Tenth of December Read Online Free PDF Page A

when feeling that the world was good and she had at last found her place in it, “Ho HO, ho HO!”
    Callie pulled back the blind.
    Yes. Awesome. It was still solved so perfect .
    There was plenty for him to do back there. A yard could be a whole world. Like her yard when she was a kid had been a whole world. From the three holes in their wood fence she’d been able to see Exxon (Hole One) and Accident Corner (Hole Two), and Hole Three was actually two holes that if you lined them up right your eyes would do this weird crossing thing and you could play Oh My God I Am So High by staggering away with your eyes crossed, going, “Peace, man, peace.”
    When Bo got older, it would be different. Then he’d need his freedom. But now he just needed not to get killed. Once they’d found him way over on Testament. And that was across I-90. How had he crossed I-90? She knew how. Darted. That’s how he crossed streets. Once a total stranger had called them from Hightown Plaza. Even Dr. Brile had said it: “Callie, this boy is going to end up dead if you don’t get this under control. Is he taking the medications?”
    Well, he was and he wasn’t. The meds made him grind his teeth and his fist would suddenly pound down. He’d broken plates that way, and once a glass tabletop and got four stitches in his wrist.
    Today he didn’t need the meds because he was safe in the yard, because she’d fixed it so perfect .
    He was out there practicing pitching by filling his Yankees helmet with pebbles and winging them at the tree.
    He looked up and saw her and did the thing where he blew a kiss.
    Sweet little man.
    Now all she had to worry about was the pup. She hoped the lady who’d called would actually show up. It was a nice pup. White, with brown around one eye. Cute. If the lady showed up, she’d definitely want it. And if she took it, Jimmy was off the hook. He’d hated doing it that time with the kittens. But if no one took the pup he’d do it. He’d have to. Because his feeling was, when you said you were going to do a thing and didn’t do it, that was how kids got into drugs. Plus he’d been raised on a farm, or near a farm anyways, and anybody raised on a farm knew you had to do what you had to do in terms of sick animals or extra animals—the pup being not sick, just extra.
    That time with the kittens, Brianna and Jessi had called him a murderer, getting Bo all worked up, and Jimmy had yelled, “Look, you kids, I was raised on a farm and you got to do what you got to do!” Then he’d cried in bed, saying how the kittens had mewed in the bag all the way to thepond, and how he wished he’d never been raised on a farm, and she’d almost said, “You mean near a farm” (his dad had run a car wash outside Cortland), but sometimes when she got too smart-assed he would do this hard pinching thing on her arm while waltzing her around the bedroom, as if the place where he was pinching was like her handle, going, “I’m not sure I totally heard what you just said.”
    So, that time after the kittens, she’d only said, “Oh, honey, you did what you had to do.”
    And he’d said, “I guess I did, but it’s sure not easy raising kids the right way.”
    And then, because she hadn’t made his life harder by being a smart-ass, they had lain there making plans, like why not sell this place and move to Arizona and buy a car wash, why not buy the kids Hooked on Phonics, why not plant tomatoes, and then they’d got to wrestling around and (she had no idea why she remembered this) he’d done this thing of, while holding her close, bursting this sudden laugh/despair-snort into her hair, like a sneeze, or like he was about to start crying.
    Which had made her feel special, him trusting her with that.
    So what she’d love, for tonight? Was getting the pup sold, putting the kids to bed early, and then, Jimmy seeing her as all organized in terms of the pup, they could mess around and afterward lie there making plans, and he could