The Axman Cometh Read Online Free PDF Page A

for the rest of the day. Not when she's in one of her prize moods. Shannon doesn't want to think about the empty bottles of vodka, but she has no reason to doubt Chap's word. He has always kept an observant eye on his mother, not out of malice but as if she is some sort of long-term nature-study project he has adopted.
    "I live at the trailer park."
    She might have guessed. There's only one in town, and not a very inviting place to live, filled with the sort of people who drive unwashed pickup trucks, have common-law spouses and get into knife fights.
    "I didn't know that." She knows nothing about Perry Kennold . He's a recent transfer student, junior, sits in her fourth-period biology class. Sits is about all. He seems never to open his mouth or his textbook, but she has observed him surreptitiously reading a paperback edition of Walt Whitman with a kind of avid, worshipful look in his eyes.
    Shannon carries the Dr Peppers out to the porch, grateful for a breeze that has come
    up as the sun sinks just below the high crowns of sage orange and persimmon trees in the backyard.
    Perry is looking at her latest watercolor.
    "I saw some of your other pictures in the library," he says. "You're real good. I'd like to be able to draw."
    "Do you take art?"
    "No. I wouldn't be any good at it. I don't have any talent."
    He looks up at her as she hands him the Dr Pepper. His hand overlaps hers for just a moment, unexpectedly clammy, she feels calluses. He's a real big kid, especially through the shoulders, but unfortunately he has acne, even on the back of his neck where his hair is longest but doesn't hide the lumps. His face is so nicked and scabby it looks as if he went through a windshield. Forget about the acne and he's really good-looking, with a Roman nose and thick, dark eyelashes. But then you notice he's minus a front tooth and always seems to be self-conscious about that, holding his head down when he talks, or shielding his mouth with one hand. He's a moody sort and Shannon is intolerant of people who can't find something to be glad about once in a while; but, perversely, there are depths to his moodiness that arouse her mothering instinct.
    Because his acne makes it hard for her
    to look him straight in the face, she goes to the screen with her own soda and stares out at the backyard. Behind the Hill house Madge Mayhew is taking wash off her line. Sheets flap briskly in the wind and Shannon thinks, creatively, of sailing ships: some day she will paint the sea in all its moods. The challenge in store gives her gooseflesh.
    "So how come you're over here?" Shannon asks, not meaning anything particularly, but it comes out sounding like she thinks he is out of bounds and uninvited. Then, before Perry can answer, she gets that little alerting flash across the horizon of her mind: he's been around before, on West Homestead, he's here this afternoon because—Shannon remembers his first day at the high school, his eyes on her in biology, brooding but appreciative—Perry Kennold has a crush on her. How terrific.
    "I don't know. I walk around a lot. Nothing else to do, if you know what I mean. I don't have a car."
    "I always have more to do than I can find time for," Shannon says blithely, hoping he will take the hint. She glances at him, not smiling. He has taken a couple of sips of the Dr Pepper, not as if he is dying of thirst, and that cinches it: he just wanted an excuse to talk to her. Ho hum. He's wearing the same
    clothes he seems to wear every day to school. Unironed Levi's, a white T-shirt and denim vest with a fleece lining that's too warm for the season, rough-out boots so shabby the stitches appear barely to be holding.
    "Do you think Oswald killed Kennedy? I don't."
    The assassination was a personal tragedy for Shannon. She doesn't like being reminded of it, or discussing an idol with a virtual stranger.
    "I don't know; I try not to think about it any more ."
    "Did you cry?" he asks softly.
    Now that is going too far, and