Sole Survivor Read Online Free PDF

despair. “What's your name, kid?”
        “What do you need to know for? You think I'm a baby, can't come to the beach alone? Screw you, I go where I want.”
        “You go where you want, but you don't have anywhere to be.”
        The kid made eye contact again. In his bruised stare was a glimpse of hurt and loneliness so deep Joe was shocked that anyone should have descended to it by the tender age of fourteen. “Anywhere to be? What's that supposed to mean?”
        Joe sensed that they had made a connection, that a door had opened unexpectedly for him and for this troubled boy, and that both of their futures could be changed for the better if he could just understand where they might be able to go after they crossed that threshold. But his own life was as hollow-his store of philosophy as empty-as any abandoned shell washed up on the nearby shore. He had no belief to share, no wisdom to impart, no hope to offer, insufficient substance to sustain himself let alone another.
        He was one of the lost, and the lost cannot lead.
        The moment passed, and the kid plucked the twenty-dollar bill out of Joe's hand. His expression was more of a sneer than a smile when he mockingly repeated Joe's words, “They're women.” Backing away, he said, “You get them hot, they're all just bitches.”
        “And are we all just dogs?” Joe asked, but the kid slipped out of the lavatory before he could hear the question.
        Although Joe had washed his hands twice, he felt dirty.
        He turned to the sinks again, but he could not easily reach them. Six men were now gathered immediately around the cockroach, and a few others were hanging back, watching.
        The crowded lavatory was sweltering, Joe was streaming sweat, and the yellow air burned in his nostrils, corroded his lungs with each inhalation, stung his eyes. It was condensing on the mirrors, blurring the reflections of the agitated men until they seemed not to be creatures of flesh and blood but tortured spirits glimpsed through an abattoir window, wet with sulphurous steam, in the deepest kingdom of the damned. The fevered gamblers shouted at the roach, shaking fistfuls of dollars at it. Their voices blended into a single shrill ululation, seemingly senseless, a mad gibbering that rose in intensity and pitch until it sounded, to Joe, like a crystal-shattering squeal, piercing to the centre of his brain and setting off dangerous vibrations in the core of him.
        He pushed between two of the men and stamped on the crippled cockroach, killing it.
        In the instant of stunned silence that followed his intrusion, Joe turned away from the men, shaking, shaking, the shattering sound still tremulant in his memory, still vibrating in his bones. He headed toward the exit, eager to get out of there before he exploded.
        As one, the gamblers broke the paralytic grip of their surprise. They shouted angrily, as righteous in their outrage as churchgoers might be outraged at a filthy and drunken denizen of the streets who staggered into their service to sag against the chancel rail and vomit on the sanctuary floor.
        One of the men, with a face as sun red as a slab of greasy ham, heat-cracked lips peeled back from snuff-stained teeth, seized Joe by one arm and spun him around. “What the shit you think you're doing, pal?”
        “Let go of me.”
        “I was winning money here, pal.”
        The stranger's hand was damp on Joe's arm, dirty fingernails blunt but digging in to secure the slippery grip.
        “Let go.”
        “I was winning money here,” the guy repeated. His mouth twisted into such a wrathful grimace that his chapped lips split, and threads of blood unravelled from the cracks.
        Grabbing the angry gambler by the wrist, Joe bent one of the dirty fingers back to break the bastard's grip. Even as the guy's eyes widened with surprise and alarm, even as he started to cry out in pain, Joe wrenched his