Sweeter Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

and let Cyrus inspect his tattoos. Mostly they just sat out of the sun and wove their words into the complicated rhythms of the creek. “Kid,” Hank said several times a day, “life is a peach.”
    Six months later Hank would be gone for good. He crossed his own dark bridge and left the rest of them behind to untangle the guilt and recrimination. That, of course, was what Isabel had been talking about—Hank, old heartaches—and the longer Cyrus sat there, the more he felt his conviction ebbing. Ruby and Clarence had been good to him, helping to turn a disaster into something more or less bearable. He hoped they knew that, hoped they understood how much he appreciated all they’d done.
    Just then a car approached from the direction of the marsh. From the corner of his eye he could tell it was a big black number, a Caddy, perhaps. He wasn’t sure. Unlike other boys his age, he didn’t know about cars. He couldn’t, from a tail light or grille, tell you the make and model.
    When the car stopped behind him, Cyrus didn’t bother to turn around. He heard the door open, the deep murmur of the radio like something from the womb. Then a man cleared his throat and said, “I hope you are not contemplating anything so rash as jumping. I am afraid I am not the ablest of swimmers.”
    It was a soft voice, an accent Cyrus couldn’t place, though it seemed faintly regal. He turned around to find a man wearing a dark suit and V-necked sweater. He had brown hair that curled down to his shoulders, and hooded eyes that seemed to glisten in the dark. A diamond sparkled on his pinky.
    ISABEL DROVE HOME to an empty house and sat in the darkness of the living room, smoking cigarettes and thinking about Ruby and Clarence and her damned kid brother. Even at the best of times a chat with her aunt and uncle could cause her a sleepless night, stirring up painful memories of departed loved ones; and sometimes she came away from her visits with Ruby feeling ungenerous and spiteful. It was sour grapes, of course, for a perfectly decent woman who had done no wrong in her life, a childless woman who, with the purest of intentions, had swooped down in themidst of a great tragedy and snatched Isabel and Cyrus to her bosom.
    At the time, Isabel was just finishing high school and was so bitter about her parents’ deaths that she resisted Ruby’s attempts to mother her, turning a cold shoulder to the hugs and kisses, the evenings with the church choir. She said hurtful things, did hurtful things and ran off a few months later, leaving her little brother with the Mitchells to somehow pick his way through the wreckage on his own. She married Gerry then and moved out to his farm, built a new life. And although she now had reason to think the future would be a sunnier place—and most of the time felt fine, like a woman in her prime—some nights she sat in the dark and pondered the loss, the guilt, the selfishness and, yes, her resentment of Ruby, who for nearly a decade had sifted the meaning of her life from the ashes of another.
    When Gerry came home about midnight, Isabel had settled into one of her moods. He knew well enough the signs of her unhappiness and knew he had caused his share of it. So, without a word, he put out her cigarette and guided her upstairs to the bedroom. Without removing her clothes, he tucked her into bed and carefully crawled in beside her.
    There were any number of things he might have been tempted to do just then. He might have pulled her into his arms and crooned softly under his breath, Marty Robbins or Merle Haggard or George Jones, the way he used to when they were first dating. He might even have made love to her, mussing her hair and pawing her flesh like he meant to obliterate the person she was and refashion a newer, happier model. But the only time Gerry ever sang anymore was on the tractor, where no one could hear him. And, really, the sexual act—he was sure that even so much as a kiss would be regarded as