The Backwoods Read Online Free PDF

paper. “Now, I make less than you, and if anything my wife, Marcy, eats even more than your wife, but look at this.”
    He passed the slips of paper to Sutter.
    Holy . . . shit! They were bank balance receipts. “Trey, I say you sure do manage your money proper. Jiminy Christmas.” Trey had five grand in his checking and eight in his savings.
    Trey took back the papers, nodding. “It’s ’cos God listens when I talk to him. God looks at me and ya know what He sees? He sees a man who’s had plenty of chances to go astray but chose not to. He sees a cop, same as He sees you. He sees a man bustin’ his ass to uphold the law and maintain peace and decency. So God don’t leave a man like that out to dry. Instead, He helps him out every so often. Just like He’s gonna help you.″
    Sutter reflected on the words. He remembered Trey back in his younger days, before marriage, before typical social and domestic responsibilities had come into his life. The man had been an absolute nutcase, a hard-drinkin’, hard-partyin’ character. Gals would follow that boy down the street, Sutter thought. Spent mos a’ his money on bar-hoppin’, hot rods, and women. . . . But life had changed Sgt. William Trey—a change for the good. He’d used the force of his will to change himself into a good man, and now good things were befalling him.
    Would the same good things befall Sutter?
    He needed some good things now.
    It was almost as if Trey were reading his mind when he said, “Good things, Chief.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Good things happen to men who put their trust in God.”
    Sutter stared out the window. What Trey was telling him just made him feel better and better. He shook his head. “Trey, I known you for goin’ on thirty years, and in all that time I had no idea you had so much religion in ya.”
    “Ain’t no secret; ain’t no big deal.” Trey calmly sipped more coffee. “Live by God’s laws, and He will grant blessings upon you.” But in that same moment, Trey’s eyes shot wide out the window at a figure at the side of the road. It was a woman, a woman flagging them down, and that was when the very God-fearing Sergeant Trey exclaimed, “Holy sufferin’ shit, Chief! Would you get a load of the tits on that piece of ass?”

(I)
     
    Patricia, of course, had forgotten. It had been five years, hadn’t it?
    Five years since her return to Agan’s Point.
    The Cadillac cruised silently, comfortingly, but as the city had faded behind her, and the interstate highways had eventually given over to long, winding, and very rural county roads, the words began to haunt her:
    Oh, my God, girl. How could you let something like that happen?
    They were her father’s words, less than a week after her sixteenth birthday. . . .
    The look in his eye, and the words he’d chosen. Like I let it happen, she thought now in an overwhelming mental darkness. Like I wanted it to happen . . .
    She’d never been more hurt in her life.
    She’d felt good, hadn’t she? Her wonderful, if selfish, love session with Byron last night might have had something to do with it, but when she pulled away from the condo, knowing full well where she was going, she felt good, and that was something she didn’t expect. Watching the sun bloom as she drove, opening the Cadillac up on Interstate 95, and moving forward . . . It seemed to clear her head of all the city’s stresses and the endless intricacies of work. Indeed, Patricia felt clean, new; she felt purged. Until . . .
    Her mood began to wilt in increments. She knew what she was doing. Putting it off. But I can’t put it off. All I can do is dawdle, procrastinate. She wound up driving through the historic district in Richmond, and blowing an hour looking for a place to have breakfast. Same thing through Norfolk, for lunch. She was turning the three-hour drive into an all-day journey, as if getting to Agan′s Point later would ease some of her distress. But she knew it wouldn’t. I’m