Rattlesnake Read Online Free PDF Page A

anyone.
    Someday he was going to die like Tom—alone, maybe on the road. Nobody would give a damn, except for whatever unlucky schmucks got stuck with getting rid of his corpse.
    But fuck if Jimmy was going to sit here feeling sorry for himself, and he sure wasn’t going to run around trying to undo things long since done. He’d never had any kids to abandon, never had anyone to let down. If he wanted to live his life as a drifter—and he did—that was his own damn decision to make. He didn’t owe anybody anything.
    With his makeshift meal soUr in his stomach, he rolled over and tried again to fall sleep.

C HAPTER T HREE
     
     
    R AMIREZ DIDN ’ T show up the following morning, which Jimmy spent sitting on a big upturned plastic bucket outside his room, watching the kids run around the parking lot and the early hooker shift try to pull customers. Around noon, a man wandered over to join him. He probably wasn’t older than thirty, but he looked tired and used up. His no-color hair hung lankly over gray skin, and his brown eyes were muddy and faded.
    The man leaned against the wall before he took out a cigarette, lit it, and took a drag. “You just get out of jail?” he asked. Maybe he’d seen Ramirez dropping Jimmy off—although the cops didn’t usually chauffeur people who’d just been sprung.
    “Nope. I haven’t done time in a while.” And never for very long. His crimes had been petty ones: vagrancy, trespassing, that ilk.
    “What’re you doing here?”
    “Just passing through.”
    The man spat and took another deep drag. “I been here seven months. Me an’ the kids.” He gestured vaguely at the children. Surely they weren’t all his, but he didn’t specify. “It’s a shithole.”
    “It could use a little updating,” Jimmy said mildly.
    “I used to own a house. Nice little place, and we kept it real clean. I had a decent job in construction, you know? Then the economy went belly-up. We lost the house. I was real happy when I finally found a job, but then I got hurt. Fucked up my back. And my wife….” He sighed, then tapped his head. “She’s got problems in here, you know? She’s been in the state hospital up in Stockton for a while. But she’ll be getting out soon.”
    Jimmy knew this story—or ones very like it. Families like this never seemed to get a break as the miseries piled up. And even when things went well, they lived so close to the edge that all it took was one small shove, one little misfortune, to push them over.
    “I hope things work out for you,” Jimmy said.
    “Yeah, we’ll be okay. After Rosie gets out, we’re gonna go up north, us an’ the kids. It’s this fucking place that makes her crazy. Up in Oregon, Washington, she’ll be better. And there’s lotsa good jobs too. We’ll buy us another house….” His voice petered out as if his dreams stopped there. Or maybe he realized that he was hoping , and hope was poison.
    “Good luck with it,” said Jimmy. He went back inside his room to read.
     
     
    R IGHT AROUND the time Jimmy started thinking about dinner, someone knocked confidently on his door. He’d already paid the day’s thirty-five bucks, so he knew it wasn’t the desk clerk—who hadn’t looked as if he had the energy for knocking anyway. So Jimmy wasn’t entirely surprised to open the door and find Officer Ramirez.
    “I’m sorry it took so long,” Ramirez said. “Our coroner was being thorough.”
    “No problem. Can I have my car back?”
    Ramirez smiled at him. “You can. I’ll even give you a ride to the impound lot.”
    Jimmy rubbed his neck. “Um, if I have to pay impound fees….”
    “You don’t. Your car is yours, free and clear. You ready?”
    He wasn’t, but it took only a couple of minutes for him to put his leftover food in one bag and everything else in the other. Ramirez waited while Jimmy checked out, and then he opened the cruiser’s passenger door with a little flourish. “Your chariot, Mr. Dorsett.”
    The