Smoke Read Online Free PDF

“I heard about what happened to Gretchen.” “I know what you must be going—” No, that wouldn’t work. Immy had no idea why everyone was getting so upset about a dead pig. Pigs were slaughtered to be eaten every day. Of course, people probably didn’t eat miniature potbellied pigs.
    She braked in front of the white ranch house, glad this trip had been cooler than the earlier one. The sun was a couple hours from setting, now throwing long slanting rays across the roof of the house and outbuildings, casting the ground behind them in deep shadow. Snuffling, rooting sounds came from the pens behind the house.
    Immy wandered around back first, thinking it might be feeding time, but Amy JoBeth wasn’t there, and didn’t come out of the house to see who was calling on her. Immy gave a tentative rap for her first attempt, and her second and third, expecting Amy JoBeth to come investigate. Her fourth and fifth were loud banging, accompanied by calling out Amy JoBeth’s name.
    Her white truck was there, beside the house. No lights were on in the house, but it was borderline whether she’d need them this hour of day.
    Then Immy spotted the piñata. It lay next to the wrought iron porch railing and had a post-it note stuck to it. Immy pulled it off and read it.
    ‘Immy, this is yours. Pay me later.’
    So, Immy thought, she must be feeling bad about Gretchen, mourning her, and didn’t want to be disturbed. Still, Immy thought she ought to make sure she was all right. Like, not suicidal or something. She might take after her father.
    She’d seemed cheerful enough earlier in the day. Before she heard about Gretchen being shot. Maybe the potbellied pigs helped keep her out of depression. It would be terrible for her to slip back now.
    So Immy opened the front door and poked her head in to see if Amy JoBeth needed anything.
    * * *
    A fruitless fifteen minutes later, Immy emerged, puzzled. Amy JoBeth wasn’t in her house. Maybe she was with her mother, Louise. She’d left the piñata on the porch. Her white truck was parked beside the house, so she hadn’t driven herself anywhere. Immy carried the piñata to the van. Before she left, she gave one last sweeping glance around the grounds. Her eye was caught by a metallic glint near the tornado shelter.
    Immy, who, whether justly or not, prided herself on her frugality, walked closer to see if the glint was money. When she bent to examine the small pile of metallic pink glittery stuff at the entrance to the tornado shelter, she saw it was confetti in the shape of pigs. She chuckled. She’d bet the piñata she’d stowed in the van was stuffed with this.
    But she sat back on her heels and wondered why it was out here, next to the shelter. The tornado shelter was underground, except for the top foot and a half that stuck up and had grass-covered dirt mounded around it. The door, a rectangular affair on about a thirty degree slant, opened to the side and swung upward. A couple of fresh footprints had been left in the small dirt space outside the door. Could Amy JoBeth be in the tornado shelter? Should Immy be starting up the car and tuning the radio to the weather station? It didn’t even look like rain when Immy glanced at the sky, let alone a tornado.
    There was no padlock, so she pulled the heavy door up and peered down the dark stairway.
    “Yoo hoo,” she called. “Anybody down there?”
    “Go away,” came the muffled answer.
    Immy started to pant and her heart trip-hammered a few beats. The last thing in the world Immy wanted to do was enter that dark, underground place, exactly the kind of place that would trigger panic from her morbid fear of being closed in.
    When five-year-old Immy had locked herself into a dark closet, she’d pounded on the door for what had seemed like hours, screaming for her mother to let her out. Hortense had been in the backyard hanging up clothes, so it probably hadn’t been more than half an hour before she rescued her frantic child.