got killed. All those speeding tickets and his drinking.
So they give him a truck.” She laughed. “Idjits. That’s who they give a
truck to.”
    I said,
“Tricia had trouble in school.”
    Her
glare said she was starting to doubt my intelligence. “That’s what I said,
ain’t it?”
    “What
kind of trouble?”
    She
sighed. “When she even bothered to go to school, she hated reading, hated
‘rithmetic, hated everything. We were in Arizona back then and mostly she snuck
away and ran around the desert with bad influences.”
    “Where
in Arizona?”
    Instead
of answering, she said, “It was hot as hell. My husband’s big idea, he was
gonna grow cactuses because he heard you could make big money growing cactuses
and selling ’em to tourists. ‘Be easy, Margie, no water, just keep ’em in pots
till they’re big enough.’ Yeah, and make sure the dog don’t eat ’em and die
from spikes in the guts, then you have to set up a stand on the highway and
breathe all that heat and dust and hope some tourist’ll bother to stop.”
    She
gave her empty cup another glance. “I sat at that stand day after day, watching
people speed right by me. People going somewhere.”
    She
pouted. “Guess what? Even cactus need water.”
    She
held out her cup. I got her a refill.
    “So
Tricia grew up in Arizona,” I said.
    “And
Nevada and Oklahoma and before that we lived in Waco, Texas, and before that
southern Indiana. So what? This ain’t about where we lived. It’s about Randolph
and the bad thing he did.” She pressed forward against the table, bosom
settling on grease-spotted blue plastic.
    “Okay,”
I said, “let’s talk about that.”
    Her
lips folded inward, tugging her nose downward. Her blue eyes had darkened to
granite pebbles. “I told him don’t be hanging with that little monster. Now,
all our lives is turned to shit.”
    “Troy
Turner.”
    “Mister,
I don’t even want to hear that name. Sinful monster, I knew he’d get Randolph
in trouble.” She finished the refill, squeezed the cup and folded it over,
placed her hand over the misshapen wad. Her mouth trembled. “Didn’t think it
would be trouble like this.”
    “What
scared you about Troy?”
    “Me?
I weren’t scareda that little shit. I was worried. For Randolph. ’Cause
he’s stupid, does whatever you tell him.”
    “Is
Troy stupid?”
    “He’s
evil. You wanna do somethin’ useful, sir? Tell the judge that without bad
influence Randolph never woulda— never coulda done anything like this.
And that’s all I’m gonna say about it ’cause Randolph’s lawyer said you weren’t
necessarily on our side.”
    “I’m
on no one’s side, Mrs. Sieff. The judge appointed me so that I could— ”
    “The
judge is against us, we were some rich nigger it would be different,”
she snapped. “And from where I’m sittin’, what you’re doin’s a waste of time
and money. ’Cause Randolph don’t have a chance, he’s gonna get sent somewhere.
Could be an aldult jail or could be someplace with little monsters.”
    She
shrugged. Her eyes were wet and she swiped them angrily. “Same difference. He
ain’t gettin’ out for a long, long time and my life’s turned to shit.”
    “Do
you think he should be released?”
    “Why
not?”
    “He
murdered a two-year-old girl.”
    “The monster did it,” she said. “Randolph was just too stupid not to get outta there.”
    Her
grandson had told me otherwise.
    “You
want blame,” she said, “there’s plenty to go around. What kinda mother is that,
leaving a baby all alone? They should be puttin’ her