Sorrow Floats Read Online Free PDF Page A

do.”
    “Lloyd claims that dime in your back pocket is heads facing out, and I maintain it is tails.”
    I stuck my fingers in the pocket in question. There was plenty of room, for fingers, anyway. “How much did you bet?”
    “The next round.”
    “You both lose, it’s a quarter.”
    “Heads or tails quarter?”
    “Isn’t there a rule against leaving an AA meeting and coming straight to a bar?”
    Shane went into a laughter spaz where he bobbed up and down on his hands. “I told you she watches. Every day, sitting in that window, watching and watching.”
    Lloyd spoke for the first time. “It’s Coca-Cola.”
    “Yeah, right. At least I put mine in a coffee cup.”
    The flab on Shane’s face arranged itself into a pout. He held the glass toward me. “It is Coca-Cola. Want a taste?”
    “I’d rather die.”
    “We don’t drink alcoholic beverages, ma’am,” Lloyd said.
    “Then why hang out in a bar?”
    The two glanced at each other, and Lloyd kind of shrugged. Shane looked back up at me. “Bars are all we know. We ceased alcohol consumption but can’t decide what to do instead.”
    “When you find out, tell me.”
    Lloyd held his pool cue with one hand and rubbed his overalls with the other. “We’ll do that, ma’am.”
    I stared down at the grinning Shane. “Now, wheel out of my way. I’m busy.”

4
    Sam Callahan says the only important decision is whether to commit suicide and die now or not commit suicide and die later. He read that in a book. I decided to die now.
    As I drove up the river road to our family place, deep blue plastered the sky all the way to Yellowstone in the north and the Winds in the east. Earlier I had been too drunk to notice the air or the silver-gray sagebrush. On the valley floor the cottonwoods had small, lime green leaves, then as I moved up the mountain the leaves curled in on themselves until, at the ranch itself, each naked twig was tipped by a furry bud.
    I pulled off next to the Miner Creek culvert and dug under the seat for a Flintstones never-tip cup, then I walked over to our buck-and-rail fence. The TM ranch stretched up the rise to the frame ranch house Grandpa built to replace the one-room cabin where Dad and three brothers and a sister were raised. Hank had the mares and foals fenced in the east pasture and the geldings strung along the creek. Frostbite the Dad killer grazed in a bunch feeding on bromegrass near the far irrigation ditch. The pasture was a dull yellow veined by dark green along the ditches where Hank was already moving water.
    I had almost killed my son. Next time he might not be lucky, therefore, I had to stop. Easy logic.
    Only a heartbeat ago Dad made us bull boats by cutting the ends off watermelons and setting in chokecherry masts with bandanna sails. Petey and I squealed up and down the creek, crashing through willows, encasing ourselves in mud from the knees down. We turned pinecones into boat families of a Mom, Dad, two kids, and a horse. Petey’s family usually sank, but mine bobbed clear to the river.
    I lived for horses back then. My mare, Molly, followed me like a beagle, once right into the house and into my room. The night lightning struck her I cried till dawn. I thought I would never feel that bad again.
    Here’s what I couldn’t grab: the string connecting that to this, how the girl who slept in cowgirl boots and played with pinecone dolls became the woman who dressed like a Salt Lake hooker and hid bourbon bottles in vacuum cleaner bags. I pried the lid off Auburn’s cup and poured it to the rim with Everclear. Was the problem nothing but alcohol? I’d been drinking more or less regular since college, although I didn’t drink a bit while I was pregnant with Auburn. I only began drinking on a daily basis after Frostbite killed Dad. Closing my eyes, I tried to call up what I felt like before booze. A few watery images floated past—watermelon boats, Shannon, myself in the mirror in my cheerleading outfit, riding—but