Rainbow's End Read Online Free PDF

moved to Marietta?”
    â€œI’m from Marietta originally.”
    â€œBut you’re working for the county?”
    â€œSergeant Edgren has some questions.”
    I could feel the drawstring pull on my stomach, but she talked so simple and honest and natural that even I believed her. She told how Shaw had “made passes at that girl, poking the gun at her head and her stomach and ribs, and all the time saying he’d kill her. And then my son spoke to him from the other side of the island, and I couldn’t hear what he said, but at the sound of his voice the man spun, spun around on one foot, and let go with his gun. Then I heard my son’s gun, and he dropped to the ground. And soon as my son brought the girl, took her ashore from the boat, I knew I had to get moving, to bring in that poke full of money, the one they were talking about on TV.
    So when Dave had gone up with the girl, I got in the boat again and rowed out to the island, first to have a look if he was really dead, and if he was, to pick up the money and bring it in. He was, all right, with his brains scattered around, but no money was there. Then I remembered the parachute he’d come down with, and thought if it was still in the river, the poke with the money might be tangled in it. If I got out there quick I could grab it before it sank from water soaking in. So I rowed around to the other side of the island and found the parachute. It’s caught on the bottom somehow, between the island and the bank on the other side. But I couldn’t see a poke. It could be there, though, if someone got out there quick and fished up the parachute. It could be tangled up in it.”
    It all matched up, not only with what had happened but with the way I’d told it myself—so much so that even I believed it in spite of what Jill had said. Yet Mantle kept looking at her, and the drawstring didn’t loosen. When she started all over again, about how scared she’d been for “that girl,” I wanted to beg her to stop, to leave well enough alone, but of course, I didn’t dare open my mouth. Just then a horn sounded from below. That shut her up, and we all went down to the river.

5
    W HEN WE GOT THERE the DiVola bunch was out on the island, having a look, at the corpse—three firemen in helmets and plastics coats, their boat tied to a tree, a smaller one than the one I had braced the johnboat against, but sticking out of the water the same way on account of the rise in the river.
    Mr. Santos called out to them: “If you’d put one of those helmets on him, kind of hold his head together, he wouldn’t be so messy to handle.” One of them looked up and said: “Hey, that’s a good idea. How about us using your hat?” That seemed to take care of that, but Mom chirped up real friendly: “You can wrap his head in a towel. I’ll get you one from the house.”
    So she went legging it back, looking quite pretty in her dress and a coat she’d put on over it. She came back with a bath towel, but while she was gone they had it, back and forth from the island to the bank, about how they were going to do it. They decided to put Shaw in the firemen’s aluminum boat, which was maybe 16 feet long, with an outboard on the stern, but instead of using the motor, to put it in tow of my johnboat, with Mantle at the oars and a fireman in the stern, holding the bow of the skiff. They thought that would be better than using the motor, as it was only a hundred feet from island to bank, and oars would give better control. So, soon as Mom got back with the towel, that was how they did it, first tying Shaw’s head up, mumbling every second about what a mess he was. Then while one fireman got in my boat to grab the skiff, the other two picked him up and loaded him on. But by that time he was stiff, with his arms sticking up in the air, not a pretty sight, especially with the towel wrapped around his