Stories (2011) Read Online Free PDF Page B

some Godtraining to female retards. It was something he wanted to do in
the worst way, though he had to admit there wasn't any burning desire in him to
do the same for boys or men or women that were half-wits, but due to his sister
having been one, he certainly had this thing for girl simples.
    And he had this thing for Halloween, because that was the
night the Lord took his sister to hell, and he might have taken her to glory
had she had any bible4earning or God-sense. But she didn't have a drop, and it
was partly his own fault, because he knew about God and could sing some hymns
pretty good. But he'd never turned a word of benediction or gospel music in her
direction. Not one word. Nor had his mama, and his papa wasn't around to do
squat.
    The old man ran off with a bucktoothed laundry woman that
used to go house to house taking in wash and bringing it back the next day, but
when she took in their wash, she took in Papa too, and she never brought either
of them back. And if that wasn't bad enough, the laundry contained everything
they had in the way of decent clothes, including a couple of pairs of nice
dress pants and some pinstriped shirts like niggers wear to funerals. This left
him with one old pair of faded overalls that he used to wear to slop the hogs
before the critters killed and ate Granny and they had to get rid of them
because they didn't want to eat nothing that had eaten somebody they knew. So,
it wasn't bad enough Papa ran off with a beaver-toothed wash woman and his
sister was a drooling retard, he now had only the one pair of ugly, old
overalls to wear to school, and this gave the other kids three things to tease him
about, and they never missed a chance to do it. Well, four things. He was kind
of ugly too.
    It got tiresome.
     
    * * *
     
    Preacher Judd could remember nights waking up with his
sister crawled up in the bed alongside him, lying on her back, eyes wide open,
her face bathed in cool moonlight, picking her nose and eating what she found,
while he rested on one elbow and tried to figure out why she was that way.
    He finally gave up figuring, decided that she ought to have
some fun, and he could have some fun too. Come Halloween, he got him a bar of
soap for marking up windows and a few rocks for knocking out some, and he made
his sister and himself ghost-suits out of old sheets in which he cut mouth and
eye holes.
    This was her fifteenth year and she had never been
trick-or-treating. He had designs that she should go this time, and they did,
and later after they'd done it, he walked her back home, and later yet, they
found her out back of the house in her ghost-suit, only the sheet had turned
red because her head was bashed in with something and she had bled out like an
ankle-hung hog. And someone had turned her trick-or-treat sack-the handle of
which was still clutched in her fat grip-inside out and taken every bit of
candy she'd gotten from the neighbors.
    The sheriff came out, pulled up the sheet and saw that she
was naked under it, and he looked her over and said that she looked raped to
him, and that she had been killed by bizarre hands.
    Bizarre hands never did make sense to Preacher Judd, but he
loved the sound of it, and never did let it slip away, and when he would tell
about his poor sister, naked under the sheets, her brains smashed out and her
trick-or-treat bag turned inside out, he'd never miss ending the story with the
sheriff's line about her having died by bizarre hands.
    It had a kind of ring to it.
     
    * * *
     
    He parked his Dodge by the roadside, got out and walked up
to the Widow Case's, sipping on a Frosty Root Been But even though it was late
October, the Southern sun was as hot as Satan's ass and the root beer was
anything but frosty.
    Preacher Judd was decked out in his black suit, white shin
and black loafers with black and white checked socks, and he had on his black
hat, which was short-brimmed and made him look, he thought, exactly like a
traveling preacher ought to